By Edward Heppenstall
The Covenants and the Plan of Redemption
The Seventh-day Adventist Church has been entrusted with the Word of God. The Word of God presents both gospel and law. The great responsibility of the church has always been and still is to teach and to preach the Word of God as both law and gospel. The great task of Seventh-day Adventists can be seen in contrast with the antinomian teachings through the centuries, and with the decline of true righteousness in our time.
The problems and issues connected with the relationship of the law and the gospel appear exceedingly complex. The first problem centers in the place and function of the covenants in the great controversy. The Bible describes two covenants: one everlasting, the other temporal; one new, the other old; one perfect, the other faulty. The problem is whether these reveal two methods of God in dealing with men.
The position has often been taken that Israel’s readiness in accepting the Sinaitic covenant presented to them by God implies that they accepted without due consideration, and without realizing their utter inability to fulfill the terms of this covenant. It is believed, further, that "the old covenant" experience predominated for the next fifteen hundred years, until the time of Christ, when the new covenant became the constitutional basis of the church.
These two covenants have been interpreted by many Christians to represent two dispensations -- one, a dispensation of law, which continued until the cross; the other, a dispensation of grace, when Christians are no longer under law but under grace. In the fullness of time, when man’s utter inability to keep the law had been demonstrated perfectly, when the dispensation of law was proved incompetent for salvation, Christ came to fulfill both the law and the prophets. Hence, the law has no longer any rights or claims. The Decalogue, we are told, was abrogated at the cross, and is part of that covenant which "gendereth to bondage."
It is further believed by some that although the Decalogue was part of the old covenant, which has passed away, God has given a new law as the basis of the new covenant of grace, designated variously as the law of the Spirit, the law of Christ, or the law of love.
Seventh-day Adventists have held that the law of God has been at the heart of the controversy from the very beginning; that the Christian Era is pre-eminently the age when the law of God, as revealed in the Decalogue and as constituting the standard of righteousness, is to be kept as never before, not as the means of salvation, but as the fruit of a life that is hid with Christ in God. We further believe that there never was a time when men were saved by law; that the covenant of grace was established from before the foundation of the world; that all men are saved by grace alone.
We also believe that there is no such thing in the plan or purpose of God as a dispensation of law and a dispensation of grace; that whatever changes and transitions are made throughout the history of man, are based upon progressive revelation and the unfolding of God’s purpose; that the Old and the New Testament are wholly complementary and not antithetical or antagonistic.
Throughout the Bible the relationship between God and His people is designated by the word covenant. Whatever is involved or experienced in this covenant relationship makes up the content of the Bible. God chooses individuals or a nation to be His people. To these people of His choice God commands His covenant. The people who accept the terms of this covenant become conscious of a special contractual relationship existing between themselves and God. This relationship carries with it certain obligations, the keeping of which is a life-and-death matter.
In ordinary parlance, we mean by the term covenant, "an agreement or contract between two parties." Either party is free to enter into the agreement or not as he chooses. But the Biblical term is somewhat different in meaning. The Hebrew word berith means "to bind," "to fetter," "a binding or a bond." The relation of God’s people to Him is expressed in a berith. The Greek word diatheke implies a free promise on the divine side and an undertaking of obligations on the human side. In both cases it implies an obligation imposed by a superior upon an inferior. The initiative is taken by God, and only in a secondary way does man have any initiative at all. Man has freedom as to whether he will enter into a covenant relationship. But he has no privilege to reject the terms or to suggest others. God the Creator is in an altogether different position from man the creature. "I alone am God" is the fundamental statement of all divine revelation. It reveals the absolute barrier that separates the divine God from man. All relationships between God and man are a gracious condescension on the part of God.
The first characteristic of God’s covenant relationship is that of lordship. God remains Lord. He is the Sovereign. The covenant is an expression of God’s will, not man’s. It is man’s responsibility to listen to God, to seek to understand His terms. In God’s first covenant with Adam, Adam instituted nothing. The Israelites at Sinai instituted nothing. They did, however, exercise their privilege in choosing to obey the covenant.
When God reveals His covenant, there is inevitably a call to unreserved obedience and surrender to God. There is no place for a bargaining relationship. The covenant of God places man on probation. Man has life only if he obeys and meets the terms of the covenant.
The second characteristic of God’s covenant is fellowship. "I . . . will be your God, and ye shall be my people." Lev. 26:12. "They saw God, and did eat and drink." Ex. 24:11. This was the covenant meal, when God and the people sat down together, as it were, in a symbol of communion and fellowship. The identical idea is found in the Lord’s supper. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me." 1 Cor. 11:25, R.V.
Hosea represents the relation of Israel to God under the figure of marriage. Jeremiah uses also the figures of father and son, shepherd and sheep. So God, through His covenant, seeks to establish a personal fellowship with man. This communion is offered as a gracious gift of God. The covenant is a relation of grace. In Genesis 17:2, God gives a covenant, nathan berith. He bestows it as a gift of grace.
The tragic mistake of Israel was that they came to regard the covenant as a juridical relationship, a legal transaction. The fundamental reality of God’s covenant is that men enjoy the favor and blessing of God irrespective of their past, without discharging any formal debt or performing any special work to secure the favors of God irrespective of their past. Grace and truth do not come through legislation.
The vital responsibility of the church is to lead sinful men into a covenant relationship with God, acknowledging Jesus as Lord, at the same time enjoying a fellowship of love and unity.
Two Covenants or One
In God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai, just what is the relationship between them? Are there two covenants held out to Israel or only one? Did God make a covenant that He knew could not be kept, in order that Israel might learn the folly of trying to keep the law in their own strength? Is God actually offering to make the old covenant with Israel the gateway to the everlasting covenant, indicating two stages in God’s dealing with men?
Mrs. White states that "the covenant that God made with His people at Sinai is to be our refuge and defense," and that it is of "just as much force to-day as it was when the Lord made it with ancient Israel."’[Ellen G. White in The Southern Watchman, March 1, 1902, p. 142] Why, then, is the Sinaitic covenant called the "old covenant"?
In the actual operating of the covenants of the Bible there are two parties. Each enters into a relationship with the other. Each has some response to make in relationship to the covenant’s promises and terms. The judgment of the New Testament on the Sinaitic covenant is that it was faulty. It is obvious that there can be nothing wrong from God’s side. He cannot be charged either with desiring or planning a faulty covenant. He makes everything perfect. Therefore the fault must lie with Israel.
What kind of covenant was God seeking to make with Israel? Was the "old covenant" at Sinai one of divine appointment, or a divine adjustment to Israel’s faulty response? Is not God limited by the nature of sinful man?
God’s Purpose and Approach to Israel at Sinai
In Exodus, chapter 19, there is the record of the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai. Israel is led to Mount Sinai. Moses makes the first of eight ascents to receive instruction from God. God tells Moses that before proceeding with the giving of the law, He requires a positive commitment on the part of the people. They are to pledge themselves to keep "my covenant." (Ex. 19:5.)
Surely, it was not in the mind of God, when the children of Israel came to Sinai, to say: "Now I will make a different covenant with them from what I made with Abraham. I am going to teach these people by giving them a covenant they cannot keep. I intend to show them how impossible it is for them to keep My laws, My statutes, and My judgments. I will therefore offer them, at least to begin with, something less than I did Abraham." If He did, then Israel lived up completely to His expectations. If Israel broke the old covenant when they sacrificed to the golden calf, there is no case to be made. Was not the old covenant made to operate that way? How could Israel be held responsible?
Israel had to meet the same requirements as Abraham. They received the same sign of circumcision that God gave to Abraham. Both Abraham and Israel were brought face to face with the same covenant. Yet both experienced the old covenant in their lives. Abraham failed when he distrusted God regarding His promise to give him an heir, and had a child by Hagar. Paul states in Galatians that this represented the old covenant experience of Abraham. The reason for Israel’s failure was not that they were given a different covenant from that given to Abraham. God is no respecter of persons. Where is there any indication that Israel were conscious they were under a different covenant from that of their father Abraham?
