"FAITH'S DILEMMA: SALVATION, CHEAP GRACE, AND THE TEN COMMANDMENTS"

An Adventist friend sent me a message expressing his concern because I left the Seventh-day Adventist church and he found out that I no longer believe that the 10 Commandments are relevant to the Christian life. Here is the content of his concern:

“I respectfully disagree with you, Brother Ronald V. Obidos. You seem to imply that Christ's sacrifice was a license for the redeemed to continue violating the law because He already fulfilled it perfectly. That is cheap grace! As Christians, we are supposed to emulate Christ in our life. If Christ lives in us, we will become partakers of His divine nature, brother, and we will be obedient as He was obedient to the Father. He gave us that example, He overcame and we can overcome that too through Him. As the Bible says, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. The true followers of Christ or God are not transgressors or rebels, brother. The moral law is not burdensome for those who obey, it is only burdensome for those who do not obey or do not have love for God in their hearts, so their obedience is like a heavy burden because it is not from the heart.”

My Response

The doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone is not cheap grace, because the price of Christ's sacrificial blood that he shed on the Cross for our sins is very high.

1 Peter 1:18-19 (NLT) 18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.

As Charles Ryrie stated,

"Grace is not cheap. Grace is expensive. It is free to the recipient but costly to the donor. The only way one may say that grace is not very costly is if the particular benefit costs the donor very little...But to use the word cheap in the same breath with the grace of God in salvation seems almost blasphemous. It cost our Lord Jesus His life. Some may insult grace, reject it, trample on it, or disgrace it, but that does not lower its infinite value.[1]”

Indeed, Christ's perfect obedience to the law qualified him as "a lamb without spot or blemish." Because of the Lord's grace, we can also receive this perfection or righteousness of Christ through faith alone in what Christ did and not by obeying the law (1 Cor. 1:30). Note that according to the Bible, God's standard to declare us righteous before him is not by keeping the 10 commandments but only by faith in Christ's atonement on the cross. The true gospel does not teach that the penalty for our sins is obedience to the 10 commandments, but death:

Romans 6:23 (NLT) 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Therefore Romans 3:28 rightly says that our justification before God is independent from obeying the law, for example, you have not kept the Sabbath yet you are regarded as a righteous child of God because of your faith in Christ,

Romans 3:28 (NLT) 28 So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.

Paul emphasized it more by saying,

Galatians 2:21 (NLT) 21 I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.

Therefore, any SDA who believes that a person who has been redeemed by Christ will persist in breaking the law is mistaken, because compliance with the 10 commandments is not a valid criterion for salvation. The gospel of God's grace is not so cheap!

Romans 6:1-2 (NLT) ​1 Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? 2 Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?

Any person who accepts Christ's redemption by faith will cease to sin, because "sin has no dominion over us" not due to adherence to the 10 commandments. According to the apostle Paul himself, sin only gains power because of people's efforts to be righteous by following the letters of the law.

The apostle Paul himself explained that sin became stronger because of people's attempts to be righteous by following the letters of the law. He wrote,

Romans 7:8-11 (NLT) 8 But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power. 9 At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life,10 and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. 11 Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me.

This passage implies that no Adventist can claim to have obeyed the 10 commandments perfectly and consistently throughout their lives. Therefore, we need the Lord's grace, which justifies us as a gift by the blood of Christ, who died for our sins. Romans 3:23-25 (NLT) confirms this:

Romans 3:23-25 (NLT) 23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. 24 Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. 25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past

The Bible also shows that when a person has received salvation by grace, they are moved by the Holy Spirit to live a godly life, without needing to follow a literal list of the 10 commandments[2]."

Christians are guided by Grace not the 10 Commandments

Titus 2:11-14 (NLT) says,

"11 For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people. 12 And we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures. We should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God, 13 while we look forward with hope to that wonderful day when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed. 14 He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds.

Christians are motivated by God's grace and Christ's redemption to live holy lives, rather than by the Ten Commandments. The Holy Spirit helps us to serve God and to pursue godliness, which is more than just following the written rules of the law, as Romans 7:6 (NLT) says:

Romans 7:6 (NLT) 6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit also helps us to follow the foundation principle of the Ten Commandments, which is LOVE—a principle that God has written in our minds and hearts as believers (Heb. 8:10-11). True Christians do not need external pressure to obey God's commandments. They obey them willingly and lovingly, like children who love their parents. This happens as God writes His law of love in our hearts and minds, as Hebrews 8:10-12 (NLT) explains:

Hebrews 8:10-12 (NLT) 10 But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day, says the LORD: I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11 And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the LORD.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already. 12 And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”