I was the only boy in my government high school that believed in keeping the Bible Sabbath--the seventh day. My convictions had come through my own Bible study; no adult had pressured me. But I stood alone in high school, and many were the "battles" I had to fight and the pressures I had to meet. "You ought to read Galatians," my friends, even teachers, would say. "That will straighten you up. Obedience to the Ten Commandment's Sabbath is old covenant legalism."
So I read Galatians, but I could not understand it, and no pastor in my church could explain it to me. On the surface, it did seem that Galatians taught that Sabbath-keeping is old covenant and creates "bondage" (4:24). But a decade later I "accidentally" discovered The Glad Tidings, a verse-by-verse study of Galatians by a to-me-unknown author, E. J. Waggoner. Here was a new idea: the Ten Commandments are ten promises! They are NEW covenant! If I will believe that the Lord is my God, that He has brought me "out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," He promises I shall never steal, bear false witness, commit adultery, etc., etc. Righteousness is by faith, the kind of "faith WHICH WORKS" (Gal. 5:6).
There is power in the gospel itself, if it is not mixed with the legalism that produces the Laodicean apathy of lukewarmness. I saw in that book that the new covenant is God's promise to Abraham and his descendants (that's where I fit in, as a child of Abraham by faith!), a promise to write His holy law in the heart that appreciates the sacrifice of the Son of God. The new covenant gives the glorious liberty of the sons of God, a joyous obedience not motivated by fear or hope of reward, but motivated by the most powerful force in the universe--the love of Christ that constraineth (2 Cor. 5:14).
It IS possible to share Paul's experience where he says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ" (Gal. 6:14). Good News? What do you think??
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 14, 1998.
Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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