Basic HTML Version
True Followers Obey God’s Law, November 4
Sin is the transgression of the law.
1 John 3:4
.
The desire for an easy religion that requires no striving, no self-denial, no
divorce from the follies of the world, has made the doctrine of faith, and faith
only, a popular doctrine; but what saith the Word of God? Says the apostle James:
“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not
works? can faith save him? ... Wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without
works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had
offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works,
and by works was faith made perfect?... Ye see then how that by works a man is
justified, and not by faith only” (
James 2:14-24
).
The testimony of the Word of God is against this ensnaring doctrine of faith
without works. It is not faith that claims the favor of Heaven without complying
with the conditions upon which mercy is to be granted, it is presumption; for
genuine faith has its foundation in the promises and provisions of the Scriptures....
The commission of a known sin silences the witnessing voice of the Spirit and
separates the soul from God. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” And “whosoever
sinneth [transgresseth the law] hath not seen him, neither known him” (
1 John 3:6
).
Though John in his Epistles dwells so fully upon love, yet he does not hesitate to
reveal the true character of that class who claim to be sanctified while living in
transgression of the law of God. “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his
commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word,
in him verily is the love of God perfected” (
chap. 2:4, 5
).
Here is the test of every man’s profession. We cannot accord holiness to
any man without bringing him to the measurement of God’s only standard of
holiness in heaven and in earth. If men feel no weight of the moral law, if they
belittle and make light of God’s precepts, if they break one of the least of these
commandments, and teach men so, they shall be of no esteem in the sight of
Heaven, and we may know that their claims are without foundation.
And the claim to be without sin is, in itself, evidence that he who makes this
claim is far from holy. It is because he has no true conception of the infinite
[288]
purity and holiness of God or of what they must become who shall be in harmony
with His character; because he has no true conception of the purity and exalted
loveliness of Jesus, and the malignity and evil of sin, that man can regard himself
as holy.
It was the righteousness revealed in His [Christ’s] life that distinguished Him
from the world.
327