I think one of the complicated issues in Christianity is the way we are saved. Clearly, one will immediatly say that we are saved by grace which covers our unperfectness. However, according to Ellen White we should be perfect obedient to the law. In the new testament it talks about that the law causes anger. Actually i am experiencing this myself, why should i be thankfull to Jesus if he saves me if the only way that i am saved is perfect obedience to the law? So my question actually is; what is the difference between being saved by keeping the law and being saved by Ellen White s her definition of grace?

I think Ellen White s definition is not totally biblical because in the new testament it talks about sins done in the spirit and sins done in the flesh, which somehow is okay because we have been made alive by the spirit and our flesh is dead.

You can find all the quotes you want to support either view of the issue of Salvation by Grace ... in the Bible and Ellen White. I could supply many of those to support my view but what is it worth ... when each individual will interpret all quotes to their particualar bias due to their life experience and current understanding. So ... I will resist the quoting thing ... it only gets me in trouble any ways.

But let me explain my personal understanding ... which is not worth anything because each person has to gain an understanding for themselves.

Here goes .... We are saved by perfect obedience ... but the only perfect obedience that is good enough is the perfect obedience of Jesus. He fulfilled the law so that we might not be punished for falling short. We must have that applied to our account or we are lost.

Any amount of perfect obedience that we allow Christ to do in our lives ... will just not amount to a hill of beans in relation to our salvation. It is just not enough. We must have the life of Jesus to our account or we are lost.

Grace ... it is by grace that HE applies His obedience to our account. Therefore we are saved only by the perfect obedience of the law that is applied to our account through the Grace of God and the same Grace that caused Him to live that perfect life and to die for us thereby we can live due to HIS perfect obedience.

This is one of the reasons that many Christians can never be sure of salvation. It is not clear. This keeps people in a low grade fear all the time. This is one reason that I believe that Christianity is simply not true.

Its manipulative, its complicated, it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to maintain, and its based on fear. And yet God is supposed to be the very definition of Love.

It has become clear to me that the whole Christian system of theology and salvation are not based on love at all. It is based on a form of double think that requires one to accept shame based doctrines and call it love.

This is very easy to demonstrate because any discussion about law versus grace will present a multitude of contradictory solutions all based on quotes from the Bible and/or Ellen White.

Not sure where all this confusing talk comes in. Its pretty simple really.

If you are really converted you love God with all of your heart. You surrender all to him.

Now because you love God you want to keep his commandments. But the only way you can do that is with the help of God. So there is no keeping of the commandments in yourself its worth nothing and impossible.

"He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me"

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Now what starts to get people is not the above but what happens after you are converted and sin. Thats where people really start to get mixed up. And in Adventism you mainly have two branches.

1. All sin is the same no matter if its willful known sin or something you did not even choose to do but did out of habbit before thinking. This is the view of sin that goes with the view that even if you "make mistakes" and choose to sin its the over all direction of your life that matters.

2. God judges sin depending on what it is. The SIN and sin view. SIN that seperates you from God is willful rebellion or something know you are choosing to do. As opposed to sin were you are not choosing to sin but relized after the fact what had happened and repented right then.

With choice 1 normaly it is normaly explained you are not lost until you have commited so many sins you have grieved away the holy spirit.

With choice 2 its explained one willful known sin is enough to seperate you from God. As you are choosing to rebel against him even tho he can help you overcome any sin. But God would not let you die in some split secound before you were about to repent of your sin. So for example if you have some rare lapse and think no God I know this is wrong but I am doing it anyway. God will not let Satan jump in and take your life in that moment in time.

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And I am sure I could explain them better if I had more sleep. And you all can easly look up arguments for each. I would suggest looking up every argument for each side. Every bit of scripture given and every Ellen White quote given and compare all of them. There is a huge amount of information on he subject. And as its the most basic and important thing any christian can consider it should be one EVERY christian is an expert on.

By the way yes there are many varations on the two examples given but from much experence normaly they fall in one of those two categories.

We can put the sin issue aside. For Christ died for our sins. We are now dead to our sins.

What will prevent us from living with Him is to reject His Salvation for us ... His free gift.

