Brief Outline of the Sabbath Question by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 29, 1903

Brief Outline of the Sabbath Question

By William Ambrose Spicer

In Four Parts

No. 1—Jesus a Sabbath-Keeper

CHRISTIANITY is the life of Jesus Christ in his followers. Christ, the divine Son of God, lived as the Son of man in this world to show how man ought to live, “leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps.” 1 Peter 2:21.

“He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” 1 John 2:6. Jesus was a commandment-keeper, and a Sabbath-keeper. Christians ought to walk even as he walked.

He now dwells with the believer and walks with him, and Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” Heb. 13:8. Therefore the person who allows Jesus to live in him and walk in him in Christ’s own way, will be, like Christ, a Sabbath-keeper. And therefore Seventh-day Adventists, who desire to follow Christ, keep his holy Sabbath day.

Jesus says that he kept his Father’s commandments, and he commended all who should “do and teach them.” Matt. 5:17-19. His gospel, through faith, saves men from sin, which is “the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4), and makes them obedient. Jesus came not to save men in sin, but from sin. Matt. 1:21. Sabbath-breaking is sin, and Jesus saves the believer from it, and makes him a Sabbath-keeper.

Not Salvation by Works

It is not that any are saved by keeping the ten commandments; they are saved from sin, through faith in Jesus, in order that they may keep God’s holy law, which is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Rom. 8:4. But the man truly saved will be obedient to God’s law. Only the “carnal mind” is “not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Rom. 8:7.

So the very promise of the new covenant is that God will write his law in the heart and in the mind. Heb. 8:10. When it is so written, it will be lived in the life, for out of the heart are “the issues of life.” Jesus had the law in his heart. Ps. 40:8. Therefore he lived obedient to it. Every heart that by faith lets Jesus in will have also the power of obedience, as Jesus had it, and still has it.

Freedom to Obey or Disobey

Some seem to think Jesus came to set men free from obeying God’s law. But he came to set us free from disobeying it, so that we may through his indwelling power keep it now and evermore. Breaking it is bondage, condemnation. Keeping it is liberty. Ps. 119:45.

Who walks the streets free from the civil law against stealing? The man who keeps the law? or the man who breaks it? The man who steals is under the law at once. Just so the man who through faith keeps God’s law, is free from the condemnation of the law. But the man who breaks God’s law is under its condemnation at once.

Who is “under the law”? — The one who breaks it. Who is “under grace”? — The one who accepts the grace of Christ that brings pardon and the power of obedience; for grace reigns “through righteousness,” or right doing.

This modern preaching of freedom to disobey is but making a religion of lawlessness. It will yet, according to the Word of God, fill the earth with violence and lawlessness as in the days of Noah.

When we teach people to follow Jesus in Sabbath-keeping, some, we find, feel very hardly toward this teaching. But surely it is not a bad thing to teach that we should live as Jesus lived, and walk as he walked! Jesus did nothing bad.

It is surely safe also to take the Scriptures as the authority in religion, for they only are able to make the man of God “perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” 2 Tim. 3:16, 17.

This great advent movement for which Seventh-day Adventists stand is but a call to the world to follow now in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, so that, when he shall come the second time, all who believe may follow the Saviour in eternity.

W. A. S.