Lou: We’ve been dealing with questions that have come up in a general way. I’d like to move now to several specific questions: “Growing up as an Adventist, I always thought the Sabbath would be one of the big issues at the end of time. Is the Sabbath something we should hold onto as a belief? Is it strong enough to die for, or is it a temporary emergency measure just for the present?”

Graham: That is a very good question. Certainly the Great Controversy is not over which day we worship. It’s over a commitment; it’s over a great truth. And the meaning of the Sabbath speaks of that truth, and that makes it an important issue. Those who meaningfully observe the Sabbath in the last days will be publicly declaring that they worship Christ as their God, and that the Father is just as gracious as the Son. Apart from the meaning of the Sabbath, there’s not a very good answer to that question. But in the light of its meaning, the Sabbath could be a central issue of enormous consequence. And because of its meaning, the Sabbath could be continued through eternity, because of all there would be to remember in the hereafter. It is a monument to freedom.

Lou: The next question is a sample out of many similar questions: “If God’s purpose is to restore a love relationship with His children, how could asking them to kill an animal do this? In my opinion, this would only tend to make people cruel and harden their hearts, rather than create a loving, sympathetic spirit. It would seem to me that it would reflect the cruel spirit of Satan rather than a loving, gracious God.” This question has to do with God’s emergency measures in Old Testament times. What about that?

Graham: Unfortunately, the sacrifices have had that effect. Many people offered a sacrifice in hopes that God would love the smell, forgive them, and bless them. And it became a rather satanic thing. God must have hated this emergency measure and hated that it had to be that dramatic. It was certainly dramatic for Adam when he killed the first lamb in order to be convinced that sin is serious; that it leads to death. I wonder how hard he hit that lamb, and what did he hit it with? Not hard enough to kill it, perhaps, just to hurt it. And he hit it harder. Then blood appeared. He had never seen that before. And Adam turns to God and says, “God, I’m not sure I can go on with this. It’s making me sick.” And God says, “I hope it always makes you sick, every time.”
But people became so accustomed to doing it that the historian Josephus described it as almost like a circus, cutting the animals up and brandishing them as they placed them on the altar to be burned. They were serious about the ritual, but had forgotten the meaning. God chose something that was rather awesome, and sometimes rather horrible, in order to sufficiently impress His people.

Lou: But with all of these risks, why would God go ahead, recognizing that this could happen? Wasn’t there a better way?

Graham: Sometimes we wish the whole Bible would have been written differently and had been a littler clearer. I would say the all wise One used the very best approach possible, and there were always some who did not misunderstand. Some have said, “If you’re the One who sees the little sparrow fall, and you asked us to kill these animals, it must have been necessary to impress us sufficiently.” And the sacrifices were also a foretaste of the Innocent One who would come and die later on.

Lou: Jesus said, “Come to Me all you who labor and I will give you rest.” But then He talks about learning and obedience. Then He says, “My yoke is easy” (based on Matthew 11:28-30). Is this really easy? Is it really light (Matt 11:30)?

Graham: In comparison with the many rules and regulations the Pharisees had, many of which made no sense, it was very light. And yet Jesus said to them, “You have omitted the weightier matters in the law” (Matt 23:23). So in another sense, it’s heavy. Isn’t love weighty and heavy in its importance? So there is a sense in which obedience is not light.
I think what makes God’s commandments light is that they make such good sense. They call for our intelligent obedience, and when I obey something intelligently, I want to do it. It makes sense. It’s dumb not to. And when I want to do it, the burden is gone. The text in Matthew actually calls for complete commitment, but when I want to do it, the “burden” is light (Matt 11:28-30).

Lou: When we try to describe the kind of world we would like to live in, we end up describing the world God has created us for.

Graham: Exactly.

Lou: What is the truth? You’ve been talking about the truth that sets us free. Just remind us again, what is the truth?

Graham: In the legal model, the truth is “we’ve been forgiven and we won’t have to go to hell.” But I think the truth that sets us free is the truth about God, about the kind of person that He is.

Lou: Does forgiving a person set that person free?

Graham: There is a sense in which that’s true, but forgiveness by itself doesn‘t necessarily change the heart. Heaven will not be filled with forgiven crooks.

Lou: But we’re still crooks.

