INCONSISTENCY by CHARLES P. WHITFORD

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 10, 1869

INCONSISTENCY.

By CHARLES P. WHITFORD

WHILE attending a meeting held by first-day Adventists recently, one of their number asked the following question: "If we are to be saved by keeping the law, what need of the death of Christ." This man had recently heard from the lips of our esteemed Bro. Cornell that we do not trust in the law and the keeping of the Sabbath, for salvation, and that it is not in the nature of law, either human or divine, to redeem the transgressor. And yet this man asks a question in which he assumes a point of faith which he has been plainly taught we do not believe, and then desires us to prove that we are to be saved by keeping the law, as assumed by him in the question.

How inconsistent men will act and talk when arrayed against the law of God. The law was given to man as his saviour. He broke it; but it could not redeem him. Christ must do this work. But after receiving pardon through Christ for sin (which is transgression of the law), shall we continue in sin (or continue to transgress the law) that grace may abound? Says Paul, "God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin but by the law." "For without the law sin was dead." "For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived [from a dead and slumbering condition], and I died." Paul was once alive, and, in his own estimation, thought he was blameless as touching the "law of God;" but when the commandment came which required him to be holy, just, and good, sin revived, and Paul died, as to all hope in himself, from the law, or from obedience to it. He saw that it condemned him, and that, judged by it, he was lost; hence, he exclaims, "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

Paul was wretched on account of his remaining proneness to violate the law; hence, with earnestness, he exclaims, "Who shall deliver me?" Not the law, not my own efforts, nor my abhorrence of myself on account of disobedience; not any expedients which ever have been, or can be, devised by creatures. Left to these, merely, he who is filthy will remain filthy still. What then? Must I perish, or drag on forever this body of death? No. "I thank God," says Paul, "for his unspeakable gift." There is deliverance, complete, everlasting deliverance, from all evil, through Jesus Christ our Lord. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. viii, 3, 4. The law could not deliver Paul, who had broken it, from condemnation and ruin. Neither could it lead him to obey it, nor to repent of having broken it; nor could it lessen his disposition to violate it. It could make no atonement for sin, and could not save from it. It was weak through the flesh; and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; destroyed the power of sin over those who trust in Christ, by showing, through his atonement, the evil nature of sin, the guilt of those who commit it, the excellence of the law of which it is a violation, the wrath of God against it; and so, opening a way in which God could be just, and the justifier of all that believe in Jesus; and through their union with him, to render to the law, true obedience; thus delivering them from both the condemnation and the reigning power of sin, neither of which things the law could do. "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us;" that we might be brought into that state of true righteousness which the law requires. The law could not save Paul, and it cannot save us. We may observe all these precepts to the best of our ability; but if we look no farther than the law for salvation, we can never find pardon for our sins. The hope of eternal salvation hangs upon Christ. Adam hung his hope there. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and the believing Jews, hung theirs there. We can do no more. The hope of the next life depends upon Jesus Christ. Faith in his blood can alone free us from our transgressions; and a life of obedience to the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, will be a sufficient passport through the golden gates of the city of God. CHARLES P. WHITFORD. Addison, Vt.