“Whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:19, N.I.V.

What reason have men for thinking that God is not particular whether they obey Him implicitly or take their own course? Adam and Eve lost Eden for one transgression of His command; and how dare we trifle with the law of the Most High, and frame deceitful apologies to our souls? We do this at a terrible peril. We must keep all the law, every jot and tittle; for he that offendeth in one point is guilty of all. Every ray of light must be received and cherished, or we shall become bodies of darkness. The Lord Jesus declares: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” We should magnify the precepts of heaven by our words and actions….

Before the Flood swept upon the world, God sent a message through Noah to warn the people of the coming deluge. There were those who did not believe the warning; but their unbelief did not stay the showers, nor prevent the waters of the great deep from submerging a scoffing world. And today, while the last message is being heralded to bring God’s servants in harmony with every precept of His law, there will be scoffers and unbelievers; but every soul must stand in his own integrity. As Noah was faithful in warning the antediluvian world, so we must be faithful to the great trust that God has given us. Although there are scoffers … on every side, we must not shrink from presenting the truth of heaven to this generation….

There are those who will be glad to lull you to sleep in your carnal security; but I have a different work. My message is to alarm you, to bid you reform your lives, and cease your rebellion against the God of the universe….

Faith in Jesus does not make void the law, but establishes it, and will work the fruits of obedience in our lives….

The church that Christ presents before the throne of His glory is without “spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” Do you want to be among those who have washed their robes of character in the blood of the Lamb? then, “cease to do evil; learn to do well”; walk in the commandments and ordinances of your God blameless. You are not to ask whether it suits your convenience to keep the truth of heaven. You are to take up your cross and follow Jesus, cost what it may. You will find that His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.—The Review and Herald, June 22, 1911.

From Reflecting Christ

The Lord was pleased, for his righteousness’ sake, to magnify his law and make it glorious. Isaiah 42:21, R.S.V.

Through the devices of the great apostate, man has been led to separate himself from God, and has yielded to the temptations of the adversary of God and man in committing sin and breaking the law of the Most High. God could not alter one jot or tittle of His holy law to meet man in his fallen condition; for this would reflect discredit upon the wisdom of God in making a law by which to govern heaven and earth. But God could give His only-begotten Son to become man’s substitute and surety, to suffer the penalty that was merited by the transgressor, and to impart to the repentant soul His perfect righteousness.

Christ became the sinless sacrifice for a guilty race, making men prisoners of hope, so that, through repentance toward God because they had broken His holy law, and through faith in Christ as their substitute, surety, and righteousness, they might be brought back to loyalty to God and to obedience to His holy law….

The life and death of Christ in behalf of sinful man were for the purpose of restoring the sinner to God’s favor, through imparting to him the righteousness that would meet the claims of the law, and find acceptance with the Father. But it is ever the purpose of Satan to make void the law of God, and to pervert the true meaning of the plan of salvation. Therefore he has originated the falsehood that the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary’s cross was for the purpose of freeing men from the obligation of keeping the commandments of God. He has foisted upon the world the deception that God has abolished His constitution, thrown away His moral standard, and made void His holy and perfect law. Had He done this, at what terrible expense would it have been to Heaven!

Instead of proclaiming the abolition of the law, Calvary’s cross proclaims in thunder tones its immutable and eternal character. Could the law have been abolished, and the government of heaven and earth and the unnumbered worlds of God maintained, Christ need not have died. The death of Christ was to forever settle the question of the validity of the law of Jehovah. Having suffered the full penalty for a guilty world, Jesus became the mediator between God and man, to restore the repenting soul to favor with God by giving him grace to keep the law of the Most High.

Christ came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them to the very letter. The atonement of Calvary vindicated the law of God as holy, just, and true, not only before the fallen world, but before heaven and before worlds unfallen.—The Signs of the Times, June 20, 1895.

From Reflecting Christ

All thy commandments are righteousness. Psalm 119:172.

The Spirit of God will lead us in the path of the commandments; for the promise is that “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” We should try the spirits by the test of God’s Word; for there are many spirits in the world. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” …

God holds every one of us to an individual accountability, and calls upon us to serve Him from principle, to choose Him for ourselves….

God will not lightly esteem the transgression of His law. “The wages of sin is death.” The consequences of disobedience prove that the nature of sin is at enmity with the well-being of God’s government and the good of His creatures. God is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of them that hate Him. The results of transgression follow those who persist in wrongdoing; but He shows mercy unto thousands of them that love Him and keep His commandments. Those who repent and turn to His service find the favor of the Lord; and He forgiveth all their iniquities and healeth all their diseases.