Graham: We’re still crooks. So unless the heart is changed, there will be no real freedom. This again brings up the difference between the legal model and the healing/trust model. Supposing you had to keep rat poison in your house, and you have a young son. And if he touches it and then eats it, he could be very sick, he might even die. So you say, “Son, don’t touch that rat poison. I’m going to put it on the highest shelf, the high and locked cupboard.” A little later you hear a crash in the garage and you run out, and there’s your son lying on the floor. He’s taken the rat poison and he’s dying. Would it do any good at that point to say, “Son, I forgive you, I forgive you!” He would die forgiven, but it wouldn’t keep him from dying. Nor would it do any good to say, “Son, I don’t want you to die, so let me drink the rat poison for you.” Then you would both die. The boy doesn’t need forgiveness. He needs an antidote. He needs healing.
Sin is like that poison. God has said, “You really don’t take Me seriously, do you? Sin is like a poison and will lead to your death. Let Me take the poison and show you.” Jesus dies, and we discover that the poison of sin is real. Nobody’s killing us. Sin is really a poison, and we are dying. And when we realize the truthfulness of God’s warning, we will take Him seriously from then on.
The beauty is that God was then able to take His life back and come out living. He had made His point. There was no legal requirement in that. There was an awesome truth to be revealed. There was nothing arbitrary about it. God does not want us to poison ourselves. We need healing. We need to heed the warning. “The result of sin is death, don’t do this thing.” That’s the healing model, not the legalistic model.

Lou: I want to come back to a basic question that I’ve heard again and again, “Must one obey God’s law to be saved?” You said the law is not a threat to our freedom. But on the other hand, don’t I have to obey it?

Graham: Maybe the safest way to approach that in a brief time is to consider the word “obedience.” The biblical word means “to listen humbly.” As Micah said, “All God asks of us is that we walk humbly before our God” (based on Micah 6:8). The thief on the cross didn’t have much time to live up to the many, many laws that had been used as God’s emergency measures, but he certainly was humbly and gratefully willing to listen to the One in the middle. And he died willing to listen; sincerely, honestly, willing to listen. He will arise in the same frame of mind. He has much to learn, but he’ll be a good disciple. That means he will be willing to listen, to accept instruction, and to accept correction.

Lou: Would it be better, Graham, if instead of, “do you have to obey God’s law to be saved?” I asked, “do you have to listen to be saved?”

Graham: I’d even go beyond that: To obey God’s law is to be loving.

Lou: So do I have to be loving to be saved?

Graham: Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Unless you are born of the Spirit, you will not be saved” (based on John 3:5). And the man who is born of the Spirit, whose fruit is love and truth (Gal 5:22-23), will now have truth in the inner man (Eph 3:16). He will have a new heart and a right spirit (Ezek 36:26-27). Yes, I would say that unless one has at least the beginning of this experience of love and trustworthiness, he or she will not be saved. And that’s from 1 John. “Hereby we know if we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (based on 1 John 3:14). I mean, unless we see the beginning of a new regard for each other, we do not have the first symptom of salvation.

Lou: So, are you saying that I have to do this? I’m trying to find out. Is there something I have to do to be saved?

Graham: We’ll cover that in a later chapter, the one on the matter of perfection (Chapter Fourteen). Do I have to be perfect? I would say perfection is not something God demands of us; it is something He offers to us. He says, “I offer you a new heart. I offer you a right spirit. I offer you healing. Do you want it?” If I don’t want it, I’m not savable. In fact the word “save” in the Greek also means “to heal.” If I say I don’t want to be healed, I don’t want to have a loving heart and truth in the inner man, then I don’t want to be saved either. In any case, to put the Ten Commandments on the wall in a mechanical sort of a way is to miss the whole point.

Lou: Let me try it another way. Our subject in this chapter has to do with a threat to our freedom. Now based on what you’ve said, let me ask respectfully: “Am I really free if I have to love and obey; if, as you put it, I need to listen? How can I think I am really free?

Graham: Well, let’s put it this way. If we lived in a society where we didn’t love each other and we couldn’t be trusted, there would be no freedom. There can’t be freedom without trust. There can’t be freedom in a disorderly, chaotic, lawless society. It’s interesting how one can phrase these things in such a way that it sounds like a burden, like a restriction on our freedom.
But what is God asking us to do, anyway? I would say He is asking us to love each other, to be trustworthy, to be safe, to be free. Who would want to turn that down? You say, “Do I have to be free? Do I have to be saved? Do I have to be healthy? Do I have to be well?” God says, “No. I can’t command it, but I can offer it to you.” And some of us say, “I’d like that very much.”

Lou: In the opening part of this chapter, you seem convinced that we need to be attentive to all ten of the commandments. But isn’t a person who is concerned about the law, who thinks a lot about the Ten Commandments, a legalist? Isn’t that the meaning of legalism? A person who thinks about the law? Shouldn’t we be thinking about Jesus rather than about the law?

