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Editorial

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 5, 1911

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 88, No. 1.

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Editorial

By Editor

ALL the way along, since the advent movement began to proclaim the Sabbath reform, we have had to meet the growing disregard of the law of God. In repudiating the Sabbath, men must repudiate the standard of eternal righteousness, and the result is increasing lawlessness.
AND strangely indeed some have wrested scriptures in defense of lawlessness toward God. A scripture declares that no sinner can be justified by the deeds of the law, but by faith only; and thereupon it is argued that the believer is set free to transgress the law, to continue in sin! Whereas justification itself means being saved from transgression and made a doer of the law, by the faith of Jesus.
MEETING this line of attack upon the very heart of the gospel, the first copy of the Present Truth, our first paper, said (July, 1849):—
“Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” Gal. 5:4.
This text is frequently quoted by the no-Sabbath teachers to show that those who are keeping the seventh-day Sabbath have fallen from grace. Now if we fall from grace for keeping the fourth commandment in the decalogue, do they not fall from grace for keeping the first, third, fifth, seventh, or eighth commandment in the same law? If we fall from grace by keeping the Sabbath commandment, we can not be restored to grace until we break it. And by the same rule those who are keeping the third, fifth, and eighth commandments, must dishonor their parents, swear, and steal, before they can be restored by divine grace.
I leave the reader to decide as to the justness of this startling conclusion. My desire is to hold up to view the no-Sabbath, no-commandment system in its true, hideous, and crooked form, that the reader may not be devoured by it. If we fall from grace by teaching the Sabbath, then Paul and all the apostles fell from grace by teaching the commandments.
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honor thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise.” Eph. 6:1, 2.
This is the first commandment of the decalogue which has a promise annexed to it, and the first on the second table of stone. There is not a man or a woman in the world who believes that the apostles fell from grace for urging upon the Ephesians the claims of the fifth commandment in the moral law.
Neither is there a man or a woman who really believes that we have fallen from grace (for the sin of Sabbath-keeping, as some would have it) for keeping and teaching the fourth commandment. Those who give this impression do not really believe any such thing; but they seem willing to give this wrong impression in order to hide the Sabbath truth.
Seventh-day Adventists do not believe that any man can win salvation by keeping the fourth commandment. The man must be saved from his sins by the faith of Jesus before ever he can keep the Sabbath holy. But salvation itself, justification from sin, means the obedience of faith. The gospel of the way of forgiveness of sin and of obedience to God's holy law, through Jesus Christ, is the only gospel there is. Christ's one purpose in coming to die for men was to save them from the transgression of the law of God and its terrible consequences. “Thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.”