God's law is now written on our hearts. The Law Giver is also the Law keeper. I don't care how much people seek to obey the law. the reality is that no one can. You can't even get agreement on what the law means. Follow the leading of the Spirit. There are three commandments that matter. Love God, Love your neighbour and the new commandment, love the brethren. It's the royal law of love, not slavish obedience to a set of rules. You can't reason with a stone. For five years I had no way of keeping a Saturday or Sunday sabbath. According to Law, I'm should be a dead man. I'm glad to agree that I'm worthy of death. I'm even more delighted to know that Lord Jesus died my death for me. Forget rules and regulations. Love God, love the brethren and you won't go wrong.
Many Christians want to put grace in a straightjacket. No, grace is not a licence to sin. Anyone who loves to sin is not born again. But I wonder just how saved some of the legalists are.
If God's law is written in your heart, meaning by heart that God's law is written at the very core of your spiritual being, why is it impossible to obey for it is the very core of who you are? And if you are following the Spirit, and the Spirit is living within you, why do you disagree with Paul's conclusion of what it means to walk, live with, the power of the Spirit?
Galatians 5:
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
23 Meekness, temperance:
against such there is no law.
Paul right there says to walk with the Spirit makes one's life to be such that one breaks no law, which includes God's law. That is not legalism. That is a living breathing relationship with God that causes us to follow God's law through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what SDA's actually teach. That righteousness works through, and is created by, faith. A faith that changes the sinful life into a life in harmony with God and His law.
What Paul is saying is that if I claim to live by the Spirit 100% of the time then I am deceiving myself if my life does not reflect that reality. John confirms this in 1John 3:6 for he said, whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not. The only conclusion we can come to from these words of Paul and John is that the problem lies with us. That we do not abide at all times in Jesus, through the Holy Spirit's presence in our lives. We're on again, off again, abiders when and if we still knowingly sin.
The above is how Jesus lived His life here on earth for David tells us this in Psalm 45:7 in his prophecy concerning the Messiah to which he looked forward. The phrase, oil of gladness, that he used is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. So, if Jesus who took on human nature could live a sinless life for his entire life we are capable of living the same way if we will constantly make the same decisions Jesus did to follow God in everything for Jesus said He did only what His Father told Him to do.
Our problem with sin is because, and I apply this to myself as scripture tells me I must, we are not wholly consecrated to God. We like sin. We are born into it. It is our natural state. However, Jesus came to "save His people from their sin". He didn't come to save us in sin, but from sin. Our sin does not somehow become righteousness when we accept Jesus. But our lives can and should become righteous and we should not be lawbreakers through the power and motivation provided by the Holy Spirit living within us. This is why Jesus told Nicodemus, and through His telling Nicodemus tells us, ye must be born again, and that the effects of the Spirit will be made manifest in our lives. We will be made into law keepers instead of law breakers, not through our own power and initiative, but through the power and initiative of God, for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.
How does the Sabbath fit into this? Exodus 31:13 tells us that the Sabbath, when we keep it, that we are acknowledging that it is God who sanctifies us. Ezekiel tells us the exact same thing in Ezekiel 20:12:
12 Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.
Verse 20 says the same thing, that Sabbath is the sign of us understanding and acknowledging that it is God who changes our lives. In other words keeping the day that God declared to be holy, not one that we declared to be holy, is a sign of our gratitude towards God for His goodness, power, and love with which He pursues and saves us from ourselves. I find gratitude to be a very positive attribute because it shows that we are responding in a positive way towards someone who is doing us favors, unmerited favors especially. I don't find gratitude to be legalistic in any way, shape, or form. I find it to be a heartfelt response to the love shown toward us.
