Foreword

During the next three months, Sabbath school students around the world will be studying The Law of Liberty. Why is this such an important topic right now?

“Self-righteousness is the danger of this age; it separates the soul from Christ. Those who trust to their own righteousness cannot understand how salvation comes through Christ. They call sin righteousness and righteousness sin. They have no appreciation of the evil of transgression, no understanding of the terror of the law; for they do not respect God’s moral standard. The reason there are so many spurious conversions in these days is that there is so low an appreciation of the law of God. Instead of God’s standard of righteousness, men have erected a standard of their own by which to measure character . . . but the kindest thing that can be preached to the sinner is the truth of the binding claims of the law of God.”-The Signs of the Times, July 21, 1890.

“To throw off the restraints which God has imposed is to accept the rule of the cruelest of tyrants. . . . Let the restraint imposed by the divine law be wholly cast aside, and human laws would soon be disregarded. Because God forbids dishonest practices, coveting, lying, and defrauding, men are ready to trample upon His statutes as a hindrance to their worldly prosperity; but the results of banishing these precepts would be such as they do not anticipate. If the law were not binding, why should any fear to transgress? Property would no longer be safe. Men would obtain their neighbor’s possessions by violence, and the strongest would become richest. Life itself would not be respected. . . . The civilized world would become a horde of robbers and assassins; and peace, rest, and happiness would be banished from the earth.”-The Great Controversy, pp. 584, 585.

“We are called into the freedom of the gospel but not into the service of sin. We are called to wear Christ’s yoke, which is true liberty, not liberty to sin and disregard the plainest injunction of the Word of God, ‘If ye love Me, keep My commandments’ (John 14:15).”-Manuscript Releases, vol. 19, p. 318.

In light of this good news, let us now study the beauty of God’s perfect law of liberty in depth, that our hearts may joyfully echo the declaration of God’s own Son, “I know that his commandment is life everlasting” (John 12:50).