The Old Testament knows nothing about covenants in the plural. The word is always found in the singular. There is constant reference to one covenant designated by God as my covenant," "his covenant," phrases that occur throughout the Bible.
2. In the second place, the Lord was pleased with the response that Israel made at Sinai when they said, "All that the Lord bath said will we do." Ex. 24:7. Moses declared that God told him it was the right response to make. "And the Lord heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and the Lord said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken." Deut. 5:27, 28.
3. In the third place, the whole tenor of God’s approach, His attitude and relationship, definitely indicated the everlasting covenant in an adapted form to be the one that confronted Israel at Sinai.
Was there the element of stern command that was supposed to mark the old covenant? On the contrary, before any revelation of the law was given, Israel was reminded of God’s gracious and loving dealing with them. In Exodus, chapter twenty, even as God began to speak the words of the Decalogue, Jehovah reminded them that He is their Redeemer, who brought them out of the land of Egypt. But the fulfillment of God’s gracious promises was conditioned by obedience. Thus we see here that the gospel precedes obedience. The principles of salvation and of becoming children of God are the same here as they have always been. It is imperative that grace conserve law.
The covenant was entirely reasonable. Nothing was forced upon them or done in haste. Negotiations were prolonged, so that the people might have the opportunity of pondering well the character of the proposed engagement. Three times the children of Israel declared: "All that the Lord hath said will we do." Intervals of time ensued between responses. Moses carefully recited to them "all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments." Ex. 24:3. The second time they promised full obedience. Even then the matter was allowed to stand over till the next day. Then Moses appeared with the written book, the book of the covenant, and they were finally asked whether they would adhere to what they had said. (Ex. 24:7.) Greater precautions against any rash committal could scarcely have been taken.
Furthermore, the fulfillment of the terms of God’s covenant was not impossible or exceedingly difficult. God had done everything to render it possible of fulfillment. Israel were told by Moses that the commandments were not hard to be understood or to perform. They were not to think of the fulfillment of the terms as an inaccessible height they could not scale. Nor was it something too deep for them to understand, like the depths of the sea. It was near to them, even in their mouths. (Deut. 30:11-14.)
The testimony of the writers of the Old Testament is that Sinai was a glorious demonstration of the love of God. Moses’ final words regarding the giving of the law at Sinai are significant: "The Lord came from Sinai. .. , and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law for them. Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in thy hand: and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words." Deut. 33:2, 3.
Hosea undoubtedly refers to the Sinaitic covenant as follows: "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt... . I taught Ephraim to walk. I took them on my arms." Hosea 11:1-3, A.R.V.
What beautiful figures are used here. God is embracing His children with one arm while giving them a fiery law with the other. Here we see the fatherhood of God taking His children, the subjects of His covenant, into His arms in order that He might instruct them in the right way.
To say that God is responsible, even indirectly, for the faultiness of the faulty response of the people, which led to a hopeless covenant of works, makes God also responsible for the apostate Judaism of Jesus’ day. Moses’ interpretation of Sinai is anything but that. (Deut. 4:12, 13, 23, 31, 36, 37.)
"Those who claim that Christ came to abrogate the law of God and to do away with the Old Testament, speak of the Jewish age as one of darkness, and represent the religion of the Hebrews as consisting of mere forms and ceremonies. But this is an error. . . . Never has He given to the sons of men more open manifestations of His power and glory than when He alone was acknowledged as Israel’s ruler, and gave the law to His people.... The stately goings forth of Israel’s invisible King were unspeakably grand and awful.
"In all these revelations of the divine presence, the glory of God was manifested through Christ. Not alone at the Savior’s advent, but through all the ages after the fall and the promise of redemption, ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.’. . . Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses understood the gospel. They looked for salvation through man’s Substitute and Surety. These holy men of old held communion with the Savior who was to come to our world in human flesh; and some of them talked with Christ and heavenly angels face to face. . . . Jesus was the light of His people. .. .before He came to earth in the form of humanity." [Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 365-367]
4. In the fourth place, the covenant which God sought to make with Israel at Sinai and with which He confronted Israel was based upon righteousness by faith.
Great care was taken to safeguard Israel from what is referred to as the old covenant experience. Clear and definite warnings were given against self-righteousness.
Moses was, it appears, as much enlightened on righteousness by faith and righteousness by the works of the law as was Paul. One of the great passages on this grand theme is found in Deuteronomy 30:11-14. Paul quotes this entire passage in Romans chapters 9 and 10 in explaining Israel’s failure, as support for the doctrine of righteousness by faith. (See also Deut. 9:1-6.)
In other words, both Moses and Paul emphasized the same truth. They both proclaimed the gospel of the everlasting covenant. Both of them met with opposition and unbelief. Both saw much the same results among the Israelites. Always a remnant knew that God would provide Himself a lamb. Always the law of God was written upon the heart of the remnant. Always the majority failed to enter in because of unbelief. Always God held them responsible for breaking the covenant. The reason God held them responsible was that He had done everything that could be done to give them cause for living the life of faith.
5. In the fifth place, the numerous appeals by leaders and prophets to return to God’s covenant were but a call to renew the original covenant made with God at Sinai and previously with their fathers, the patriarchs. As it was with God at Sinai, so it was with Israel’s leaders and prophets. All were in harmony in seeking to lead the people in righteousness under the holy covenant of the Lord.
The word covenant is used almost 250 times in the Old Testament. Seven times it is used with reference to the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; 74 times miscellaneously to covenants in human relationships; and 159 times directly to the Sinaitic covenant. If the covenant at Sinai was but a covenant of works, and this is how it is interpreted by the New Testament writers, how could Israel hope to produce any other kind of record than the one they had? Men become like what they hear and what they think. If the leaders and prophets were continually calling them back to the old covenant, then why blame the Jews and Israel for making such a failure?
There were several occasions in the later history of Israel when God reminded His people through the prophets of their covenant obligations and privileges.
The first occasion was the public rehearsal of the law and the Sinaitic covenant by Moses at the close of his life as contained in the book of Deuteronomy. Moses appealed to Israel to be faithful to the Sinaitic covenant, and by so doing, to fulfill the covenant made with their fathers.
"After the public rehearsal of the law, Moses completed the work of writing all the laws, the statutes, and the judgments which God had given him, and all the regulations concerning the sacrificial system. The book.. . was for safe-keeping deposited in the side of the ark." [Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p 466]
This book of the law is first mentioned in Exodus 24:7. There it contained only the Ten Commandments and the seventy laws and judgments. Later additions were made, including also the book of Deuteronomy. The whole thing came to be known as the law of Moses, the book of the law, the book of the covenant, the book of the law of God. (Deuteronomy 4, 5, 7, 9, 26 to 33.)
The question may be raised that Deuteronomy distinguishes between the Abrahamic and Sinaitic covenants. "The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day." Dent. 5:2, 3. Moses is not emphasizing the difference between covenants. He is saying that each man must renew that covenant for himself. God made a covenant with Abraham; nevertheless both Isaac and Jacob renewed that holy covenant for themselves. And it must be renewed by their descendants. They cannot be excused by saying that God made this covenant only with their fathers, and so it is not binding. No, he made it with them, "with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day." What avails it to be children of Abraham according to the flesh, since God is able of the stones to raise up children unto Abraham? This is a covenant that needs to be ratified by every individual for himself apart. Similarly, we urge our own children to seek and to gain a Christian experience for themselves, for they do not inherit it from their parents. This is exactly what Moses was asking the Hebrews to do just before he died.
