Who Will be Saved? by R. F. Cottrell

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1875

Who Will be Saved?

By R. F. Cottrell

LET us analyze the argument contained in the emphasized question of a writer in the American Christian Review. He says: “But if, as Sabbatizers and Judaizers contend, the moral law, or decalogue, is, as a system, still of force and binding upon all people, Who will ever be saved?” He adds, “Is it not this very law that all are condemned by? Who has lived up to all the requirements of this law? Who, therefore, can be saved by it?” We might reply to these last queries, This is the very law which condemns all; for all have transgressed it, and therefore no one can be saved by it. No Christian people expect to be saved by it. This is a false issue.

But let us try to get the main argument of our author in form.

1. The moral law condemns all its transgressors.

2. All have transgressed it.

3. Therefore no one can be saved unless it be abolished.

According to this argument, the mission of Christ into the world was to destroy this law, or, in our author’s language, to “break up” its “binding force.” But said Jesus, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” Did God give man a law which it was impossible for him to keep, and so make it necessary for the Son of God to die to abolish it, in order to save him? Is there no way to honor the law and pardon its transgressor? Did not Christ die for our sins? Did not the law of God slay him in our stead? Then the law lives to slay the transgressor. If the law is slain, to talk of the pardon is a sham. The abolition of the law and the pardon of its transgressor cannot coexist. One or the other is false. If the law is abolished, the sinner escapes its penalty without pardon; but if the transgressor is pardoned, the law is still in force.

But the whole controversy is on the fourth commandment or Sabbath law. Every Christian admits that the other nine precepts of the decalogue are still binding. Their quarrel is against the Sabbath commandment only. This is the law that nobody keeps, that nobody can keep, and therefore must be abolished or no one can be saved! Why was it ever in force? When our author questions the fact of its being “still in force,” he implies that it was once in force; but when he makes faith in Christ break up its binding force, he makes it that it never was binding on believers, even those that lived before Christ died. Otherwise, they could not be saved, according to his argument. But hold! it is in vain to get at the clearness of an argument that has no clearness in it. So I will close by giving a good testimony from the same sermon, something straight forward, unambiguous, and clear. Let it atone, if possible, for the folly and confusion of the rest. He says:

WHY KEEP THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK AS A SABBATH?

“It was the seventh day that God rested on, and that he ‘blessed and sanctified.’ It was the seventh day that Moses enjoined upon the children of Israel as a Sabbath holy unto the Lord. And there is nothing clearer than that, if we are still under the Old Testament Sabbath law, we should keep the seventh day. If it be shown that we are still under the law ‘written and engraven in stones,’ then the ‘Sabbatarians,’ or ‘Seventh-day Baptists’ are clearly right. It cannot be shown that Jesus or the apostles ever authorized the transfer of the Sabbatic idea and observances from the seventh to the first day of the week. It will not be claimed that they did. It cannot be shown that the change was made in apostolic times. It cannot be shown that it was done in the first three centuries of the Christian era.” To this let all people say, Amen.

R. F. COTTRELL.