Sabbath School Today, Volume 9 - Paul E. Penno

to come, and it will.
That means the sealing message is not proclaimed by a handful of
zealots scattered almost invisible in the church, but it's by the corporate body
of the church. It means the church will at last be united in their
understanding of the message! In other words, it's God's purpose that the
entire body of the church be united in their heart-appreciation for the
sacrifice of Christ as no corporate body in history has been so united, so
grown-up in their understanding of the atonement. At last, they comprehend
something--what it cost the Son of God to save this world. And that
constrains them.
What Sunday-keeping churches just can't see.
Paul's prayer is that we might comprehend the grand dimensions of this
agape-love of Christ (Eph. 3:14-19). It's no fault of theirs they can't see it--
the false doctrine of natural immortality they inherited from Romanism (and
eventually paganism) hides their eyes from "comprehending" the kind of
death Christ died on His cross. We have yet to become united in our
understanding of what happened there, but the Holy Spirit is working. We
have a unique new covenant message to proclaim to "all nations." It will
arrest the attention of every honest soul in the world.
Was Paul's gospel self-propagating?It seems that it did have its own
built-in power pack. It motivated people even to the point of being thought
extravagantly zealous: "If we are out of our mind ... [or] in our right mind, ...
Christ's love [agape] compels us, because we are convinced that One died for
all, and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no
longer live for themselves" (2 Cor. 5:13-15, New International Version).
In other words, they sensed a motivation fueled by something special
they saw in the sacrifice of Christ. Once you grasped what had happened,
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