The second occasion for the renewal of the covenant was under Joshua, when Israel had come into possession of the land of Canaan. Again a solemn appeal was made at the close of the life of one of Israel’s great leaders. The occasion was especially significant. The tabernacle had been removed to Shechem, the scene of God’s first covenant with Abraham. The location was well calculated to inspire the Israelites, not only with deep emotions, but with a deep sense of responsibility. Joshua briefly reviewed the history of Israel from the call of Abraham. Israel was charged "to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses." Joshua 23:6. Three times Joshua called upon them to serve the Lord, and three times, just as at Sinai, the people responded, "The Lord our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey." (Joshua 24:16, 21, 24)
"And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there.... And Joshua said unto all the people,.. . It shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God." Verses 26, 27.
This occasion had many points similar to Israel’s experience at Sinai, except for a time it showed better results. "And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done for Israel." Verse 31. It is evident that many of these people knew something better than the "old covenant experience."
The third occasion for the renewal of the covenant was during the reign of Josiah, when the lost book of the covenant was discovered. Josiah called for a public recitation of the covenant. "And all the people stood to the covenant." 2 Kings 23:3. A great revival followed as king, priests, and people stood to the covenant of the Lord.
The fourth occasion was on the return of Israel from exile. Under Ezra and Nehemiah this was undoubtedly the greatest attempt since Sinai to call Israel to stand by the covenant of the Lord. The book of the covenant was read day after day before the people. Synagogues were established throughout the land, in order that the people might receive instruction from the book of the covenant every Sabbath. Again there followed a great religious revival. (Nehemiah 8 to 10.) Yet between Ezra’s time and the time of Christ, a period of more than four hundred years, Israel retrograded into a legalism that surpassed anything in all of their history, and which reached its nadir in that system that Christ met and utterly repudiated when He came to earth.
The final occasion constituted a prophecy for the Christian church. Almost the last words in the Old Testament are an appeal to the Sinaitic covenant. "Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments." Mal. 4:4. Its connection with the work of John the Baptist under the figure of the return of Elijah is particularly significant, indicating the reverence and respect for the ancient covenant that all God’s true servants and prophets had manifested through the centuries.
6. In the sixth place, the testimony of the Spirit of prophecy is conclusive as to the spirituality and the permanency of the Sinai covenant.
"I have been instructed to direct the mind of our people to the fifty-sixth chapter of Isaiah. This chapter contains important lessons for those who are fighting on the Lord’s side in the conflict between good and evil. ‘Thus saith the Lord, keep ye judgment, and do’ justice; for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.. . .Every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant; even them will I bring to my holy mountain.’ This is the covenant spoken of in . . . [Exodus 19:3-8]."[Ellen G. White in Review and Herald, June 23 1904, p. 8]
"The covenant that God made with His people at Sinai is to be our refuge and defense.... ‘And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words.’ ‘And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.’ This covenant is of just as much force to-day as it was when the Lord made it with ancient Israel." [Ellen G. White in The Southern Watchman, March 1, 1904, p. 142]
What shall we say, then, as to the God ward side of the Sinaitic covenant? Since God’s attitude and approach are identically the same in both covenants, why not say that there is, in the mind of God, but one covenant? And since that is true, then the covenant is none other than the one everlasting covenant.
Let us now examine the human factor at Sinai and the nature of the response. From the manward side, how came the Sinaitic covenant to be spoken of as the old covenant?
If we accept this interpretation of the Godward aspect of the Sinaitic covenant, then certain questions remain yet to be answered: In view of the evidence in the Scriptures and in the Spirit of prophecy, how can one deny that the old covenant was made by God at Sinai? Does not Paul testify in Galatians to the old covenant "from mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage"? Galatians 4:24. And again in Hebrews, "In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old." Hebrews 8:13. Surely it must be concluded that there are two covenants, since the new covenant is to take the place of the old, indicating two plans of God’s dealing with man, two ways of serving God, one a preparation for the other.
Exactly what constitutes the difference between the old and the new covenants?
First, since the new covenant writes the law of God on the heart, it must be concluded that under the old covenant the law was not written on the heart. Paul defines this condition in 2 Corinthians 3, indicating that the old covenant was of the letter and not of the spirit. Under the old covenant man’s heart was not right with God. This was remedied under the new covenant.
Second, the old covenant is based upon works of law, the new covenant upon faith. "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" Galatians 3:2. These Galatians had already received the work of the Holy Spirit in their heart at their conversion. Jewish leaders had led them away from righteousness by faith into legalistic works of righteousness. They had been led to believe that they were now fitted and able to fulfill the law as a natural duty.
Third, the old covenant stands upon the faulty promises of men, whereas the new covenant stands upon the eternal promises of God. (Hebrews 8:6-8; Romans 10:3, 4.) Under the new covenant, God promises to do all: to keep the heart, to give all power to men, in order that they might obey His will and His law. Under the old covenant, man endeavors of himself to attain righteousness.
Fourth, those who leave the new covenant to live under the old covenant fall from grace. As long as they remain under the new covenant they are under grace. Grace means two things: the quality of Christ’s character and the divine power of that character which God makes available for the salvation of men. When man lives according to the "old covenant," he is under the condemnation of the law, because of his own failures. To live by the covenant of grace means to enter into personal fellowship with God.
When and how did the old covenant originate? It grows out of the very nature of man. That God made a covenant with Adam is obvious from Hosea 6:7: "They like men ["like Adam," margin] have transgressed the covenant." This covenant with Adam was a covenant of works. It is also called a commanded covenant, also a covenant of life. A covenant of works before sin entered would be both acceptable and in harmony with the character of God and the nature of man. There would be no conflict between the law of God and the nature of Adam. It is called the covenant of works, because by the terms of it man was to have life or death in accordance with what he did.
The entrance of sin still left man face to face with God’s requirements of obedience but with no power to obey. Even with his loss of freedom and his ability to do what God commanded, he still possessed a strong desire to be justified by his own efforts.
"The spirit of Phariseeism is the spirit of human nature. . . . In the days of Christ the Pharisees were continually trying to earn the favor of Heaven, in order to secure the worldly honor and prosperity which they regarded as the reward of virtue." [Ellen G. White, Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing (1900 ed.), p. 120]
But more important than this, Satan is the originator of the spirit of the old covenant. The basic premise of sin itself is the work of Satan in leading Adam to place his own ego at the center of his existence instead of Christ.
"The principle that man can save himself by his own works, lay at the foundation of every heathen religion; it had now become the principle of the Jewish religion. Satan had implanted this principle. Wherever it is held, men have no barrier against sin." [Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 36]
The Sinaitic covenant, then, from the manward side is based upon the will to owe man’s life to himself, and is manifested in that pride which does not want to live by grace but by man’s own doing. This is that phase of the old covenant that Paul calls the righteousness of the law. This spirit is deeply ingrained in all men. It is not the sole prerogative of the Israelites. They are but an illustration of what can happen to any man and in fact to every believer. And until self is crucified it will inevitably happen.
This spirit of pride, independence, and self-effort toward the law was the outstanding sin of Israel. The revelation of the law at Mount Sinai was to lead them to Christ. This was in harmony with God’s plan, even as it is today. But salvation by works never was.
The reason the old covenant takes such prominence at Sinai is the people’s spiritual condition. Adam was conscious of his fall as were the rest of the fathers. There were but eleven patriarchs before the Flood. It needed only four of them to span the period from creation to Abraham. By the time Israel had spent more than two hundred years in slavery, sin had almost obliterated the impressions of the law written in their hearts. The instructions and laws of their fathers had almost faded from their minds. When such a thing happens the commandments of God become a stern command, not a delight. The law entered that Adam’s offense might abound.
"If man had kept the law of God, as given to Adam after his fall, preserved by Noah, and observed by Abraham, there would have been no necessity for the ordinance of circumcision. And if the descendants of Abraham had kept the covenant, of which circumcision was a sign, they would never have been seduced into idolatry, nor would it have been necessary for them to suffer a life of bondage in Egypt; they would have kept God’s law in mind, and there would have been no necessity for it to be proclaimed from Sinai, or engraved upon the tables of stone." [Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 364.]
