Question: I think that you are definitely on the wrong track. I refer you back to Eph 2:8,9 (Paul). Suddenly I notice (from your comments of the upholding of the sabbath) that people are now being saved according to their good behaviour. According to your website, it is not Grace anymore, but deeds that count. But in the first century the apostle Paul went back to Jerusalem to confer with the other apostles about what must be taught to new believers (read Acts 15) see Acts 15:28,29. I do not see in my Bible that a requirement was made that the Sabbath must be upheld as well. It was for the sake of the acceptance of the Gospel by the Gentiles that everything that may keep people away from Saving Grace was taken out of the way (Acts 15:19,20). See Acts 15:10 also where it is clear that no-one is able to bear the yoke of the law.
Answer: You have jumped to the wrong conclusion from our comments upholding the Sabbath. Sabbath-keeping does not diminish salvation by grace any more than refraining from murder and adultery do. Like Paul, we uphold salvation by grace alone. Also, like Paul, we uphold the fruits of the Spirit, which produce all true moral behavior in believers. If there is a comment of ours that suggests salvation to be anything but the gift of God, we would appreciate the exact reference, and we shall correct this at once.
Your appeal to Acts 15 is one that we would applaud. Indeed, everything that might keep people away from saving grace was taken out of the way. By the same token, the Sabbath reading of the law in the gathering is retained in Acts 15:21.
"Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood. For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day." Acts 15:19-21.
Today the word synagogue refers to a Jewish place of worship. In the first and second centuries, it referred to a place of gathering, not even specifically for religious purposes, and not even generally in a Jewish or Christian context. So we should understand this word to mean "place of gathering", which is what it means in Greek. Peter does not say that the Gentiles should gather to hear Moses read every Sabbath. He merely mentions the fact that they do as justification for writing to them, that they "abstain from pollution of idols, from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood."
So we see that the Gentile believers, already saved by grace or the free gift of God through faith in Christ, and who already have the habit of gathering to hear the reading of Moses every Sabbath day, are further asked, despite having been saved, to abstain from four things. We dare to affirm that these four actions are all "works of the law" which are imposed on the believers by the apostles themselves. Salvation from sin and dead by grace through faith does not, apparently release us from certain moral obligations in life. But the very thought that carrying out such obligations could earn us a right to a place in the kingdom of God seems approaching blasphemy to us. One becomes a citizen of the kingdom of God by the same process as in any other nation: by birth and by naturalization or becoming a subject of the king of that nation, that is, by the new birth and by accepting Christ as Lord and Master.
Please take note of the article Righteousness by Faith in the Articles section, and lessons 25-27 in the Bible-study-lessons-course in the eCourses.
