How Saved?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 28, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 22.

Not long ago the SIGNS said: “Mortal man is not saved by keeping the law. He does not buy eternal life by keeping the law. He does not win God’s favor by keeping the law. He is not justified by keeping the law. Every truly instructed Christian knows all this. And it is perfectly obvious why it is so. First of all, the law of God is so great, so full, so high, so deep, so broad, that man can not in the very nature of things see or know its requirements. How, then, can he keep what he knows not? In the second place, he has tried times innumerable to keep in himself his poor ideal of the law, and miserably failed, demonstrating the truth of the word, ‘For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.’ Man can hope for nothing in himself over a broken law, and after failure to comprehend its nature and fulness.” A good brother writes us that this must be a mistake; for does not God enjoin upon us the keeping of His commandments, the keeping of His law, and command us to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, etc.?—Surely He does. There is no contradiction. It is still true that man is not saved by keeping the law; for “by grace are ye saved through faith.” Man is not justified by keeping the law; for we are “justified freely by His grace,” “justified by faith.” That man must be saved and justified by God’s favor is proof positive that he can not “in himself” (see quotation above) keep the law. Therefore man “can hope for nothing in himself.” But what about God’s requirements? Does God ask of man what man can not do?—He does, in man’s own strength. But in Christ Jesus man can do all things. Faith makes all God’s commandments enabling acts; it makes of every precept a promise of power. Faith receives the Holy Ghost, by which the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, and all the commandments of God become a delight. Jesus truly said, “Without Me ye can do nothing;” and Paul responds, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”