p. 45 | Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 8, 1894

The Sabbath That Christ Kept.

CHRISTIANITY is based on the redemption work of Christ. Man had broken God's law in Eden and the curse of a broken law hung over humanity. A law was made at Sinai and written on tables of stone of which God said: “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man do he shall live in them.” Man failed to obey this law so help was laid on One who was mighty and able to save to the uttermost. In the fullness of time when God's purpose had matured, which he purposed before the world began, he sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law. His office was to magnify the law and make it honorable. This he did by living a life of perfect obedience to it in every jot and tittle, and he proved it to be “holy and just and good.”

Holiness is sinlessness. Sin is the transgression of the law, so holiness is perfect obedience to the law. Christ was holy and as such was acceptable to God, and as such was fitted to become a sacrifice for sin. Had Christ not obeyed the law perfectly he would have been a sinner. “The wages of sin is death.” Had Christ sinned

his death could have had no redemptive power. It would have been the penalty of a broken law. It was his perfect obedience to God's law that qualified him to intercede for us. Had he broken the law in one point he would have been guilty of all. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” was a part of God's law, and the day was expressly declared to be the seventh day. We know that Christ kept the Sabbath day holy, for he declared himself to be the “Lord of the Sabbath day.” Had he not done so, he would have been a sinner, not able to redeem even himself. John says, “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk even as he walked.” 1 John 2:6. The 4th verse reads, “He that saith I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar and the truth is not in him.” If we do not obey this Sabbath law as Christ did we are convinced of the law as transgressors. Christ said in Matt. 5:18, R.V. “Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished;” that is, not till the end of this age. The enforcement of God's law, then, is a purpose that cannot fail. Christ said on another occasion, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail.” The destruction of the material universe, then, would not thwart God's purposes, as would the failure of the least part of his moral law.

Christ's success as a redeemer depended upon his keeping the seventh day. Had he kept Sunday, as do so many of his professed followers, we would be still in our sins for the law would remain broken. He could only redeem men from the curse of the law which he obeyed himself. Christ never kept the first day of the week so that if it were possible for God to alter his Sabbath law which he made obligatory “forever,” and he did alter it, we should have no mediator under the new law. Christ could be no refuge for us under a broken law which he never kept himself. That God made no change at his resurrection is proved by Christ's words in Matt. 24:20 where, in anticipation of the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened forty years afterwards, he said, “But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter neither on the Sabbath day.” This was spoken to a company with whom he habitually kept the Sabbath day of the fourth commandment.