In earthly affairs, the servant who seeks most carefully to fulfill the requirements of his office, and to carry out the will of his master, is most highly valued. A gentleman once wished to employ a trusty coachman. Several men came in answer to his advertisement. He asked each one how near he could drive to the edge of a certain precipice without upsetting the carriage. One and another replied that he could go within a perilous distance; but at last one answered that he would keep as far as possible from such a dangerous undertaking. He was employed to fill the position.

Shall a man be more appreciative of a good servant than is our heavenly Father? Our anxiety should not be to see how far we can depart from the commandments of the Lord, and presume on the mercy of the Lawgiver, and still flatter our souls that we are within the bounds of God’s forbearance; but our care should be to keep as far as possible from transgression. We should be determined to be on the side of Christ and our heavenly Father, and run no risks by heady presumption….

We should magnify the precepts of heaven by our words and actions. He who honors the law will be honored by it in the judgment.—The Review and Herald, June 22, 1911.

From Reflecting Christ

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Mark 12:30-31, N.I.V.

Love, the basis of creation and of redemption, is the basis of true education. This is made plain in the law that God has given as the guide of life…. To love Him, the infinite, the omniscient one, with the whole strength and mind and heart, means the highest development of every power. It means that in the whole being—the body, the mind, as well as the soul—the image of God is to be restored.

Like the first is the second commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The law of love calls for the devotion of body, mind, and soul to the service of God and our fellow men. And this service, while making us a blessing to others, brings the greatest blessing to ourselves. Unselfishness underlies all true development….

Lucifer in heaven desired to be first in power and authority; he wanted to be God, to have the rulership of heaven; and to this end he won many of the angels to his side. When with his rebel host he was cast out from the courts of God, the work of rebellion and self-seeking was continued on earth. Through the temptation to self-indulgence and ambition, Satan accomplished the fall of our first parents; and from that time to the present the gratification of human ambition and the indulgence of selfish hopes and desires have proved the ruin of mankind.

Under God, Adam was to stand at the head of the earthly family, to maintain the principles of the heavenly family. This would have brought peace and happiness. But the law that none “liveth to himself” Satan was determined to oppose. He desired to live for self. He sought to make himself a center of influence. It was this that had incited rebellion in heaven, and it was man’s acceptance of this principle that brought sin on earth. When Adam sinned, man broke away from the heaven-ordained center. A demon became the central power in the world. Where God’s throne should have been, Satan placed his throne. The world laid its homage, as a willing offering, at the feet of the enemy.

The transgression of God’s law brought woe and death in its train. Through disobedience man’s powers were perverted, and selfishness took the place of love. His nature became so weakened that it was impossible for him to resist the power of evil…. Men had chosen a ruler who chained them to his car as captives…. Christ came to the world to show them that He had planted for them the tree of life, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations.—The Review and Herald, January 16, 1913.

From Reflecting Christ

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. John 12:31, 32.

Since the divine law is as sacred as God Himself, only one equal with God could make atonement for its transgression. None but Christ could redeem fallen man from the curse of the law, and bring him again into harmony with Heaven. Christ would take upon Himself the guilt and shame of sin—sin so offensive to a holy God that it must separate the Father and His Son. Christ would reach to the depths of misery to rescue the ruined race.—Patriarchs and Prophets, 63.

The plan of redemption had a yet broader and deeper purpose than the salvation of man. It was not for this alone that Christ came to the earth; it was not merely that the inhabitants of this little world might regard the law of God as it should be regarded; but it was to vindicate the character of God before the universe. To this result of His great sacrifice—its influence upon the intelligences of other worlds, as well as upon man—the Saviour looked forward when just before His crucifixion He said: “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”

The act of Christ in dying for the salvation of man would not only make heaven accessible to men, but before all the universe it would justify God and His Son in their dealing with the rebellion of Satan. It would establish the perpetuity of the law of God, and would reveal the nature and the results of sin.

From the first the great controversy had been upon the law of God. Satan had sought to prove that God was unjust, that His law was faulty, and that the good of the universe required it to be changed. In attacking the law he aimed to overthrow the authority of its Author. In the controversy it was to be shown whether the divine statutes were defective and subject to change, or perfect and immutable….

Heaven marked the insult and mockery that He received, and knew that it was at Satan’s instigation…. They watched the battle between light and darkness as it waxed stronger. And as Christ in His expiring agony upon the cross cried out, “It is finished” (John 19:30), a shout of triumph rang through every world and through heaven itself…. Satan had revealed his true character…. The very fact that Christ bore the penalty of man’s transgression is a mighty argument to all created intelligences that the law is changeless; that God is righteous, merciful, and self-denying; and that infinite justice and mercy unite in the administration of His government.—Patriarchs and Prophets, 68-70.

From Reflecting Christ