The Law of God
Years ago, in France, the nation was debating the question of capital punishment: should it be abolished? Advocates for its abolishment contacted a famous French writer and philosopher named Michel Foucault and asked him to pen an editorial on their behalf. What he did, however, was advocate, not for abolishing just the death penalty, but for abolishing the whole prison system entirely and letting all the prisoners go free.
Why? Because for Michel Foucault all systems of morality were merely human constructs, human ideas put in place by those in power in order to control the masses. Hence, these moral codes had no real legitimacy.
However extreme his position, what we see here is a logical consequence of a problem that is not really so new. Moses dealt with it in ancient Israel thousands of years ago. “You shall not at all do as we are doing here today – every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes” (Deut. 12:8, NKJV; see also Judg. 17:6, Prov. 12:15).
However, if we shouldn’t do what is right in merely our own eyes – that is, we ourselves are not righteous, holy, and objective enough to know what is morally correct – then how do we know what to do? The answer, or course, is that the Lord who created us also gave us a moral code to live by. Maybe our eyes can’t get it right, but the Lord’s always do.
What do these texts teach us about moral conduct? Deut. 6:5, Mark 12:29-31, Rev. 14:12.
If we are going to make redemption central to our Christian worldview, then (as we saw last week) God’s law, the Ten Commandments, must be central, as well. After all, what are we redeemed from if not sin, which is breaking the law (Rom. 3:20)? The gospel really makes no sense apart from the law of God, which is one reason we know that the law is still binding for us, despite its inability to save us. (That’s why we need the gospel.)
Therefore, all Seventh-day Adventist education must emphasize what Ellen White has called “the perpetuity of the law” (The Great Controversy, p. 63), which includes the Sabbath. If education is to help restore the image of God in us as far as possible in this life, then even at the most basic level God’s law must be held up, in light of Christ’s example, as the moral code that shows us what truly is right in God’s eyes.