Graham: When people put it that way, it implies that a loving person is a legalist, since love is the fulfilling of the law. And that doesn’t make sense. So I think we need to consider the real meaning of legalism. I believe that the essence of legalism is preoccupation with our legal standing before a legalistic God. Many Christians are preoccupied with their legal standing, because they don’t really know God. They don’t realize that He is a gracious God who is not preoccupied with our legal standing. Like the father of the prodigal son, He’s very preoccupied with our welfare and whether or not we will come home. So the essence of legalism is preoccupation with one’s legal standing with God.

Lou: Are you saying a person could believe and accept Christ’s sacrifice in such a way that they would in effect be a legalist?

Graham: We should say this very carefully, but I really believe it’s true. If you believe Jesus died primarily to adjust our legal standing with a God who is preoccupied with our legal standing, you are a legalist. And this means that you no longer take the blood of bulls and goats to God to adjust your legal standing (Heb 9:12-14), you now take Him the blood of His Son and say, “Will this adjust my legal standing?” And in that perspective God would say, “That’s good; now you’ve brought me the right blood.” To me, this is legalism.

Lou: So you’re saying that if our purpose in approaching God is to meet a legal requirement, it becomes a matter of legalism.

Graham: I would call that the Devil’s sad perversion. He has actually taken the death of Christ, which is a monument to freedom, and turned it into a ceremony that adjusts our legal standing. In other words, those who misunderstood the ceremonies in Old Testament times, but then became Christians, applied the same misunderstanding to the cross and to the blood of Christ. It’s just that now they had better blood and more persuasiveness with the Father to adjust their legal standing. To me, it sounds terrible to say that. It supports the Devil’s charges that God is arbitrary, exacting, vengeful, unforgiving, and severe. You see, all legalism is based on the concept that God has to execute those who disobey Him. Therefore, it follows that forgiveness will somehow take care of that. And that’s what produces legalism.

Lou: That was a beautiful statement at the end, and it touches me deeply. But it seems to me that the very title of this chapter implies that there are many sincere individuals who have seen God’s law as a threat to our freedom. Many Christians feel that God’s law is something from which they want to be free. For example, I’ve heard people quote Romans 10:4: “Christ is the end of the law.” Doesn’t that verse imply freedom from the law? What does that text mean?

Graham: I don’t think God wants us to stop loving, or to be disorderly and live in chaos, do you? The text needs to be analyzed, first for the words and then for the context. First of all, the word “end.” One rare but possible meaning is “purpose,” Christ is the goal or purpose of the law, but I doubt that’s the meaning in the context. I do think it means termination, all right. Law here does not have an article in front of it, so it is not referring to any particular law. Paul, all the way through the book of Romans, is contrasting the obedience that springs from love and trust with the obedience that springs from law. And the obedience that springs from law is often the obedience that comes from fear, and that can turn us into rebels even as we obey. So when Paul comes to 10:4 the meaning is, “Christ is the termination of law as a way of being saved.” Christ is the end of legalism. Phillips has a marvelous rendering of that. “Christ means the end of the struggle for righteousness by works of law, that everyone who has faith in God may be saved.” That’s beautifully done.

Lou: But along with a text like Romans 10:4, I think of the one in Romans 6 which I could hear someone asking about. It says, “We are not under the law, but under grace” (based on Romans 6:14). Isn’t that more evidence freedom is not under the law but under grace?

Graham: Again, that depends on the meaning of being “under the law.” People often explain that as meaning we’re not under the “condemnation” of the law. For Paul, I think, it has to do with our relationship with God. We’re not under law, we’re under grace. We are not dealing with a legalistic God. We are dealing with a God who is graciousness personified. So Paul is saying, “If you realize that you are dealing with a gracious God, it helps you get rid of sin.” Because when you’re dealing with God in a legalistic manner, it actually provokes the very sin you are trying to avoid.
You may remember that in Romans 7 Paul describes this very thing. He says, “There was a day when I looked at the law and it provoked me to sin. Especially commandment number ten irritated me (based on Romans 7:7-11), until I realized God’s gracious purpose in giving it to us. Now I delight in the law” (based on Romans 7:22 and 8:2). So one really cannot understand law until one understands God’s gracious purpose, which means one has to know what He’s like. And that’s Paul’s message. We do not deal with a God of legalism, but a God of graciousness. It makes all the difference in the world. It places the law in its proper context.

Lou: This reminds me of Paul’s statement in Romans 14:5. Speaking in the context of the Sabbath he says, “Let everyone be persuaded in his own mind.” Isn’t that just leaving it up to personal choice? What should we really make of this?