Why did the Lord see it needful for a re-declaration of the law from Sinai? The sooner to compel Israel to come to Christ for salvation. But this particular function of law is just as significant today as in the days of Israel. At Sinai God provided them with the opportunity of making a response by promising to keep His law. But the nature of that response is entirely the responsibility of man.
The old covenant experience of Israel sprang just as much out of their relation to the ceremonial law representing the gospel as it did out of their relation to the Decalogue. They used the ceremonial law in the same way they used the Decalogue. They looked upon their sacrifices without discerning their true significance. They thought that the cold, formal presentation of a sacrifice was acceptable unto God. They conceived that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin, so what they lacked in fulfilling the moral law, they thought to make up in the ceremonial law. Thus they separated Christ from both the moral and the ceremonial law. They rested in the works of the law, both moral and ceremonial.
For the few, the ceremonial law had real significance. They apprehended Christ in the sacrifices. Such were Abel and Abraham. It is obvious that this ceremonial law, consisting of those sacrifices that pointed forward to Christ, did not arbitrarily belong to the old covenant any more than circumcision arbitrarily belonged to the everlasting covenant. For by the time of Christ and Paul, circumcision had become the hallmark of the old covenant. Neither does baptism nor the Lord’s supper belong arbitrarily to the new covenant. Such classifications depend entirely upon the attitude and response of the worshipers in both the Old and the New Testament eras.
The fact that God gives men the law to live by does not mean that the law constitutes the old covenant. "Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?" asked the rich young ruler. "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments," was Christ’s reply. Does this sound anything like the stated requirements at Sinai? What was Christ counselling the young man to do? Try the impossible? Or was He telling him the truth?
Failure to see Christ in the law is the failure of faith. The failure is not so much a lack of mental and intellectual understanding of the will of God. Christ rebuked the two disciples for being slow of heart to believe, not stupid of mind to perceive. It is in heart apprehension of God and in living faith that men are seriously retarded. In mental and hair splitting differences in theology, men have always been far ahead of heart experience; hence the animosity and persecution in the name of Christianity.
The psalmist points to the sin of Israel: "How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel." Ps. 78:40, 41.
If the law presented at Sinai was intended to lead them to Christ, why did Israel fail, and fail so continually through their history?
"It was their own evil heart of unbelief, controlled by Satan, that led them to hide their light, instead of shedding it upon surrounding peoples; it was that same bigoted spirit that caused them either to follow the iniquitous practices of the heathen, or to shut themselves away in proud exclusiveness, as if God’s love and care were over them alone." [Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 370.]
But are there not many sincere Christians today who live in the spirit of the old covenant and yet whose righteousness is not that of the Pharisees? As an elemental stage of Christian growth resulting from ignorance and spiritual immaturity, that is one thing. But the willful and persistent offering of an external and formal religion of self-righteousness in the face of the revelation of righteousness by faith, that is something else. It is stubborn unbelief in the face of light that becomes a serious sin before God.
The revelation of God at Sinai was of such a marvelous character as to present to the Israelites the full knowledge of the everlasting covenant. The sin that destroyed them was that in the face of all that God had done and revealed to them, the leaders molded a people in the rigid orthodoxy of pharisaical righteousness, and set forth to the world a totally false picture of the character of God, until the name of God was blasphemed and despised among the nations and the Jewish nation became a byword.
There is nothing clearer than this: that God will judge the level of one’s Christian experience and development by the measure of God’s revelation. What made Christ’s judgments of Israel so final and irrevocable was that the Jews throughout their history had received increasing revelation and counsel through the prophets on the true meaning of the everlasting covenant, and still came out with a religion known as Pharisaism.
There can be no more serious charge made than that the Laodicean church is following in the footsteps of ancient Israel. The full revelation of the glory of God in the third angel’s message leaves us without excuse. Such light is both our privilege and our sacred responsibility.
"That which God purposed to do for the world through Israel, the chosen nation, He will finally accomplish through His church on earth to-day. He has ‘let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, even to His covenant-keeping people, who faithfully ‘render him the fruits in their seasons.’ Never has the Lord been without true representatives on this earth who have made His interests their own. These witnesses for God are numbered among spiritual Israel, and to them will be fulfilled all the covenant promises made by Jehovah to His ancient people." [Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, pp. 713, 714.]
If the covenant mentioned in the Old Testament, from Sinai to Malachi, is none other than the everlasting covenant, why should there be need for those days spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel"? Jeremiah 31:31. Surely this indicates that the covenant existing in Jeremiah’s day is to be abrogated by the coming of the new covenant. Otherwise, why not continue with the same covenant found all the way through the Old Testament? What is the force of Paul’s words: "In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayed and waxed old is ready to vanish away." Hebrews 8:13.
The answer is contained in the correct understanding of the term "new covenant" and the reason for its being called new.
In the first place, the established interpretation is that it was ratified by the blood of Christ at the cross. Daniel declares of Christ, "He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week." Dan. 9:27. The word "confirm" means to cause to prevail. During the brief period of His earthly ministry, Jesus fulfilled the terms of the ancient covenant made with the seed of Abraham. Paul says of this: "Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers." Romans 15:8. Thus Christ secured the benefits of the ancient covenant to "many," that is, to the believers in Israel.
In the second place, this covenant is called new because God’s everlasting covenant had been so completely lost sight of that it appeared to be an entirely new covenant. This text is taking cognizance of the fact that while both God and His servants the prophets thought mostly in terms of the everlasting covenant, the nation of Israel thought in terms of the old covenant of works.
"Even the people of Israel had become so blinded to the precious teaching of the prophets concerning God, that this revelation of His paternal love was as an original subject, a new gift to the world." [Mount of Blessing, p. 114.]
The Jews had lost sight completely of the everlasting covenant. The new covenant was to write the law of God in their hearts, but writing the law in the hearts of men was not new. Isaiah spoke of it as sealing "the law among my disciples." (Isaiah 8:16.) The whole of Hebrews 11 is a historical record of it.
"Through the grace of Christ they may be enabled to render obedience to the Father’s law. Thus in every age, from the midst of apostasy and rebellion, God gathers out a people that are true to Him, -- a people ‘in whose heart is his law.’" [Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 338]
It is this writer’s suggestion that the later prophets and the New Testament writers were obliged to deal with the utterly mistaken conceptions concerning the Sinai covenant. We must never forget that the Judaism of Christ’s day represented a perversion of the economy and testimony given by God to Moses. It is to offset these misrepresentations of the old covenant idea that the gospel writers are strong in their assertions of an opposite tenor and direction. This swing away from Judaism in the New Testament has been falsely interpreted as the abrogation of the law of God. The New Testament writers are compelled under the circumstances to press home the differences on account of Jewish errors and their hardness of heart. The real battle of Christ, John, and Paul was to deliver the church from every shred of Jewish legalistic bondage that had been fastened on Israel during the previous fifteen hundred years.
In the third place, the use of the term "new covenant" is occasioned by new revelation that came with Christ’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. Progressive revelation is an important part of the Bible record.
"God’s work is the same in all time, although there are different degrees of development, and different manifestations of His power, to meet the wants of men in the different ages. Beginning with the first gospel promise, and coming down through the patriarchal and Jewish ages, and even to the present time, there has been a gradual unfolding of the purposes of God in the plan of redemption." [Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 373]
"Christ in His teaching presented old truths of which He Himself was the originator, truths which He had spoken through patriarchs and prophets; but He now shed upon them a new light. How different appeared their meaning! A flood of light and spirituality was brought in by His explanation. And He promised that the Holy Spirit should enlighten the disciples, that the word of God should be ever unfolding to them." [Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 127.]
The most burning question ever since the birth of Christianity has to do with the relationship of the law and the gospel. Throughout the great controversy it has been the purpose of Satan to destroy the authority of God by casting His law aside, and to pervert the righteousness of God by perverting the truth about the law. He has sought to do this in two ways:
First, by an antinomianism brought about either by an out-and-out rejection of the law or by the erroneous concept of the dispensation of law as opposed to the dispensation of the gospel.
