Our Redeemer, laying aside his glory and majesty, to take human nature, and to die man’s sacrifice, was a miracle of God. It was God’s wise arrangement to save fallen man. God requires his people to be laborers together with him. He requires them to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul, and present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is the only service he will accept from reasonable mortals. Jesus has stooped very low in order to reach man in his low estate. And God requires of man to make earnest efforts, and deny self, that he may preserve his vigor of mind, and elevate himself, and imitate the example of him in whom was no guile. Then will he be benefited with the atonement of Christ. As the Lord bade faithful Noah before the flood, Come thou, and all thy house, into the ark, he will, previous to the time of trouble, say to his faithful saints, who have been preparing for translation, “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee. Hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth, also, shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.” (4aSG 149.1) MC VC

Christ took not on him the nature of angels, but the nature of man, that he might acquaint himself with the temptations with which he was beset, and help man in his fallen state, and by his own humiliation and death elevate men to become heirs with him to his Father’s kingdom. Christ endured the strongest temptations of Satan, that he might experience in himself the severest conflict which the children of men would have with the fallen foe, and that he might sustain those who should come to him for strength in their temptations. (4aSG 149.2) MC VC