As Jesus walked through this world, so we are called to walk. While His faithfulness to the Father's will led Him to uncomplainingly endure the trials that led to His crucifixion, He was constantly exerting a heavenly influence for the kingdom that He came to establish. We are invited to surrender all of our hearts to Christ so He can establish His kingdom of grace in our hearts. This is only possible as we receive and appropriate truth to our lives and characters. As we learn of Christ in humility, learning what it is to be still and know that He is God, we can take the time necessary for His life and lessons to exert such power upon us that we gladly yield to Christ. I appreciate the lessons we can gather from beholding Christ's trial before Pilate, for we are all by nature vacillating and weak without Christ's truth in our hearts. We need a Savior, and Christ offers Himself freely to us today just as surely as He offered Himself before Pilate as a living witness of the kingdom that will never pass away.
"'My kingdom is not of this world,' He said; 'if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence. Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth My voice.'" {The Desire of Ages, page 727, paragraph 2}
"Christ affirmed that His word was in itself a key which would unlock the mystery to those who were prepared to receive it. It had a self-commending power, and this was the secret of the spread of His kingdom of truth. He desired Pilate to understand that only by receiving and appropriating truth could his ruined nature be reconstructed." {The Desire of Ages, page 727, paragraph 3}
Will you receive the word of God into your soul? Christ, the word, will accomplish all He promises in the lives of those who are willing and obedient. The fruit of truly learning of Christ and yielding our will to Christ is that He comes to take up the throne of the heart and casts out sin, fear, and guilt through the merits of His atoning blood, and then He imparts His Spirit so that love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance--all of the fruits of the Spirit without one missing--will have an ever-widening influence in our lives so that we will be able, through Christ, to reveal what it is to live by the divine nature in every circumstance. Let us look upon Jesus and be transformed! This is the reason we exist (to bring God pleasure and to enjoy Him), and in Him we find life, and life more abundantly!