Brief Comments | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 26, 1882

Brief Comments.

GAL. 4:10, 11. "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain."

This text has often been quoted against those who keep the Sabbath of the Lord according to his own commandment. But there is not the shadow of a reason for such an application. The text does not specify the nature of the days observed by them. It is inferred that it may refer to the Lord's Sabbath day; but the inference is not sustained by any probability. So far from it, the context shows clearly to what it does refer, and shuts out all possibility of referring it to the Sabbath of God's commandment.

1. Paul said to those to whom he wrote in Galatia—"When ye know not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods." Verse 8. This service could not refer to the Sabbath, nor even to the rites of the Levitical law, nor to anything which Jehovah, the true God, had commanded. Obedience to anything which the God of Israel required never was doing "service unto them which by nature are no gods." This is evident to all.

2. The apostle reproved them for turning back to their former practices, and followed this reproof with the declaration of the text.

3. The nature of the observances referred to is clearly shown by the expression, "observe times," which always denoted the practices of the heathen. See Deut. 18:9-12: "When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord; and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee." The observance of "times" has a heathen companionship in Deuteronomy, and so it has in Galatians 4.

4. While the "service" of the text cannot include the observance of the seventh day, or Sabbath, or anything which God ever required, it does include the observance of the Sunday, which, as the observance of "times," was of heathen origin. It was instituted in honor of "them which by nature are no gods." See the proof :—

(a) The first "public authority" for the observance of Sunday was the decree of Constantine, in which he gave it the heathen astrological title of "the venerable day of the sun."

(b) Dr. Schaff, in his Church History, says this decree of Constantine was in accordance with his worship of Apollo, the sun-god. This decree was issued before the Emperor made any profession of Christianity.

(c) All authorities agree that it derives its name Sunday from its being consecrated to the sun by the heathen nations. The "Sunday" is a standing monument, upheld by modern Christianity, in honor of heathenism.

"Sunday was a name given by the heathen to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshiped the sun."—S. S. Union Bib. Dict.

"The heathen nations in the north of Europe dedicated this day to the sun, and hence their Christian descendants continue to call the day Sunday."—Webster.

"The ancient Saxons called it by this name, because upon it they worshiped the sun."—Rel. Encyclopedia.

"It is also called Sunday from the old Roman denomination of dies solis, the day of the sun, to which it was sacred."—Douay Catechism.

Such was the "dedication" and such the "sacredness" of the Sunday. Its observance is prohibited by the Lord who forbids our following the ways of the heathen, or observing the "times" instituted by them.

Rom. 2:13. "For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified."

The first part of this statement is evident to all; hearing the law does not make one just before God; it does not make any one better. The benefit of any precept is not in the hearing, but in the use. It may, and often does, greatly increase one's condemnation. Not that there is anything in the law which is necessarily condemnatory in its nature. If the law condemns a man the fault is in himself. The law will never condemn a man who does right—who does not transgress it.

And this leads us to a ready acceptance of the second part of the text. If a man did not transgress the law he would not be condemned by it; he would stand vindicated by his obedience—justified by the law. An innocent man may always find a refuge in the law; a guilty man never can. Here is where most people err in considering this text; they try to apply it to man in his present, fallen condition—as a sinner. But the application will not hold good. There is a difference, infinitely wide, between a doer of the law and a transgressor of the law. The text admits of no modification. No statement in the Bible is more just and consistent with the principles of government than this, that "the doers of the law shall be justified."

The scripture says: "Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Can any person believe that man would ever have incurred the displeasure of God, and brought condemnation upon himself if he had done his whole duty, and perfectly obeyed God's requirements? Impossible. No one who regards God as a just Judge and Governor can for a moment harbor the thought. The conclusion is inevitable: if he would not have been condemned, he would have been justified, for between condemnation and justification there is no intermediate state or neutral ground.

The apostle does not say that men will be now justified by the law. This he contradicts; he says there are no doers, hence, none are justified by it. The text does not vindicate the present condition of man. But it does vindicate the law as a rule of right and justice. It proves that justification is in the law, though man has lost it, and, unassisted by grace, can never recover it.

Paul is not alone in this statement. James has laid down the same principle: "But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his doing." (Margin). Jas. 1:25.

Where the carnal mind (Rom. 8:7) has not the supremacy, antinomianism finds no place. He who is "vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind," finds fault with the law; but he who sees in the light of "the perfect law of liberty" and is instructed by the Spirit of God—who recognizes his relation, as a sinner, to the justice of God, will leave his complaint upon himself. Job 10:1.