Under Law or Grace — Which?
By K. C. Russell
One of the stock arguments against the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath is that we are not living under law, but under grace. It is evident that those who reason thus against the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath have not stopped to consider the correct application of the text. It will be observed, by considering the sixth chapter of Romans, that the apostle Paul is here addressing those who are Christians, and not mankind in general. It is difficult to conceive of an application more foreign to the text than the one that teaches we are not under obligations to obey God’s law. The only rational application that could be made of the text is that one who has accepted Christ is not under the condemnation of the law, because the receiving of Christ as his Saviour is an evidence that he has been saved from sin—transgressing the law, for we read in 1 John 3: 4 that “sin is the transgression of the law.” It would also seem that the apostle Paul endeavored to forestall the prevailing false application that we are not now under obligations to obey the law; for after saying that the Christian is not “under law, but grace,” he exclaims: “What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.” The person who employs this argument in order to escape the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, stultifies himself; for should he wish to remonstrate sometime, when occasion demanded, with one who was guilty of blasphemy, bearing false witness,8or stealing, the accused could reply by saying, “I am not under law, but grace.” Again it should be remembered that to be under grace is to be under the favor of God, for grace is the unmerited favor of God; and only those who are seeking to obey the law through faith in Christ are under grace, or God’s favor. No one who loves his Saviour will try to escape obeying Him, by resorting to the specious argument that we are under no obligations to obey God’s law, because we are under grace.