“Sin Is the Transgression of the Law” — But Which Law, and for Whom?

 

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)

Samuel Kitchen has a new article that says,  “Jesus Christ made it VERY CLEAR!” that the two commandments above require the observance of everything in the Old Covenant. This is a textbook example of taking the words Jesus spoke about love and immediately burying them under the very system Christ came to fulfill and replace. He quotes Matthew 22:37-40 (the two greatest commandments) and 1 John 2:3-6, then pivots straight back to “THE TEN COMMANDMENTS,” the Sabbath, “all things pertaining to worship,” and the familiar claim that anyone who doesn’t see it his way is either a liar or demon-prodded.

This is Herbert W. Armstrong’s legalistic version dressed up in New Testament language. Let’s pick it apart with actual New Covenant understanding — the one where grace doesn’t just *help* you keep the old rules better, but fundamentally changes the relationship.

Kitchen is correct that Jesus summed up the Law and the Prophets in love for God and love for neighbor. That’s not in dispute. The dispute is what happens *after* that summation.

In the New Covenant, those two commandments are not a new-and-improved checklist that still requires you to keep the entire Mosaic code (or HWA’s particular interpretation of it) to prove you’re “really” loving God. They are the *fulfillment*. Paul says it plainly: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). And “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8).

Jesus didn’t say, “On these two hang the Ten, so go back and obsess over the Sabbath and holy days exactly as interpreted by 20th-century American restorationists.” He said on these two hang *all* the Law and the Prophets. Then He went and *fulfilled* them perfectly in our place and inaugurated a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6).

The New Testament repeatedly treats the old covenant law — including its Sabbath regulations — as a shadow that pointed to Christ (Colossians 2:16-17). The real Sabbath rest is entered by faith in His finished work (Hebrews 4:9-10). Christians have liberty regarding days and foods (Romans 14:5-6; Galatians 4:10-11). The early church didn’t fracture over which day was “the right one” to worship; they met when they could and the unity was in Christ, not the calendar.

“Sin Is the Transgression of the Law” — But Which Law, and for Whom?

Kitchen leans on 1 John 3:4. Fine. But context matters. In John’s letters, the “commandments” that define genuine Christianity are repeatedly boiled down to **believing in Jesus Christ and loving one another** (see especially 1 John 3:23: “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us”).

“Walking as He walked” (1 John 2:6) does not mean replicating first-century Jewish Sabbath observance. It means walking in love, truth, and mercy — the very things Jesus demonstrated when the Pharisees accused Him of breaking the Sabbath to heal people. He was Lord of the Sabbath, not its slave.

The rich young ruler passage (Matthew 19) is another favorite proof-text in these circles. Jesus meets the man on his own terms (old covenant), exposes that he hasn’t actually kept the commandments from the heart (covetousness), and then calls him to follow *Him*. The point is not “keep the Ten perfectly and you’re in.” The point is that no one does — that’s why we need a Savior.

Kitchen proclaims: “There Is Only ONE WAY TO WORSHIP GOD!” — Yes, and it’s not what he thinks

Kitchen insists that differing churches and denominations prove people have “gotten away from the law of God” and are worshipping “in their own ways.” The irony is thick: the very movement he represents has produced dozens of competing “one true church” splinters, all claiming the same lock on truth while excommunicating each other over fine points of administration, prophecy, or which leader is the real “Zerubbabel.”

The New Testament answer to “how do we worship?” is not a return to old covenant forms. It is “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24) — through the finished work of Christ, by the power of the Spirit, with hearts transformed. The “one way” is Jesus Himself (John 14:6), not correct observance of the letter.

The claim that disagreement equals “spiritual attack” inspired by demons is the classic move of high-control groups. It shuts down conversation and protects the system. Many who left the Worldwide Church of God (or its descendants) didn’t do it because they wanted to “get away from God’s commandments.” They did it because they discovered the system had mixed genuine biblical truth with legalism, failed prophecies, authoritarian control, and a gospel that was too small.

“You Knew Better” — The guilt trip that never dies

This line is especially rich: people who were “added to the Worldwide Church of God, and fell away… knew better, or ought to have known better.”

Many of us were there. What we “knew better” included a package deal that contained both truths and serious errors — British Israelism (scientifically and biblically untenable), date-setting that repeatedly failed, heavy tithing demands, and a view of the Christian life that often felt more like qualifying for the kingdom through law-keeping than resting in Christ’s finished work.

Leaving that system was not falling away from grace. For many, it was the first time they actually experienced it.

Kitchen compares warning people to a family intervening when someone spirals into drugs. The analogy would land better if the “drug” in question wasn’t actually the freedom Christ purchased and the “sobriety” being enforced wasn’t a return to the tutor we graduated from (Galatians 3:24-25).

Loving warning is real. But when the warning is “get back under the law or you’re a liar and the truth is not in you,” it stops being love and becomes spiritual manipulation. Jesus warned the Pharisees precisely because they loaded people with heavy burdens while ignoring the weightier matters (Matthew 23:23). The same warning applies today.

Samuel Kitchen’s article quotes the right verses from Jesus and John but arrives at the wrong conclusion because it reads them through Herbert Armstrong’s legalistic restorationism rather than the New Covenant realities those verses were written to support.

The New Covenant is not “the old law plus better attitudes.” It is a fundamentally better arrangement (Hebrews 8:6) in which God writes His law on hearts and minds (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10), the Spirit empowers what the letter could only demand, and there is therefore now **no condemnation** for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

True love for God and neighbor is the fruit of that relationship, not the entrance exam. The Sabbath rest remains — but it is entered by faith in Christ’s finished work, not by which day we mark on a calendar. Worship is no longer tied to specific locations, days, or rituals as covenant requirements. It is in spirit and truth, through the one Mediator.

The many churches and denominations are not primarily proof of rebellion against “the law.” They are evidence that the gospel is for real human beings who see through a glass darkly and still manage to love Jesus and one another imperfectly. Where the Spirit is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17).

To those who were taught the Armstrongist package and later walked away: You are not condemned. Many of you didn’t leave to escape God’s commandments — you left to finally obey the greatest ones without the added weight of a system that turned shadows into substance and grace into a footnote.

God does correct those He loves. Sometimes that correction sounds like: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).

That is the New Covenant. That is the love that actually fulfills the law. And that is the truth worth contending for — without needing to call everyone else liars or demon-inspired for refusing to pick up the hammer and start nailing extra stone tablets to the wall.