Sabbath: Christ’s Death and the Law
Read for This Week’s Study: Rom. 7:1-6; Rom. 8:5-8; Rom. 7:7-13; Rom. 4:15; Acts 13:38-39; Gal. 3:10.
Memory Text: In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God (Romans 7:4, NRSV).
A woman is driving way over the speed limit. Suddenly, she sees in her rearview mirror the flashing red and blue lights of a police car and hears the familiar wail of the siren. She pulls over, grabs her purse, and takes out her driver’s license. The policeman approaches, takes her license, and returns to his car.
She wonders how much the ticket is going to be (she was way over the limit); she also worries about how she will be able to pay it. A few minutes later the policeman comes back and says, OK, Miss, what we are going to do, so that you don’t have to face the penalty of the law again, is abolish the law. You no longer have to worry about the speed limit.
As ludicrous as that story is, it’s no more so than the theology that teaches that after Jesus died, the law, the Ten Commandments, was abolished.
This week we’ll look at the death of Jesus and what it means in relation to the law.
*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, May 10.
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indeed the death of Christ it has got nothing to do with the abolishing of the ten commandments
when jesus died he accomplished what was written long in the golden days by prophets in the old testament. that was not their program but God's
Remember the brass snake image in the wilderness pointed out for christ. so it had nothing to do with the ten commandments.
some say he surmmarized them into only two:
( (1) loving God with all our hearts.
(2) loving our neighbors too
now where are the rest?
other christians who worship on sunday say even the sabbath was abolished., is it true?
kindly assist me with more light over the same
I think this week of lessons are going to be hard to understand just as it was during the first century (2 Pet 3:15). I think we all can agree that Paul was not doing away with the law; in fact, he seems to attempt to balance some things in his letter to the Romans in order to truncate extremism concerning everyone’s relationship to law. Even with that James had to enter into the discussion sometime later because people were thinking that Paul’s theology did away the necessity of righteous conduct.
I liked Mr. Maxwell's gentle approach to the Sabbath in the sense that we all must come to terms with God and how we are impressed to observe the Sabbath. Its very important not to sit in judgement of our fellow Adventist's because they observe Sabbath in a different way than us. We are not the judge.
The death of Jesus is not a direct entry to the Kingdom of God.We need to work hard for our salvation based on the Laws of God, which are the Ten Commandments which of course acts as the mirror that detects the short comings of our spiritual growth and align us to will of our Father in Heaven.
Isaiah, the bad news is that no matter how hard we work, we can never come up to the standard of holiness of God's Law. So salvation by that means is impossible.
The good news (gospel) is that Christ has fulfilled the Law in every respect and thus demonstrated what it means to live by the Law of God. He demonstrated the very character of God. And when we accept Him as our Savior and Lord, He offers His robe of righteousness to us to cover our imperfections of character.
No, that robe does not cover even one cherished sin - the sin we refuse to let go, because by the very fact of holding on to that one sin, we are denying His lordship in our lives. But it does cover the imperfections of our obedience - when we have the heart to obey, but we fail for one reason or another.
The Good News is that salvation is made possible to all who will fully surrender their lives and their will to the Savior.
I understand. That is an exhausting path. Look at Jesus more and not the mirror. Self is very discouraging.
Very well said, Larry. You have the gift of succinctness. 🙂
Spending more time looking at Jesus and less at the mirror (the Law) is excellent advice, indeed.
The mirror analogy is very instructive: The Law functions as a mirror in that it allows us to note our defects of character. But when we look at the Law and seek to live according to it to make ourselves "perfect," we are really focusing on self, rather than Jesus.
In real life, we would consider that person insane who stands continuously in front of the mirror and tries to persuade others to stand in front of the mirror as well. Yet in the spiritual realm, some folks do just that!
Isaiah, how much can you love?
Just say hypothetically that someone murders a person whom you love dearly. Are you able to love that murderer?
"work hard for our salvation"sound like salvation is by works
Nyamao if you consider the Decalogue, the first four commandments concerns our relationship with God. Love the Lord with all your heart, do not have any other gods before Me etc.. The last six commandments talk about our relationship to each other. So, when Jesus sums it up in this way, love to God and love to your fellowman. The commandments haven't changed.
Eileen
Romans 8. The law of the spirit of life and the law of sin and death. Could it be that the law here is not talking about an imposed law such as the analogy of the speed limit?
God's law of love is a as natural as breathing or gravity. We tend to want to make the 10 commandments Roman law. The 10 commandments are part of the law of love which is God's natural law. You cannot do away with gravity or thermodynamics by edict. You cannot do away with God's law by edict. Hence, Sabbath versus Sunday. Natural law or imposed law?
Natural law. We need to be clear about what that means. With Eve now, her natural desire might be to take and eat of the forbidden fruit. She saw that it looked good to eat and it no doubt was good as food, delicious and nourishing. The only thing preventing her from eating it then was God's word. The natural thing to do would be to take of the fruit, out of curiosity, and taste it. But in doing so she would be submitting to some other law, which happened to be the law of the serpent, or to be more precise, the law of Lucifer who was the one who had actually spoken to her saying, "Ye shall not surely die." According to Satan's natural law then, there was no reason on earth why she should not eat of the forbidden fruit. It was good for food.
In Romans 7:1-6 Paul talks about marriage and how we can change partners without sin. We can only do this through death. So to change our partnership from Satan to Jesus we must die to the old partner Satan or sin. Only in this way can we become the bride of Christ, only then can he cover us from the condemnation of the law. This does not abolish the law only allows for his mercy to be extended to us. As the bride of someone else he does not have the right to do anything for us.
I like the simple example for the Sabbath lesson. The author used the woman speeding to explain the law. The law (tem commandments cannot change because man refused to obey it). Human have a choice whether the obey the law or the can refused. In that case, the woman refused that is why she was stopped. Just imagine if we disobey the law of God, what will happen to us at the judgment.
The ten commandments are not to condemn us. They are a light showing us the way to Joy and fullness of life. Only by following them can we be full of Love for God and each other. We don't fail to reach Heaven by sinning, we fail by not dieing to our first partner Satan and cleaving to our new partner Jesus. Jesus seeking only to love and protect us did not remove the commandments that lit our way to Love and Joy.
This week's lesson is actually one of the most crucial of all. for one to fully understand how 'Grace' i.e. being under grace and 'Law' i.e. being under the law, it takes dedication and a huge amount of time in prayer and reading HIS WORD. where I am very keen to look at is the key text... Paul says that "...we should be married to another, event unto Him who was raised from the dead..." the question: who is this another Paul is talking about? . May GOD help you understand in Jesus' name. AMEN
The Pharisees and even Paul in his Pharisaic days had swallowed the lie that they could become righteous by keeping the law...and would gain salvation through the law. Believers have been released from the law by dying to it as a way of salvation. They are free now from it's condemnation. They are now living in the newness of life, made possible by grace rather than law. This is the only means of salvation. As in the marriage analogy, man had a binding relationship to the law. Then he died to the law. Now he is free to be married to another - Jesus!
Death of christ is not death of the moral law, after all isaiah 66:22,23 indicate that beyond this present life moral law will be preserved.