Graham: I wouldn’t want to leave the impression that you’re not free to make up your own mind on any of the other commandments. It seems to me that if we have not made up our own minds freely about God, then our worship is worthless. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” is the way God approaches us about everything He asks us to do. It isn’t just with respect to the Sabbath. When it comes to love, trust, obedience, you name it, we are free to make up our own minds. That’s why He says, “Don’t go around condemning other people.” God does not condemn them. Everyone is free to make up their own mind.

Lou: But God isn’t saying that all roads lead to the same place or that it doesn’t matter what choice you make, is He?

Graham: No, He isn’t, the choice you make is very important, but it must still be yours. God is not going to force you to do what is right or what is best for you. Now before Paul knew God was gracious, before the Damascus road, he would say, “I know some of you are wrong, and I’m on my way to put you into prison and have you stoned.” But when he wrote Romans, there was no more of that! He had learned that we are not under the law but under grace (Rom 6:14).

There’s just one commandment that doesn‘t seem to fit in to this picture. Can the seventh-day Sabbath be regarded as a guarantee of freedom? Isn‘t the Sabbath a restriction of our freedom? That was a key point in Chapter Ten of this book, entitled “The Reminder of the Evidence.“ If the Sabbath is an arbitrary test of our obedience, it doesn’t fit in to this good news we have been talking about. But, in fact, the purpose of the Sabbath is to remind us of the freedom given to us in the Garden of Eden, to remind us how God set His people free from Egyptian bondage, and how Jesus died on crucifixion Friday. The Sabbath sets us free more than any other commandment, by telling us there is no need to be afraid of God. Understood in this way, keeping the seventh-day Sabbath does fit in to the larger picture, for we need to be reminded of these truths that are the basis of our freedom.

God gave the Sabbath to help us, not to test our obedience. Look at Isaiah’s understanding of the Sabbath:

If you cease to tread the Sabbath underfoot, and keep my holy day free from your own affairs, if you call the Sabbath a day of joy and the Lord’s holy day a day to be honoured, if you honour it by not plying your trade, not seeking your own interest or attending to your own affairs, then you shall find your joy in the Lord (Isa 58:13-14, NEB).

Joy is one of the gifts of the Spirit of Truth. And what is the truth that makes the Sabbath a day of joy? It is the truth about our God. God invites and urges us to take time to listen, to remember, and to consider all the truths about God that the Sabbath represents. Then we will find the joy that comes from knowing this truth about our God. That’s the kind of joy we will have for the rest of eternity. That is how the Sabbath fits in to the larger picture.

This idea that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (based on Galatians 5:14 and Romans 13:10) was certainly not new with Paul. Jesus had said the same thing to the inquiring lawyer (Matt 22:35-40). But the first person to say it was actually Moses. Jesus and Paul were both quoting Moses, the man who was instrumental in giving the commandments in the first place: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut 6:5, NIV). That is one half of it. Notice the other half in Leviticus: “Do not hate your brother in your heart. . . . But love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:17-18, NIV). Jesus quoted that directly from Moses (Matt 22:37). But you cannot really command things like love, can you? You cannot command “not hating your brother in your heart” either (based on Matt 5:21-22; 1 John 2:11; 3:15; 4:20). But when people are misbehaving, you may say it that way as an emergency measure. But that is all it is. It doesn’t provide the lasting motivation that God desires.

Even love is not always clearly understood. The love that fulfills the law “is patient and kind. . . is not jealous or boastful. . . is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right” (1 Cor 13:4-6, RSV). Imagine living in a community where everyone lives as described in the Ten Commandments, where everybody loves God and loves everybody else! It would mean that no one is ever rude, arrogant, or impatient. No one insists on having his own way. Can you imagine living in such a community? Would you be free in that environment?

Look at the details of the Decalogue (Exod 20:13-16). No one ever steals. No one ever kills. No one ever hates. No one ever lies. Everyone can be trusted. And even more than that, look at number ten (Exod 20:17). People not only never do anything wrong—no one even wants to. That’s the meaning of the coveting commandment, number ten, the one that bothered Paul so much at first (Rom 7:7-11). He thought God was interfering too much when He got in that deep. But that is the mindset that really guarantees our freedom, as Paul eventually learned (Gal 5:22-23). In eternity we will live in a place where people not only never do wrong, they will never even want to. That means they have really been healed.