Second, Satan has through the principle of salvation by works not allowed the law to function according to God’s design.
Luther declared that one of the most important trials of theology concerns its ability "rightly to deal law and gospel." The result of blinding men’s minds as to the true position of the law of God has rested in the inability of both the law and the gospel to act according to God’s purpose and plan.
In these last days Satan’s efforts are increased in this direction. Even in many professed Christian churches today there is widespread opposition to the Decalogue as an essential part of the everlasting gospel. This particular position receives its strongest support from dispensationalists.
1. Those who declare that the Decalogue is not intended for the Christian church and was abrogated at the cross point to various scriptures for vindication.
Christ
Luke 16:16. "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it."
John
John 1:16, 17. "And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."
Paul
Galatians 2:19. "For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God."
Galatians 3:18-25. "For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise. .. . Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. .. . But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster."
Galatians 5:14, 22, 23. "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."
Romans 3:21. "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets."
Romans 6:14. "Ye are not under the law, but under grace."
Romans 7:1-6. "Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? . . . Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ. . .. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter."
2 Cor. 3:7. "But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away."
It is important to bear in mind at this point that the teaching of the New Testament certainly does reveal an opposition to law. And it is the misinterpretation of this opposition that has led to the great error of antinomianism in the professed Christian churches through the centuries. It is the province of this paper to seek the correct interpretation.
2. Now, Seventh-day Adventists believe that the everlasting gospel cannot be preached or rightly interpreted unless the law of God be considered binding upon all men in all ages. Furthermore, in order that the issue may be rightly understood, Adventists believe that a careful distinction must be made at two points:
First, a distinction must be made between the two laws, the ceremonial law and the moral law. Perhaps the strongest texts on this point are Daniel 9:27, speaking of the coming of Christ, "in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease," and Matthew 27:51, showing which law was abrogated at the cross.
Second, there must be a distinction made between the term "law" as it is used in the New Testament and this term as it is used in the Christian church.
Actually, what constitutes the real issue over the law of God, and how is that issue resolved? Is it concerned with a distinction between two laws? Or is it over the use and function of all those God-given requirements that come under the term "law"? Only the Scriptures can tell us. I believe it can be shown that it is the second of these which constitutes the major problem. For the problem of the relationship of the law and the gospel cannot be resolved by centering attention upon the ceremonial law as opposed to the moral law. Certainly one does not get the impression, in reading the above passages, that this is what Paul and the other writers are particularly concerned about.
For example, the question of which law is referred to in Galatians has long been a point of controversy even among Seventh-day Adventists. But we no longer need to spend our days arguing over which law is referred to, for Mrs. White wrote:
"‘The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.’ In this scripture the Holy Spirit through the apostle is speaking especially of the moral law. The law reveals sin to us, and causes us to feel our need of Christ and to flee unto Him for pardon and peace by exercising repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
"An unwillingness to yield up preconceived opinions, and to accept this truth, lay at the foundation of a large share of the opposition manifested at Minneapolis against the Lord’s message through Brethren Waggoner and Jones. By exciting that opposition Satan succeeded in shutting away from our people, in a great measure, the special power of the Holy Spirit that God longs to impart to them." [E. G. White letter 96, 1896. (See Review and Herald, March 13, 1952, p. 6.)]
"I am asked concerning the law in Galatians. What law is the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ? I answer: Both the ceremonial and the moral code of Ten Commandments."[ E. G. White manuscript 87, 1900. (See Review and Herald, March 13, 1952, p. 6.)]
It is obvious from these two articles by Mrs. White that the issue in Galatians is no longer between these two laws, the moral and the ceremonial, and which one was done away. There is a much bigger problem than that. Paul declares it to be "another gospel." (Galatians 1:6.) The gospel is a way of salvation. This other gospel Paul speaks of must be another way of salvation. One is genuine; the other is counterfeit. The symptoms of the problem arise in the use and place of the moral law, the ceremonial law, circumcision, and other Jewish traditions and practices.
The role that law fulfills in relation to the gospel is twofold. First, law is God’s standard of what is right and true; it is the standard of obedience to the will of God. As a standard the law does certain things. It expresses the mind of God: "I delight to do thy will, 0 my God: yea, thy law is within my heart." Ps. 40:8. It also declares the whole duty of man: "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." Eccl. 12:13. And again as a standard, the law reveals sin: "For by the law is the knowledge of sin." "I had not known sin, but by the law." Romans 3:20; 7:7.
Not only is the law a standard, however; it is a method by which God works. Law cannot run anything. It never sets anything in motion. It merely explains how a thing works with constant regularity and permanency. Law is merely the revelation of universal principles by which God works, how God runs the universe, how men are created by God to live. The law of gravitation runs nothing. When Sir Isaac Newton discovered what he called the law of gravitation, he did not create it. He merely discovered one of the ways God runs the universe, and then he wrote it down.
The law of the circulatory system of the blood simply declares the way the blood circulates in the body and has circulated in all men since creation. Similarly, the Ten Commandments constitute a way of obedience, a way of life for moral and spiritual beings. They represent God’s eternal principles, declaring to us the way God runs the universe morally and spiritually. The universe does not run on a lie. It does not run on impurity. It runs on truth, on honesty, on reverence for God, on unselfishness. Try any other method than that declared by God, and it will not work. God has created us in the image of God. We live as God intended only as our lives follow God’s method of obedience to His will.
"Obey and live, disobey and perish" is still the method of the law of God. The law is suited to produce holiness and happiness in the soul of any and every man who lives in harmony with it. So far as the purpose of God is concerned, the Ten Commandments are perfectly adapted to fill the soul with peace and purity provided everything in man had remained as it had been created. "And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death."
"Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." Romans 7:10, 12.
The original relation between man's nature and the law of God was precisely like that between material nature and the material laws. There has been no apostasy in the system of matter. The law of gravitation, this very instant, rules as peacefully and supremely in every atom of matter as it did on the morning of creation. The methods that God ordained for material laws are in perfect harmony with the methods of nature herself.
Thus for scientists, their authority and their methods of investigation rest upon those natural laws that are but God’s way of running the stars, the planets, the earth, and all things in the natural world with a constancy like the unchangeableness of God Himself. For Christian men and women, their authority rests upon the Creator and those moral and spiritual laws that are but the standard of God’s own character, and upon the way He wills that we are made to live in relationship to Him and to our fellow beings.
But original conditions no longer prevail. Man must continue to accept the law of God as a standard of righteousness, but he can no longer use the law as a method of becoming righteous. Man is not standing where he was when created. He is out of his original relation to the law and the will of God. Therefore, that which was ordained to life for Adam before he sinned, he now finds to be a ministration of death.
If man had not sinned, he could easily have accepted the terms "Obey and live, disobey and perish," knowing that he would be perfectly capable of living in harmony with those requirements. There would have been no need of urging him to "become dead to the law," or to seek no longer to live by law but only by grace.
It is at this point that we find the crucial issue over the law throughout the Bible. God can never change His law as a standard; but because of man’s sinfulness, He has to change His method of attaining righteousness from the method of righteousness by works of law to the method of grace. In seeking righteousness, man must now choose to live by God’s method of salvation by grace or he has no other alternative but to try to use law as a method.
The problem becomes acute at the point where professed Christian men and women want salvation by grace at the expense of throwing out both the law as a standard and the law as a method. The result is antinomianism. On the other hand, the effort to keep the law both as a method and as a standard leads to legalism and Pharisaism. In both cases there is what Paul calls "another gospel."
The Seventh-day Adventist position is simply this: that the law of God is unchangeable and immovable as a standard. In order to attain to that standard, law as a method must be forever rejected, and men must live by grace alone, by faith that works by love.
