Excerpt from: "A Present Salvation."
So it is that “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:2, 3). Note again the present tense. It is not enough to confess that Jesus Christ did come in the flesh; that will bring no salvation to anybody. We must confess, from positive knowledge that Jesus is just now come in the flesh, and then we are of God. Christ came in the flesh eighteen hundred years ago, just for the purpose of demonstrating the possibility. That which He did once, He is able to do again. He who denies the possibility of His coming in the flesh of men now, thereby denies the possibility of His having ever come in the flesh.
So our part is with humbleness of mind to confess that we are sinners; that in us is no good thing. If we do not, then the truth is not in us; but if we do, then Christ, who came into the world for the express purpose of saving sinners, will come and take up His abode within us, and then the truth will indeed be in us. Then there will be perfection manifested in the midst of imperfection. There will be completeness in the midst of weakness. We “are complete in Him” (Col. 2:10). He has created all things by the word of His power, and therefore can take men who are but nothing, and can make them “to the praise of the glory of His grace” (Eph. 1:6). “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be the glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).
E. J. Waggoner
The Present Truth | May 18, 1893