p. 5 | WHAT LOVE WILL DO by M. E. K.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 3, 1898

WHAT LOVE WILL DO.

By M. E. K.

SOMETIMES when we demand of those who hold to the observance of the first day of the week as a day of rest and worship, a scriptural command for so doing, we are met with the statement that no such command is needed. Love, it is claimed, needs no commandment, but will of its own accord seek out the best method of expression, and that love has done this in the voluntary observance of the day of Christ’s resurrection. One minister illustrates this idea in the following manner: “It is not necessary to command the wife to place a monument over her deceased husband; love will prompt her to do that.” So he claimed it was not necessary for Christ to command His disciples to observe the day of His resurrection, when love alone would lead them to do so.

This may be a very convenient way to avoid the force of the unpleasant fact that there is no direction for Sunday-keeping in the divine Word, but it is a very faulty way, both in relation to the principle involved, and also in regard to the especial point which is sought to be proved,—that love alone will lead to the keeping of the first day of the week as a day of especial devotion—a sabbath of rest.

We now raise the question, Is love infallible in regard to the best way of expressing itself? If men were infallible, this might be so; but how can fallible man, without directions from the infallible One, be always right in everything? Does not the very fact that God has given us laws to govern our conduct prove that we need such laws that we may know how to express our love to our Creator in a proper manner? An inspired apostle has said, “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” I John 5:3. Then the proper way to show our love to God is to yield a perfect obedience to what we know that He has commanded. And without God’s law, man would not know how to show his love to God, for love to God, as we have seen, is best expressed by obedience. How then can any one declare that no law was necessary for the establishing of a new sabbath?

If a sabbath can be instituted without any especial act or command of God, why was not the original seventh-day Sabbath established in that way? Our first parents were created with full intellectual powers and placed in the beautiful garden to dress and to keep it, which would certainly require labor. But would they ever have thought to dedicate every seventh day to rest and worship, even had their love been ever so strong, had not God sanctified, or appointed the seventh day for such a purpose? Evidently they would not; and the God of infinite wisdom, foreseeing man’s need of something to aid him to keep in memory the Creator and His work, gave him, what he could not give himself,—a holy Sabbath of rest.

This is made very clear when we remember that the observance of the Sabbath is a part of our duty to God. Man of himself, no matter how much he searches, can not find out God, can not know His requirements. Human beings, placed in close personal contact with each other, will, in time, learn their own rights and the rights of others. As evidence of this we point to the fact that some of the heathen nations of antiquity had quite just and equitable laws in relation to life and the rights of men in regard to their property. Men can learn much in regard to such things by intercourse with each other.

But mankind can not, by their own efforts, have any such general and tangible connection with God. Hence our duty to God can only be learned by a divine revelation. This revelation we have in the Bible. In this book God has told us how to show our love to Him. He has also told us how to show our love to our fellow-men far better than we could learn it in any other way.

Mistaken ideas of duty to God—in other words, love without direction—have led to many very terrible and cruel things. The Hindu mother loves her child as fondly as her western sister with a whiter skin, but tears it from her bosom and throws it to the crocodile because she thinks God would be pleased to have her do so. This is a good illustration of what love without divine guidance will do. She fears and loves the Deity, but, being unacquainted with the law of God, does not know how to express her love. Yet it is claimed love needs no direction.

Love does need direction, such direction as God’s law alone affords.

Jesus has told us plainly how to show our love to Him. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” John 14:15. He did not leave it for love to prompt His disciples to celebrate the Lord’s supper, institute the ordinance of humility, or to be buried with Christ, in baptism. All of these new institutions were plainly appointed. Can any one believe that love alone, without any command from Christ, would have led the early church, or the church at any time, to practise these ordinances? No one would put forth such a preposterous claim. Yet a position precisely like this is taken in regard to the observance of Sunday.

Love will lead us to do just what God commands. Love may also lead us to do other things for Christ and for each other which He has not specially commanded, but such things are always included in the general principles of Christianity, and they must never be of a character to supersede or destroy other things He has commanded.

God did command the observance of the seventh day. The specific command to hallow that day was placed by His own hand in a position of honor in the bosom of the great moral code. He surrounded it with a cluster of other moral precepts, all as immutable as Himself. The Sabbath rests upon the divine example and the divine command. Upon what does Sunday-keeping rest?—Nothing but the various and contradictory positions of men. How, then, can we show any love to God by its observance? “This is love, that we walk after His commandments.” 2 John 1:6. M. E. K.