p. 153 | RIGHT AND WRONG by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, March 4, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 10

RIGHT AND WRONG.

By R. F. Cottrell

BY ELD. R. F. COTTRELL.

A correspondent says, “The law of Christ teaches right positively and wrong negatively, while the ten commandments teach wrong positively and right negatively. If, then, we are released from the law from Mt. Sinai, not being bound by it, we come under the law of faith, which commands right doing, so that we are ‘justified by faith without the deeds of the law’ (Rom. 3:28), and at the same time do not make void the law through faith, because the law of faith establishes the righteousness of the law from Sinai.”

Right and wrong are opposites, and yet their testimonies perfectly agree. That which is right is not wrong, and that which is wrong is not right. Moreover, that which is right in moral actions, as defined by the primary laws of God, can never become wrong; and that which is wrong can never become right. A lie cannot, by being repeated, or by reason of age, become the truth; neither can the truth of God, by growing old, become a lie and vanish away.

The law of God is the truth. Ps. 119:142. All his commandments are truth. Verse 151. These “laws of truth” were spoken by the voice of God from Sinai. Neh. 9:13. (See marginal reading.) All of them are truth. Not one of them has become a lie. To abolish or change one of them would be to abolish or change the truth. Men may desire to do this, but God never. “Thy word is true from the beginning; and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever.” Ps. 119:160.

Now if the law of Christ teaches right positively, and the ten commandments teach the same thing negatively, there cannot be the least difference in what they teach; for truth is truth. The only difference is in their manner of teaching it. Again, if “the law of Christ establishes the righteousness [the italics are his] of the law from Sinai,” we still have perfect harmony; for righteousness must be right teaching and right doing; and therefore the righteousness taught by the law from Sinai is still right.

But what can my friend mean by being “released from the law from Mt. Sinai, not being bound by it,” and coming “under the law of faith which commands right doing”? Does not the law from Sinai forbid wrong doing, and thus teach the right?

We believe that repentant sinners are “justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” The law cannot justify its transgressor, simply because it condemns him; and he can make no atonement for past sins by future obedience. Hence the absolute necessity of something aside from the law by which to be justified, and that is Christ. Justification is obtained by us, sinners, only by faith in the sacrifice which Christ offered for us. “The law of faith,” by which boasting is excluded, is not a moral code, as our opponents seem to regard it; but simply that principle, rule, or law, by which, in the plan of redemption, the sinner is pardoned by faith in Christ, and not through his own right doing.

But our friend talks of the law of faith as of a new moral code which has taken the place of the ten commandments. He says, “We come under the law of faith, which commands right doing, so that ‘we are justified by faith.’” The law of faith commands right doing. “Sin is the transgression of the law,” or wrong doing. That law, they hold, of which sin is the transgression, is not the ten commandments, but “the law of faith.” We ask, How, then, is the sinner, the transgressor of the law of faith, to be justified? By the same law of faith,—their only rule of right, or moral law. Truly, they are the persons who seek justification by the law. It is well to remind them that “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified,” for by the law that requires right doing is the knowledge of sin.

Of the ten commandments it is true that most of them teach the right by forbidding the wrong. Yet two of them, the fourth and the fifth, directly require the duties they teach; namely, special honor to parents and to our Creator. God is to be honored by remembering the day of his rest to keep it holy. This is the only precept of the ten that requires direct and special honor to the Creator as the parent of the universe. Is not this reasonable and right, and as much so now as ever? Yet our opponents tell us that if we keep the Sabbath, we seek to be justified by the law, and are fallen from grace. We may keep every other precept of the ten. They themselves do not openly claim to break any one of the other nine. They claim to do all right things, as commanded by the law of faith, and yet have no fears that they shall fall from grace by their “deadly doing.” We may even keep Sunday as the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and all is well. But if we attempt to honor God by resting on the day on which he rested, the case is far otherwise—all is lost. Oh, consistency! It is no wonder that Job and David both exclaimed, “What is man!”