p. 50 | THE SAVIOUR’S EXAMPLE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 8, 1878

THE SAVIOUR’S EXAMPLE.

Here is a straight piece of theology from the International Bible-Lesson Department of the Watchman, of July 18; but it will not fit the crookedness of Sunday-keeping.

“I. THE SAVIOUR’S EXAMPLE.—Our ideas of Christ are at fault if they center wholly on his work of expiation for sin. This undoubtedly was his crowning work, but as preliminary to that, and as essential to it, his life of obedience to the law of God must not be forgotten. ‘He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it,’ in its most rigid requirements and holy sanctions. ‘He magnified the law and made it honorable.’ As artists of moral beauty, therefore, in our Sunday-school work, we must keep the human perfections of Jesus in view. By so doing his humanity will come within our reach, and we shall feel at home with the exemplary, spotless, sinless Son of man.

“The exemplariness of Jesus was noticed in our last lesson in his observance of the festivals of his race. In the present lesson the same is manifest in his observance of the Sabbath. By one of those slight touches of inspiration which often convey a world of meaning, the phrase ‘as his custom was,’ as bearing on his Sabbath worship, is deeply significant. There is no reassertion of the commandment on the Sabbath in the New Testament. Repetition of divine precepts there, however, was not needful. In the absence of express commands by Jesus, his example was sufficient to bind the conscience of his followers. Example, in his case, is as good as law. The conditions of Sabbath obligation as laid down in God’s word are too well known to be reviewed here. (See Ex. 20:8-11; Isa. 66:23; Isa. 58:13; Hab. 2:20; Matt. 24:20; Ps. 65:1, 2, 4, 7; Neh. 13:15–22; Mark 2:23, 28.) Suffice it to say, these conditions apply alike to the individual, the family, the community, the church, and the state, and unless they be heeded, the divine ordinance instituted at the creation, re-affirmed at the exodus, and honored by the example of Christ and his apostles, will be more and more Parisianized—to coin a word—and practically swept away. If ‘history,’ however, is ‘philosophy teaching by examples,’ there is the highest example for a perpetuated Sabbath. The Lord’s custom should be the custom of man to the end of time.”