Chapter 12 Living Our Faith

The Sabbath commandment is for believers. If a person does not believe in God as Creator and Sovereign of all creation, it matters little whether he observes the real Sabbath, or its counterfeit, or no Sabbath at all. If you are not a believer, we urge you to be reconciled to God, to accept Jesus as your Savior, and to commit your life to Him. Genuine, lasting joy is within the reach of those only who are willing to place every temporal concern into the hands of our Maker and Redeemer. When we "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8), we are filled with gratitude for His mercy and care. Love wells up in the heart, controlling our relation to God and to our fellow human beings.

This kind of Christian experience is built on faith. Our whole attitude, our philosophy of life, is under the control of God because we believe. We believe because it is sensible to do so. While our experience cannot stand on reason alone, yet it must be reasonable. God has challenged us:

    "Come now, and let us reason together,"
    Says the Lord,
    "Though your sins are like scarlet,
    They shall be as white as snow;
    Though they are red like crimson,
    They shall be as wool" (Isaiah 1:18).

Before going further with the theme of this chapter, we must be sure to emphasize the one great principle of Christianity; that is, salvation is a gift, something we do not deserve, and that we cannot earn. It is a gift of God’s grace, which comes to us through the open door of faith. Please keep these two passages in mind:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
    not of works, lest anyone should boast (Ephesians 2:8,9).

Belief in salvation by works is the foundation of every false religion. And this fatal pagan doctrine persists in maintaining a place in the Christian church. Scripture, especially in the writings of the Apostle Paul, very severely condemns such a view.

Yet, a living faith is a working faith. It is not merely something that is; it is something that does. It works! Writing to the church in Thessalonica, Paul commends their "work of faith" (1 Thessalonians 1:3); and in his letter to the Galatians on Christian liberty, he stresses the importance of "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6). What husband or wife would be happy if their spouse provided only words of love, with no appropriate action? Acts of love are done, not to earn love, but to show love. The same principle applies in our work for God.

Consider here some of the things that Jesus Himself said about doing:

No doubt the most vivid picture that Jesus presented regarding the importance of works is recorded in Matthew 25:31-46. In this passage He describes the judgment as a process of separating the sheep from the goats, with the difference turning on the point of good works. Our Lord certainly could not have been teaching here that salvation is earned by our works, such an idea being contrary to the whole tenor of Scripture. But He was asserting very positively that one who is really saved will surely practice doing deeds of love as a testimony to his salvation experience.

God’s beautiful plan of redemption is grounded in love – God’s love. Man did not invent it, God did; for "God is love" (1 John 4:8). And God’s love gives us the capacity to love Him. "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). When we sinners are born again, the Holy Spirit implants love for God in our hearts. Then the new relationship is based on our love for God, as well as God’s love for us.

This conversion experience wakes us up to the fact that we owe all that we are and hope to be, to God. The heart of a true Christian is filled with an all-consuming desire to please our Creator and Redeemer. And the Bible tells us exactly how to please God. To show Him our love, we are to keep His commandments (John 14:15); if we keep His commandments, we are His friends (John 15:14). Just how to express our love to God and to our fellow humans is made very clear in God’s Ten Commandments. The first four explain how to show our love to God; the last six tell us how to show our love to other people.

Complete obedience includes keeping the fourth commandment along with all the others. Keep it, and you discover the Sabbath is not a burden, but a delight. There is a unique blessing in Sabbath-keeping. Both creation and redemption are outgrowths of God’s love. The Sabbath day celebrates both of them, as a response to that love. Obedience is not a chore; it is a privilege. It is the fruit of love.

It is important that we review here some of the essential points of this study. The Sabbath is really a test of our loyalty to God. We observe it as a sign of our allegiance to Him. The Bible says clearly that God made the seventh day of the week a holy day. There is not even a hint in the Scriptures that He ever made the first day of the week a holy day. It is vital to remember here that we Protestants are committed to accepting the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice. We test the word of any religious teacher by checking it with what the Bible says.

If you have been trying to keep Sunday as a holy day, sincerely believing it to be the true Christian Sabbath, God has accepted that service of love. Now that you are aware that God’s real, unchanging Sabbath is Saturday, you are required to keep it holy. God’s command has never been changed. One of the most positive teachings of the Bible is that God demands strict obedience.

We are under grace. How wonderful of our Heavenly Father to grant us grace -- grace that is greater than all our sins. When God’s grace forgives us, our hearts are filled with gratitude, and we try the more to please Him. We realize that grace is not a license to sin, but a door to holiness. Grace does not give us permission to disobey, but an urge to obey. So grace leads us to keep God’s law, never to ignore it!

We appeal to you to take your stand for the real seventh-day Sabbath of the Bible. God is more than willing to give you the courage to do this. You may not know many people who keep the true Sabbath; but there are millions of them, scattered all over the world, faithful to God’s holy word. When you obey God’s command to keep the Sabbath, you experience a real joy, such as you have never known before.

As the capstone of the structure of this study, we see that the Sabbath is of an enduring nature. It was a part of God’s design for man before sin came into the world; and it will continue as a part of that design after sin has disappeared. It is the eternal jewel of delight that God gave to the human race:

"For as the new heavens     and the new earth Which I will make shall remain     before Me," says the Lord, "So shall your descendants     and your name remain. And it shall come to pass That from one New Moon to another, And from one Sabbath to another, All flesh shall come to worship     before Me," says the Lord (Isaiah 66:22,23).

Chapter 11   Index   Chapter 13               Copyright © 2001 - by McDonald Road SDA Church

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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