Christ, Faith, and the Law
ELDER S. P. WHITNEY, formerly president of the Advent Christian Conference of West Virginia, having united with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, has published in the Monitor an address to his former denominational brethren, from which we extract the following paragraph:— How foolish to me now do all my former reasonings concerning Christ ending the law by faith appear! “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth.” “A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” “Against such there is no law.” How I did ring the changes on these and other passages of Scripture before the truth shone out to me in this explanation of Paul: “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law.” Setting aside my prejudice, I was helped to see that when Paul says, “Ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14), he did not mean that the law was abolished, but “being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21), “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4). I could see that a man might be under the law in one sense and not under it in another. Don't you see? A righteous man is not under the claims, the penalty, of the law, because Christ has released him by faith. But this same faith justifies him only in obedience to the law; or, as Paul says, “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.” Rom. 6:1. “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” Rom. 7:22. How truth does shine! Praise the Lord!