God so loved this world that He gave Jesus that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. God, in His love and mercy gave us freedom to choose. He forces nobody to love Him though He seeks them out through His word.
Seventh Day Adventist Christians have spoken out against the Roman Catholic idea of legalism and it’s idea that God asks us to “earn” our salvation through a system of works. This idea places one in bondage instead of freedom. The New Testament sees salvation in Christ as liberation from sin and corruption. Thus, as Seventh Day Adventist Christians we understand the Christian life to be one of liberation and not bondage.
As “born again” believers we are set free from the Mosaic Law as a system of salvation. The blood of animals could never answer the justice of God’s moral law, the Ten Commandments. Only Jesus could serve as our perfect sacrifice. Through Jesus we have justification. Justification not to break the Ten Commandments but to be seen as perfect through the forgiveness He has offered us.
Seventh Day Adventist Christians are no longer condemned by God’s law, but graciously aquitted on the basis of Jesus’ merit [Ro 3:19; 6:14,15; Gal 3:23-25]. We keep God’s Ten Commandments through and in the forgiving strength of Jesus Christ. When we seek righteousness through obediance to the Law the Law arouses, exposes and condemns the fallen nature. This is what we call “bondage to the Law”.
We must never understand our “freedom” as Christians to mean that God is “lawless”. A loving God just like loving parents gives rules and commandments to protect the children. This being said, we as Christians should not feel that through our obedience God will somehow love us more than another. Or that through obedience we somehow gain our inheritence.
Though we as Christians are free from the dominion of sin we are not yet totally free from it’s presence and influence. This is why the Ten Commandments help guide our moral conduct.
It is true that the Bible states that love fulfills the law but true love strives to obey God’s law. In other words, love is the true motivating factor behind healthy obedience. Many caught in antinomianism state that the Holy Spirit leads them to do things that even go contrary to God’s law. They deny the need to be guided by God’s law on issues. Freedom from the law as a way of salvation is assumed to bring with it freedom from the law as a guide to conduct.
As Seventh Day Adventists we believe that the Holy Spirit is given to empower law keeping and to make us more and more like Christ Jesus. The Bible offers no hope to anybody who does not seek to turn from sin.
God has not freed His children to break His moral Law. Although such obediance can never merit salvation, nor can breaking the Law condemn us, the Holy Ten Commandments are still our moral guide.
Compiled from some earlier writtings of Eric W. King and written on July 15,2007
