“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2: 5, 13)

Jesus tells us to buy of Him “gold [refined] tried in the fire,” which is the faith which works by love, the genuine article. What is it that is to be tried with severe trials?

Your faith which is “more precious than gold.” Then, you see, as everyone’s faith is to be so tried, he needs the faith that has stood the trial. We have the testimony: “Here are those who keep the commandments of God and “have faith in Jesus? (Rev. 14:12). No, the “have” is not there. They keep the commandments of God and [keep] the faith of Jesus. This is the genuine article; that is the faith which, in Him, endured the test.

That is the faith which met every fiery trial that Satan knows with all the power he could rally. That faith endured the test. So, in the expression “buy from Me that faith that has endured,” is there not the same thought that we have learned in “this mind…which was also in Christ Jesus”? (Phil. 2:5). When that “mind” is in me that was in Him, will not that mind do in me precisely what it did in Him? How is it that we serve the law of God? “With the mind I myself serve the law of God (Rom. 7:25). Christ in this world every moment served the law of God. How did He do it? With the mind. By what process of the mind? By faith. Did not the faith of Jesus keep the commandments of God perfectly, all the time? And is not that the faith that works by love?

Isn’t that the third angels’ message when He says, “Buy from me gold refined [tried] in the fire [love and faith], and white garments [the righteousness of Christ], that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed”? (Rev. 3:18). We see how the mind that was in Christ will stand all of the trials that this world can bring. Will the mind of Christ in Him do differently from the mind of Christ in me or in any other person? No.

Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1893, p. 205