Sanctification is a progressive work. The successive steps are set before us in the words of Peter: “Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”2 Peter 1:5-8. “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall; for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”2 Peter 1:10, 11.
(MYP 116.1)
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Here is a course by which we may be assured that we shall never fall. Those who are thus working upon the plan of addition in obtaining the Christian graces, have the assurance that God will work upon the plan of multiplication in granting them the gifts of His Spirit.
(MYP 116.2)
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Peter addresses those who have obtained like precious faith: “Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord.”2 Peter 1:2. By divine grace, all who will may climb the shining steps from earth to heaven, and at last, “with songs and everlasting joy,”Isaiah 35:10. enter through the gates into the city of God.—The Review and Herald, November 15, 1887.
(MYP 116.3)
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The trials of life are God’s workmen, to remove the impurities and roughness from our characters. Their hewing, squaring, and chiseling, their burnishing and polishing, is a painful process, it is hard to be pressed down to the grinding wheel. But the stone is brought forth prepared to fill its place in the heavenly temple. Upon no useless material does the Master bestow such careful, thorough work. Only His precious stones are polished after the similitude of a palace.—Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, 10.
(MYP 117.1)
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To the secret place of the Most High, under the shadow of the Almighty, men now and then repair; they abide for a season, and the result is manifest in noble deeds; then their faith fails, the communion is interrupted, and the life work marred. But the life of Jesus was a life of constant trust, sustained by continual communion; and His service for heaven and earth was without failure or faltering.
(MYP 117.2)
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As a man He supplicated the throne of God, till His humanity was charged with a heavenly current that connected humanity with divinity. Receiving life from God, He imparted life to men.—Education, 80, 81.
(MYP 117.3)
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