For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:21.
The fact that the holy pair, in disregarding the prohibition of God in one particular, thus transgressed His law, and as the result suffered the consequences of the Fall, should impress all with a just sense of the sacred character of the law of God....
God's people, whom He calls His peculiar treasure, were privileged with a twofold system of law, the moral and the ceremonial. The one, pointing back to Creation to keep in remembrance the living God who made the world, whose claims are binding upon all in every dispensation, and which will exist through all time and eternity. The other, given because of Adam's transgression of the moral law, the obedience to which consisted in sacrifices and offerings pointing to the future redemption....
The love that God bore to humanity, whom He had created in His own image, led Him to give His Son to die for their transgression, and lest the increase of sin should lead them to forget God and the promised redemption, the system of sacrificial offerings was established to typify the perfect offering of the Son of God....
Christ became sin for the fallen race in taking upon Himself the condemnation resting upon the sinner for his transgression of the law of God. Christ stood at the head of the human family as their representative. He had taken upon Himself the sins of the world. In the likeness of sinful flesh He condemned sin in the flesh....
The law of Jehovah, dating back to Creation, was comprised in the two great principles, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.” ...
What is the will of the Father? That we keep His commandments....
The death of Jesus Christ for the redemption of mankind lifts the veil and reflects a flood of light back hundreds of years upon the whole institution of the Jewish system of religion. Without the death of Christ, all this system was meaningless.—The Review and Herald, May 6, 1875.
From From the Heart - Page 286
From the Heart