Adding to the Law of God

Whenever we add to God’s law, we’re actually subtracting from it. Today, R.C. Sproul teaches that the sovereign Lord, not our personal preferences or traditions, has the sole authority to bind our consciences absolutely.

Every time we add to the law of God, beloved, it is inevitably a subtraction. Because instead of putting our attention on those things that God is concerned about to regulate our behavior, we then lose sight of what concerns God and we begin to major in minors. We begin to give our devotion to our own traditions, to our own human regulations. You’ve seen it in the Christian community. You’ve seen it where Christian piety is defined by whether people wear lipstick, whether they dance, whether they go to movies, as if these things had anything to do with the kingdom of God. But not only in some Christian environments are they elevated to regulations and law, they become the test of real piety. In one sense, when that happens authentic righteousness is not simply obscured it’s discounted. 

Which is easier, to refrain from lipstick or to refrain from pride, to stop going to movies or to start loving your enemies? I have all I can do to try to seek the righteousness that God’s law shows us to do without worrying about petty issues. That’s what happens here. The Pharisees began to major in minors. The Pharisees turned the supreme law of God into petty regulations, which obscured the majesty of the law of God. 

Beloved, I have no right or authority to bind your conscience, anybody’s conscience in this room, absolutely. But God has the power and the authority to bind your conscience absolutely. You may not like the traditions that I like, you’re not going to be judged for that. But there is an Apostolic tradition. There is the tradition that comes to the church that is passed down from God Himself, and that’s where our focus is to be. Don’t let anybody or anything divert your focus away from that to something of human invention.