The price of sin has been paid. We can accept that and have eternal life ... or we can reject it and go with Satan and get what he gets. Christ was the first sin bearer ... Satan will be the final sin bearer.

Ooooohh, I don't know....this talk about sins is, quite honestly, outside my being....I grew up in sin, and am familiar with it to the point that I don't know how to live without being in sin...I suspect that you are the same...you, as well as me, don't know any different.

What we do know is forgiveness. and mercy...and hope...we know compassion, and kindness....Love maybe a bit more elusive, but many of us know love, but we can not sustain it.

I think EGW had it right when she intimates "we should be perfect obedient to the law"....what is not said is the following words....to the best of our ability.

Now, I don't know about you, but I desire to live free from guilt. I desire to live according to the law. But.....
there are days when I could just care less about it than other days...there are days when I try and try, and I keep failing and failing....there are days when no matter what I begin to attempt to do, it is wrong from the git-go. And that is where grace, and forgiveness from God comes to us...again and again and again..and that is ok.

In fact, EGW mirrors this in her writings...You can see this when you read it in the DA of the leper who returns and says "If you want to, you can make me clean.", of the captain who asks Christ for healing of his servant without coming to his home.....Forgiveness and compassion and kindness is abundantly free, and boundless in it's applications....

Salvation by grace and not by the law means that you don't need a Saviour, right? That's right. What a stupid thing for Jesus to come to the world and shamefully died at the cross. For what?

What is the definition of sin?

And now, if simply grace and no law applied, we don't need a Saviour! So, please make a complaint to Jesus now how stupid He is to died at the cross.

For what? What's the purpose? To make the humankind free to kill, steal, or worship other gods since we don't need the law after the cross, right?

Oh yeah, I love the grace of God. Beautiful. And I really need it. But His grace is NOT a certification or a licence for me to freely breaking His laws. Instead, to respect His laws even more.

By the way, "Perfection" here is not directly comes from Ellen White. Not at all. She just simply borrowed what Jesus said in Matt.5:48
"Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Jesus says in John 14:15, "If you love me, you don't need my Laws anymore, it's okay to break my law, just receive my grace anyway."

Please correct me if I quoted wrong here.

Whoa there, nelly...Slow down there....

We know that we need a Savior...but the practical aspects are overwhelming....There are days when no matter what you do, it's wrong....

To live according to some standard, without kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and hope is some sort of dysfunctional living....

When Jesus said that we were to be perfect as God in Heaven is perfect...he left open the question.."Perfect what?" Perfect in character? We have marred characters already, and even when we come to Christ, our characters are still marred. Perfect bodys? That doesn't deserve an rebuttal...Perfect what? Perfect human beings... as maybe...God is a perfect God? Maybe God is perfect...but even in paradise, human being were never perfect. If they were, they never would have had the power of choice....And, if you remember, we choose badly....

But we now know the wrong choice, and we have experience ...Now God calls us back to be human beings...the loving, compassionate, kind, hopeful, and gracious human beings that we can be....

I found this topic confusing, it seems that on one hand everyone is saved by grace alone and on the other hand faith without works is dead.

While trying to study this topic I came across a paper written by a member of the Biblical Research Institute of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Justification by Faith: An Adventist Understanding
by Peter M. van Bemmelen, Th.D. August 2007

This article is listed unded Philosophy, Conversations with Other Christians, World Evangelical Alliance.

I would have posted it in it's entirity but it is a little too long to do that. The following is the ,pdf file location. This helped me understand the churches position as it fell into place with what I had beleived.

http://www.adventistbiblicalresearch.org...0by%20faith.pdf

Gene

Relax, Neil !

I am sorry for your belief [or maybe just your personal experience?] of saying that, "There are days when no matter what you do, it's wrong...."

But in here you don't say the attitude of any individual. Whether in bad day or good day, this is not the poit. The real issue here is if that person's tendency in character, attitude and motivation is still always love the Lord and love one another....and then this will brings him/her to the perfect obedience to His Law even in her/his weakness.

How about the ability to obey the Law? That's God's business. Not ours.

I just don't know if you believe that the Holy Spirit is able to give POWER for us to the obedience of His Law.

I am weak but He is strong.