The gospel of “all you have to do is believe” and God will adjust your accounts in heaven is “cheap grace” which voids God’s law. The gospel of “trust and obey” is “legalism” and it abolishes God’s law too. The Apostle Paul is dead set against the abolition of God’s law. He writes: “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law” (Rom. 3:31). So how are we to understand the relationship between faith and the law?
Through the centuries Christians have wrestled with salvation by law-keeping or by believing. The historic Roman Catholic idea was that salvation is by grace which is received by the communicant through the sacraments of the Church which in turn enable one to render acceptable works to God in order for sins to be forgiven. The law of God and the Sabbath in particular were of little importance. Luther’s breakthrough of justification by faith was the beginning of a restoration of God’s love for sinners by forgiving their record of sins. Distinct from justification by faith was the pursuit of living for God, but the Sabbath truth and God’s law were of secondary importance.
What Ellen White heard in the 1888 message was the perfect marriage of justification by faith and the law of God. [1] In other words, justification by faith is the experience of seeing the uplifted Saviour and appreciating the fact that “if one died for all, then were all dead” (2 Cor. 5:14); i.e., all would be dead if One had not died for all. This effective gift of God’s amazing forgiveness in Christ is given to the sinner and it reconciles an enemy’s heart to God so that the soul receives the atonement.
It follows that one cannot be reconciled to God and not be reconciled to His holy law. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law” (Rom. 3:31). Therefore, if we are reconciled to God we shall gladly obey all ten of His commandments, including the fourth. Yes, we shall obey the seventh, too; justification by faith heals wounded, alienated hearts in marriage.
Paul provides two illustrations of justification by faith from the Old Testament. “Abraham our father” was a heathen when God proclaimed the cross to him (Gal. 3:8). God’s self-giving, self-denying love won his heart and “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Rom. 4:3). He who seeks to be “justified by works” supplies the righteousness in which he glories, but all such self-motivated works are nothing “before God.” It is faith which is activated by the creative agape of God that counts for righteousness, and there is no egocentrism involved in it.
When one is motivated by self-interest, he works for wages earned, but grace cannot be earned. Grace is God’s gift to sinners. Genuine faith is centered on the cross where the sinner identifies with Christ. God actually makes the ungodly just from the inside out. This is what Paul means when he writes, “his faith is counted for righteousness” (vs. 5). [2]
Paul’s second illustration of justification by faith is David. The “blessedness” of David is twofold: God’s imputation of righteousness, and the forgiveness of sins (vss. 6, 7). David wrote of the blessed experience of God removing his sins (Psalm 32:1, 2). Equally important is the personal happiness of God making one righteous (vs. 8).