Adventists insist upon the same standard of righteousness given to Adam in the Garden of Eden. "God requires at this moment just what He required of Adam in Paradise before he fell-perfect obedience to His law." [Ellen G. White in Review and Herald, July 15, 1890, p. 433]
There are only two ways to bring about harmony in the soul of man, who is out of harmony with God’s law. One is to alter the divine law so that it would agree with man’s sinful inclination, and thus remove the cause for inner conflict. This would transmute the law of holiness into a law of sin. It would make evil good. It would destroy the eternal distinction between right and wrong. This is impossible. There can be no transmutation of the law of God or any part of it as a standard of righteousness. The other method of bringing harmony between man and the law is to change the sinful nature of man, so that it becomes again in accord with the divine law. There is only one method by which this can be done. That is the method of free grace, or righteousness by faith.
Therefore, if we depend upon God’s power, the method is one of grace. If we depend upon our efforts at obedience, the method is one of law. If we appeal to God, the method is grace. If we appeal to our own strength, the method is one of self-justification. If we use the method of grace, the law has no more a voice in the matter of our salvation. If we use the method of obedience to the law, whatever law it might be, we are under the dominion of law. If we depend upon the power of the Holy Spirit, we are under grace.
Thus the law of God and the everlasting gospel are united in a firm alliance. Because the gospel as the only way to God rules supreme apart from every legalistic method, the law as the eternal standard of righteousness is completely liberated to work according to God’s purpose. When we no longer use the law in a false way to bring forth human merits and self-righteousness, then the law of God appears in all its true sovereignty, majesty, and power. Now, by the law of the Spirit, the law of God has become our friend. It stands as an eternal bulwark against sin and wickedness. It becomes the basis of a glorious fellowship with Christ in that we live in harmony with His great law and with God Himself.
In the light of this definition of law, the use of the term "law" throughout the Scriptures, particularly in the New Testament, must be clearly understood. It is imperative to know whether the reference to law is to law as a standard or to law as a method of salvation.
The new covenant experience as set forth in Hebrews 8 declares the law of God to be written on the mind and heart by the Holy Spirit. The old covenant is stated to be faulty, and the fault is declared to be with the people themselves. The exact nature of that fault is brought to view in Romans 9:30 to 10:8.
Here Paul presents two groups of people, the Gentiles and the Jews. The Jews who have lived by the old covenant have not attained to the law of God as a standard of righteousness; "for they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." Romans 10:3.
Then the Scripture continues, "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." Verse 4. How is the term "law" used in this verse, as a standard or as a method? The context reveals that Paul is contrasting two methods of seeking righteousness, one by works of law and the other by faith. Hence Christ is the end of the law as a method of salvation to everyone that believeth.
In Romans 6:14 Paul declares that we are no longer under law but we are under grace. Grace is God’s method of salvation. Grace is God’s power made available by the free gift of God in order that men may attain to the righteousness of the law. Grace is not a standard but a method. Being under grace as a method is contrasted with being under law as a method.
What does the term "under law" mean? It is usually interpreted to mean "under condemnation." Paul, in addressing the Galatians (4:21), asks the question: "Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?" Paul cannot have in mind "under condemnation." No one desires to be under condemnation. Romans 7:1 reads, "Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth." Here the law is declared to have dominion over a man. To be under law means to live under the dominion of law rather than under the dominion of grace.
It is quite evident that the attitude of the New Testament writers toward law is a two-sided one. On the one hand there exists a dominion where law has no rights and no authority. As a way of salvation the law has no more any authority or validity. Salvation by grace through faith forever dethrones the law as a method of salvation, for "the law is not of faith." (Galatians 3:12.) From another point of view, there exists a dominion where the law remains, in all its power and authority, as a standard of righteousness. Salvation by the loving power of God means a radical and most accentuated opposition to all legalistic methods of salvation. The two are incompatible. This is the explanation of the opposition to law found in the New Testament. It is an opposition that all Christians should make, particularly Seventh-day Adventists. For this church the responsibility is a double one: to make vital the law of God as a standard of righteousness in the hearts of men; at the same time to show ourselves a relentless foe of all pharisaical religion and righteousness by works. The pendulum has swung either to one extreme or to the other in the history of the Christian church, either to abrogate the law of God or to formalize it.
The evidence that God’s method of salvation by grace establishes the law as a standard is conclusive.
"Do we then make void the law [as a standard] through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law [as a standard]." Romans 3:31.
"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law [as a standard] might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 8:3, 4.
"I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God [as a standard]; but with the flesh the law of sin." Romans 7:25.
"For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. . . . Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law [as a standard]." Romans 13:9, 10.
That the Adventist position has always been clearly stated may be concluded from many authoritative statements.
"We ourselves owe everything to God’s free grace. Grace in the covenant ordained our adoption. Grace in the Saviour effected our redemption, our regeneration, and our exaltation to heirship with Christ." [Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 250]
"Every jot and tittle of the word of God is to be brought into the daily practise. He who becomes a partaker of the divine nature will be in harmony with God’s great standard of righteousness, His holy law. This is the rule by which God measures the actions of men. This will be the test of character in the Judgment." [Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 314.]
The proper function of the law is imperative to the work of the gospel.
"It is only as the law of God is restored to its rightful position that there can be a revival of primitive faith and godliness among His professed people." [Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 478.]
1. What is that rightful position? Two passages of Scripture explain thoroughly the proper function of the law in the plan of salvation. On the negative side, Romans 7:7-13 reveals how the law kills, how it brings man under condemnation, how sin is revealed and made to "become exceeding sinful." On the positive side Galatians 3:1926 shows that the law leads us to Christ, by shutting us up to one method of salvation, faith in Christ.
"Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." The word "schoolmaster" in the original is paidagogos. It means "slave master." He was the slave who accompanied the children to school, to see that they did not play truant. If they attempted to run away, he was there to prevent it. He was given authority to use physical punishment if necessary to see that the children arrived at school. On arrival at the school, they were handed over to the care and instruction of the teacher.
"But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed." The figure here used by Paul is that of being shut up in prison. The law acts as their jailer. It is the law that shuts them in and will not let them off. God is merciful and gracious, but He will not clear the guilty by calling evil good. Men are imprisoned for breaking the law that they cannot keep. If the man tries to escape by appeals to the law, he finds only further restrictions and condemnation. The law declares to him: "There is no freedom by men, for you have sinned and broken the law." Man may try to change and lessen the claims of the law, but all the time the law stands as firm as the everlasting hills. Man comes to realize that "the strength of sin is the law." (1 Cor. 15:56.) There is one door and one door only out of the prison house, and that is the door of faith. There is no escape except through faith in Christ. Man is hopelessly shut up under the law until he finds the door of faith.
It is interesting to notice at this point that the Jews preached the law, but it never seemed to have this effect described in either Romans or Galatians. Seventh-day Adventists have also preached the law far more than any other professed Christian body, preached it until "we are as dry as the hills of Gilboa that had neither dew nor rain." The result has been lukewarmness and self-satisfaction. In both cases the effect seemed to be the opposite of what the law was declared to produce.
Kant the philosopher said that he knew of but two beautiful things: the starry heavens above his head and the moral law within his heart. Kant felt the moral law to be a beautiful thing in his heart. Why did he not feel as Paul felt? Because he knew only mere morality. If he had seen the law of God in the face of Jesus Christ, he would have felt as Paul did when he cried out: "For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me." "0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Romans 7:9-11, 24.
Here are two men, Kant and Paul, upon whom the effect of the law was totally different. Kant had substituted ethics for the law and the gospel. Paul declared of his relation to the law even before he had come to know Christ, as "touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless." Phil. 3:6.
Hence the significance of Mrs. White’s statement:
"As a people, we have preached the law until we are as dry as the hills of Gilboa that had neither dew nor rain, We must preach Christ in the law, and there will be sap and nourishment in the preaching that will be as food to the famishing flock of God." [Ellen G. White in Review and Herald, March 11, 1890, p. 146.]