Even more than that, imagine living in a community where everyone loves and reveres the same God (Exod 20:3). Every member of God’s family will admire the God who values nothing higher than the freedom of His children and who has paid such a high price to prove it. They will worship a God who asks for nothing more than mutual love and trust. The unity of love and trust will be based on the fact that we all love and worship the same God. When you have a group of people who live like that, you have real freedom, real peace, and real security. Seen in that light, the Decalogue is a guarantee of freedom. For God says, “I will always run my universe this way. I’d rather die than change it.”

Some of us say, “God, please, do not change it. Please, always run your universe in harmony with the principles of the Ten Commandments, or we won’t be really safe and free.” But there will be one major difference in eternity. When the emergency is over, there will be no need for God to tell us to love each other and to be decent neighbors. The Spirit of Truth will have convinced us that it is only right and sensible to behave like that. That’s the meaning of the law being written in our hearts, where we do our thinking (Jer 31:31-34; Heb 8:8-12). That means we have thought this through. We agree with God. That’s the best way to live. That’s the best way to run the universe. It is right, and that means that our self-control has been restored.

Why does a God who desires His children to enjoy dignity and freedom make so much use of law? Paul explains this in Galatians 3, as we noted in the previous chapter. Law was added as an emergency measure because we needed it (based on Galatians 3:19). The law was added to be our guardian, to guide us back to a right relationship with God (Gal 3:25). A right relationship with God means we will do what is right because it is right and not because we are being ordered to. The Greek word for “guardian” is paidagogos, which means “leader of children.” The law was designed for people who behave like children. As rebellious, disorderly and immature sinners, we have needed the guidance and protection of God’s laws. Behind all those regulations, we can see a very gracious God who has used all these emergency measures for our best good. There is nothing arbitrary about them. They make very good sense and they deserve to be intelligently obeyed.

This is even more apparent when we look precisely at what our God has asked us to do, particularly in the Ten Commandments. But more than that, we must understand why we needed to be instructed by these emergency measures:

We know, of course, that the Law is good in itself and has a legitimate function. Yet we also know that the Law is not really meant for the good man, but for the man who has neither principles nor self-control (1 Tim 1:8-9, Phillips).

If you have self-control, you don’t need to be ordered to behave. But the law does not give us self-control. Rather, it is an emergency measure because we lack self-control. We need it until we can recover self-control and love and trust. Then we are able to use our freedom in the right way.

This is what Paul explained to the Galatian believers, who were prone to misunderstanding God’s use of law. Galatians 5:13-23 as a whole is a magnificent passage, but we will focus on Paul’s understanding of God’s use of law:

You, my brothers, were called to be free. . . . The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself. . . .” But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. . . . But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:13-14, 18, 22-23, NIV).

“Faithfulness” means that we can be trusted, and “self-control” is the real meaning of the word “temperance” in the King James Version. Some people would prefer that God command and control them for the rest of eternity. That seems humble and safe, but it is also telling God that we don’t want the freedom that He has paid such a high price to protect. In light of the cross, how can we hand our freedom back and say, “no, I don’t want self-control. I want You to control me?” But God offers something marvelously better, “When you are fully under the influence of my Holy Spirit, I won’t control you. You will have recovered the dignity and joy of self-control.” Then we really will have freedom once again.

Saul of Tarsus took up the cause of those who had denounced Jesus as a heretic (previous blog) and who had denounced His picture of God as false and satanic. Saul did this because he too obeyed God for the wrong reason. He worshiped a tyrannical God who would be pleased to see people persecuted, imprisoned, and even stoned to death—to force them to obey. That was the kind of God he worshiped. And he conducted his evangelism in the name of that God. It was Saul’s picture of God that moved him to use so much force. And he had many texts (or so he thought) to support it.

It was on the Damascus road that he finally saw the light, and the truth set him free. What a difference! He didn’t change his Bible or even the name of his God. He didn’t change the day he worshiped, or his diet, or his dress. What did he change that day? All Saul changed was his picture of God. And who has spoken more eloquently about freedom and faith and grace than the Saul who became Paul? Even further, he presented Christ as the end of legalism (based on Romans 10:4). We’re not under law, we’re under grace, because we worship a gracious God (Rom 6:14)!

Paul went on to say, “Don’t misunderstand me in my new emphasis, do you think my emphasis on love, trust, and freedom abolishes the law?” Faith does not abolish the law. Faith establishes the law by putting it in its proper perspective (based on Romans 3:31). In other words, when you really trust God, you love and admire Him for His wise and gracious ways. You are perfectly willing to listen to everything God has to say, and to give careful heed to all of His instructions. It’s only wise and sensible to do so, once you’re convinced God is that kind of a person.