After Christ rose from the dead, He proclaimed over the sepulcher, “I am the resurrection and the life.” John 11:25. Christ, the risen Saviour, is our life. As Christ becomes the life of the soul, the change is felt, but language cannot describe it. All claims to knowledge, to influence, to power, are worthless without the perfume of Christ’s character. Christ must be the very life of the soul, as the blood is the life of the body.... (1SM 114.1) MC VC

Cleansed From All Selfishness VC

Those who are connected with the service of God must be purified from every thread of selfishness. All is to be done in accordance with the injunction, “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all” (Colossians 3:17) “to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). God’s laws of justice and equity must be strictly obeyed in the transactions between neighbor and neighbor, brother and brother. We are to seek for perfect order and perfect righteousness, after God’s own similitude. On these grounds alone will our works bear the test of the judgment.... (1SM 114.2) MC VC

Christianity is the revealing of the tenderest affection for one another. The Christian life is made up of Christian duties and Christian privileges. Christ in His wisdom gave to His church in its infancy a system of sacrifices and offerings, of which He Himself was the foundation, and by which His death was prefigured. Every sacrifice pointed to Him as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, that all might understand that the wages of sin is death. In Him was no sin, yet He died for our sins. (1SM 114.3) MC VC

The symbolic system of ceremonies worked to one end—the vindication of the law of God, that all who believe in Christ might come “in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). In Christian work there is ample room for the activity of all the gifts God has given. All are to be united in carrying out God’s requirements, revealing at every advance step that faith which works by love and purifies the soul. (1SM 114.4) MC VC