When men substitute ethics for the law and the gospel, when men do not see Christ in the law, the end is pride and self-satisfaction before God. But when the eye of God and the power of Christ are seen and felt in the law, men are smitten to the ground. Declares the psalmist: "When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makes his beauty to consume away like a moth." Ps. 39:11.
We feel the guilt of an evil action far more sharply when we know that someone saw us commit the sin, than when we know that no one but ourselves is cognizant of the deed. How much more sinful, then, do we feel, when we look into the face of Christ and say, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned."
The constant appeal to Israel was to hear and obey God’s voice, not merely to observe the letter of the law. It was the Jews’ failure to see Christ in the law that led them to that perverted religion known as Pharisaism.
The pious legalist and the legalistically religious good man are farthest away from God because they stand over against God on their own two feet, feeling "rich, and increased with goods," and in "need of nothing." Legalism is the practical outcome for the man who seeks to fulfill the demands of the law in his own strength.
Nothing is in greater opposition to the holy and loving God, who saves men by grace alone, than this self-satisfaction, this lukewarmness, this complacency of men who are too sure of themselves. They see only the letter of the law, and conform to it.
To see Christ in the law leads to repentance and salvation, because it leads to trust and faith. Faith does not simply depend on learning something that is true, even though it be the entire Bible. An unbeliever may pass the stiffest theological examination and yet, in the sense of spiritual fellowship with Christ, he has understood nothing. The devil himself could pass with distinction the most rigorous test in dogmatic and Biblical theology. Real Christian living is not something a man can learn on the intellectual level. Correct doctrine alone can be learned by anyone with a good brain. It is dangerous for the church to confuse that which is the gift of the Holy Spirit with that which anyone with a good brain can learn or seek to accomplish by his own efforts. Faith that sees Christ in the law and the gospel does not depend on logical arguments.
"The Holy Spirit flashes conviction into the mind. It is not the conviction that logical reasoning produces;. . . a deeper meaning is grasped, and the sublime, spiritual truths of the written word are impressed on the heart." [Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 24.]
"A knowledge of the truth depends not so much upon strength of intellect as upon pureness of purpose, the simplicity of an earnest, dependent faith. To those who in humility of heart seek for divine guidance, angels of God draw near. The Holy Spirit is given to open to them the rich treasures of the truth." [Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 59.]
To see and to preach Christ in the law is vital. Simply to hold fast to intellectual ideas in the law of God without the deeper meanings and convictions of the Holy Spirit, leaves a man wholly untouched, unredeemed, and untransformed, and utterly incompetent to know God.
2. Because of the danger of misuse of the law, it is important that the law be maintained in its proper function and correct relationship with the entire plan of redemption.
"Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made." Galatians 3:19.
Where did Paul get the idea that "the law was added till the seed should come," and what does he mean by it? Christ Himself makes a similar statement in Luke 16:16. "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it."
If we can understand Christ’s meaning, then it should not be difficult to believe that Paul had the same idea. Are Christ and Paul teaching that the dispensation of law ends with them since Christ has now established the dispensation of grace? After making this statement in verse 16, Christ is very careful to let His hearers know that the law of God is still binding. Lest anyone should get the idea that the law is now at an end, He says, "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Verse 17. Christ is saying, "Think not that, though some things are changing, the divine law will ever change. No, not even the smallest part of one letter of the divine moral law will fail."
As an illustration of the point He has made regarding the eternal nature of the law, Christ turns to one of the Ten Commandments of which there has been much violation in His day. This is the seventh commandment. There has been comparatively little tampering with the Sabbath, so there is no need to mention that. He refers to the one that has been most seriously affected in His day. "See," He says, "the new state of things which I am now advocating, instead of lessening the importance of the law, will magnify it. Instead of a laxer code on divorce being submitted, I bring you a severer one. My law of divorce is much more severe than that written by Moses." (Luke 16:18.)
What, then, does Christ mean by His statement that "the law and the prophets were until John"? He is saying: "You Jews for fifteen hundred years have maintained an attitude toward law and have established a dominion of legal righteousness which is no longer to prevail. Your system is dethroned with My coming. The consequence is that men everywhere are pressing into the kingdom of God." Thus men are shut up to one way, the way of faith in Christ.
"But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." Galatians 3:25. Many have interpreted this text to mean that man was under law until a certain fixed time in the history of the race; that there was a definite time for faith to come in to free men from the law.
Suppose this to be so, that all men were in bondage to law until Christ; then they had no chance or opportunity to be saved. If a man were born during the period from Moses to Christ, it was just too bad. Then a man’s salvation would depend simply on the accident of birth. God had been using the Jews as guinea pigs and had kept them under a system that He knew would not work, simply for the benefit of other generations to follow His own ministry.
Paul is not speaking of a fixed, definite point of time when faith came. The galaxy of Old Testament saints recorded in Hebrews 11 shows that men were saved by faith from the very beginning. Whenever a man receives the Word as the voice of God to his soul, whenever man sees Christ in the law, then faith comes, for "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Romans 10:17.
3. Finally, the true function of the law sets forth the inescapability of obedience to it. The choice is still a matter of life or death, blessing or cursing. "So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continued not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." Galatians 3:9, 10.
The choice of the law and of the gospel is either a blessing or a curse. The blessing comes through faith, whereas the law brings a curse. Who are those under the curse? Not those who do the law, for "cursed is every one that continued not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." "The law worketh wrath." Romans 4:15. But wrath cometh only upon the children of disobedience. (Eph. 5:6.)
These texts declare that it is disobedience to God’s law that brings the curse. Disobedience means separation from fellowship with God. The curse that belonged to us was laid upon Christ as He cried out: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Some exclaim that we no longer need to keep the law, because Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. But the curse is disobedience, not obedience; otherwise the text should read: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of obedience to the law." But the text declares, "Cursed is everyone that continued not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." Thus Christ hath redeemed us from all disobedience of the law.
It is this inescapability of obedience as it is in Christ that makes the law to do its work in every age. The law must be used faithfully and fearlessly within its own limits and in accordance with its proper function. Let Christian men and women apply the law of God to personal character and conduct. But look not to the law for salvation.
"Many who call themselves Christians are mere human moralists. . . The heavenly principles that distinguish those who are one with Christ from those who are one with the world have become almost indistinguishable. The professed followers of Christ are no longer a separate and peculiar people. The line of demarcation is indistinct. The people are subordinating themselves to the world, to its practices, its customs, its selfishness. The church has gone over to the world in transgression of the law, when the world should have come over to the church in obedience to the law. Daily the church is being converted to the world." [Christ’s Object Lessons, pp. 315, 316.]
"His [God’s] professed followers should be more marked for their fidelity to His holy law. . . . The very contempt that is shown to the law of God is sufficient reason why His commandment-keeping people should come to the front and show their esteem and reverence for His downtrodden law. .. . Soon God’s people will be tested by fiery trials and the great proportion of those who now appear to be genuine and true will prove to be base metal. "[Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 136.]
The first law of revival is the withering work of the Holy Spirit through the application of God’s eternal standard in our lives. It holds good through all generations. It is certain and sure. This humbling work of the law of God seen in the light of Christ is always the first gleam of a spiritual awakening. The standard of the law demands of us perfection in Christ. There is only one door. "I am the door," "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."
Ever since the fall of man the great question has been one of righteousness. How can a man become righteous before God?
It is the belief of Seventh-day Adventists that the righteousness of God is disclosed when the law and the gospel are united in the life through the divine power of the Holy Spirit. We believe that both the Old and the New Testament see the law of God as a requirement within faith and love. The law of God is not to be externalized in formal rigid codes. It can be experienced only in a life that is born of the Spirit and lived in fellowship with God. For Seventh-day Adventists the law remains the guardian of the gospel. It tells us what God requires of us, not in our own power but in His power. It reveals to us our sinfulness and, therefore, our need of grace and of His righteousness, both imputed and imparted.
