For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation. Galatians 6:15.

The grace of Jesus Christ alone can change the heart of stone to a heart of flesh and make it alive unto God. Men and women may perform great deeds in the eyes of the world; their achievements may be many and of a high order in the sight of others, but all the talent, all the skill, all the ability of the world, will fail to transform the character and make a degraded child of sin a child of God, an heir of heaven. We have no power to justify the soul, to sanctify the heart….

How the wondrous provision of the plan of God for the salvation of mankind widens and exalts our ideas of the love of God! How it binds our hearts to the great heart of Infinite Love! How it makes us delight in His service, as our hearts respond to the drawing of His loving kindness and tender mercy! …

This is the work that is before us. We are to have the faith that works by love and purifies the soul. Through faith our lives are to be hid with Christ in God. We shall then be God’s hidden ones; for the value of Christian character is not discerned by the world. The world admire honesty, and the manifestations of the virtues and graces of Christian character; but at the same time they make a jest of true Christian conscientiousness because it is a rebuke to their own lives of sin. The living stones that shine in the spiritual temple of the Lord are a great annoyance to Satan, and he ever seeks to cut off the light and eclipse the Sun of Righteousness by interposing his shadow between the soul and God….

Before human beings and angels, Christians are required to show by precept and example the value of Christian character. Those who receive Christ as their personal Savior will be able to do this, and for them Christ has gone to prepare mansions in heaven. There are some who declare that all are entitled to a place in heaven, and in the same breath they acknowledge that all are not fitted for that heavenly abode. If all … would but accept the truth as it is in Jesus and give it a place in the inner sanctuary of the soul, that they might become sanctified through it, they would be fitted for heaven….

Those whose lives are hid with Christ in God, who have been clothed upon with His righteousness, will have a right to the inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.—Signs of the Times, May 2, 1892.