Seventh-day Adventists oppose as altogether un-Scriptural any position that abrogates the law of God, or any part of it, or seeks to substitute any other law for it. There are many professed Christian churches and people today who believe that the Decalogue belongs to the Jews under a dispensation of law; that Christ instituted a new law, variously known as the law of the Spirit, the law of love, which is the basis for the new covenant. They declare that the Decalogue is not intended for the Christian church. This leads to the claim that the Seventh-day Sabbath is exclusively Jewish; that Christ set apart the first day of the week as the new rest day in honor of His resurrection.
II. Old and New Testament Eras United on the Law and the Gospel
Seventh-day Adventists insist upon the unity of the law and the gospel for both Old and New Testament eras. In replying to the question of dispensationalism, that the dispensation of grace has, with the coming of Christ, superseded the dispensation of law, the fundamental issue is: Does the Christian church fulfill the plan, the purpose, and the covenant of God as revealed throughout the Old Testament; or does it displace that which has become decadent and outmoded?
Paul (Titus 2:14) and Peter (1 Peter 2:9) declare the purpose of Christ to "purify unto himself a peculiar people," a people for His own possession. They both quote from the Old Testament, from the covenant which God made with Israel at Sinai. Why do these leaders of the Christian church appeal to this ancient covenant except for the purpose of calling attention to the close and vital connection that exists between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church? Or has God had two peculiar peoples that are to be carefully distinguished? Does the God of Israel have one peculiar people that are to be obedient to one set of laws, and does the Lord Jesus Christ have another peculiar people with another set of laws? Seventh-day Adventists believe that God, who is the only Redeemer of God's elect throughout the past six thousand years of earth’s history, has one and only one peculiar people. They are made up of Old Testament saints and New Testament saints without distinction. "We are all children of Abraham in Christ Jesus." We further believe that there has been and still is one law, one covenant, one gospel, one Sabbath, "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Eph. 4:5, 6.
Furthermore, Paul likens the true Israel of God, in both Old and New Testament eras to an olive tree. Both Jews and Gentiles are grafted onto the same olive tree. The tree represents true Israel. Some of the natural branches are broken off because of unbelief, representing literal Jews. Branches of a wild olive are grafted in among them. These are Gentiles who have accepted salvation. It would be difficult to state more clearly that the Gentiles entering the Christian church become members of one body, one church that has existed through all the years of earth's history.
After illustrating this truth, Paul draws two important conclusions: the first is that since unbelief caused the breaking off of some of the natural branches, the branches of the new graft owe their status solely to faith. The second conclusion is that since the Gentiles owe their present status of salvation to grace alone, it is only to be expected that the same grace which has spared them, will also restore the natural branches representing the literal Jews who repent. Only in this way is Abraham the father of all those who believe. They are the true Israel of God, those who are saved by faith. No one is saved by law whatsoever, and never has been. The Bible knows of no distinction between law and grace in the matter of the saved. Both Jew and Gentile possess the same righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. They become citizens, not of the new state of Israel, but of that holy city, the New Jerusalem.
Those who believe that the law of God or any part of it was abrogated or changed at the cross misread Moses and credit God with having instituted the old covenant of righteousness by works of the law for meritorious acceptance with God. The Jews through their history as a nation misread Moses the same way. Paul declared of their blindness, "But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart." 2 Cor. 3:15. They rejected the everlasting covenant and substituted for it a covenant of works, which neither the law nor the prophets gave any recognition to at any time. For Paul declares in Romans 3:21, 22, that "now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ." Christ also calls upon Moses for confirmation of His position and to expose the errors of the Jews. "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me." The Old and the New Testament are in complete harmony. Through stubborn pride and hardness of heart, the Jews rejected God's great plan and crucified the Lord Jesus. A hard heart is impossible under the everlasting covenant, for God is able to write His law upon it.
The unity of the law and the gospel constitutes the major premise of the new covenant. The new covenant is none other than the everlasting covenant ordained from before the foundation of the world. It is also referred to as the covenant of grace. They are all one and the same.
1. The new covenant contains blessings of the highest value. First of all, in its negative aspect, it removes the weak ness and faultiness of the old covenant. This is definitely indicated in Hebrews 8:6-8: "By how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah."
What was this weakness? The fault was in man, in his promises to keep the law. Man was depending upon his own will power, which led to failure and condemnation. Man could not fulfill what he had promised to do, to keep the commandments.
A more complete detailed explanation of the Jewish failure is recorded in Romans 9:31-33. "But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. They failed because, instead of trusting wholly in Christ, they trusted in themselves. Theirs was a failure of faith. They depended upon the arm of flesh.
Again, Paul illustrates this failure in 2 Corinthians 3:14-16 as like unto a veil which was upon their faces and which had remained there even unto Paul's day. The veil which is said to cover their faces symbolized their unbelief, "because only through Christ is it taken away. . . . But when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed." (R.S.V.) The Jews had insisted on trying to keep the law by their own efforts, and had arrived only at self-righteousness. The first blessing of the new covenant then is to take away all self-righteousness.
2. The positive aspect of the new covenant concerning the unity of the law and the gospel makes very specific the work of Christ for man: "I will put my laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people." Hebrews 8:10.
a. Immediately we are led to ask: What law is it that is to be written on the mind and heart? Again Paul is very conclusive.
It is first pointed out that the law is weak, not through any defect in itself, but due to the flesh; "for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh." Verse 3. "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Verses 7, 8. When men are so biased and sinfully determined by the very nature of their depravity that they are totally unable to keep the law of God, the strength of the law is weakened. On the contrary, the text declares that the only way to keep the law is by the power of the Holy Spirit: "God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit." Verses 3-5.
It is the province of this passage to show that the law that was weak through the flesh is the same law whose righteousness is now fulfilled. This work of the Holy Spirit in us evidently means more than that Christ's righteousness may be imputed unto us. We do not remain as we were except for our justification. The gospel, or good news of Christ's victory over sin, is now united in our hearts with the law of God, in order that there may be obedience and holiness of life. Our union with Christ under the new covenant is so real and vital as to bring our lives into full harmony with the law of God. The law is stronger than ever before. "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law."
In all of these passages of Scripture which so clearly depict Christian experience by the power of the Holy Spirit, the law that is written upon the mind and heart can be none other than the Decalogue. Many believe that Christ instituted a new law or changed the old one, which they, designate as the law of love or the law of the Spirit. But the New Testament nowhere reveals such a law. The law of the Spirit is a new way of life, not a new law from God. There is revealed a wholly different and more effective method of keeping the law of God. It is the full revelation through Christ of the only way of securing the loyal adherence of every believer to the commandments of God. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Romans 8:2.
The Law of God Experienced in the Life
3. What is meant by writing the law of God upon the mind and heart?
This was what Christ came to do for us, and what we could never have done for ourselves. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Matt. 5:17. So what victory Christ has wrought out on the cross, the Holy Spirit makes real in the life. The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 8:4.
Isaiah prophesied concerning Christ that He would "magnify the law and make it honorable." Isaiah 42:21. No longer is the law discredited by the weakness of the flesh. It is now exalted to a place of honor. We are enabled to do honor to God's eternal code by living in complete harmony with it. As God once honored the two tables of stone by writing upon them His eternal law, He now honors our hearts and minds by inscribing this same law upon them. This time He writes the law, not with His finger, but by His Holy Spirit. The law of God is magnified as never before. It receives its greatest honor in the work of the Holy Spirit by being written upon the minds and hearts of men.
b. In the second place, to have the law of God written on the mind and heart means to know that "the law is spiritual" "and the commandment holy, and just, and good." (Romans 7:14, 12.) The law is seen in all its spiritual and vital meaning. It is no longer rendered in external forms. Its underlying principles are clearly apprehended.
A principle is that to which the whole bears testimony. In contrast, a detail is that which garnishes the principle. In the coordination of the whole, the principles are constant and not contradictory.
"The law of Jehovah dating back to creation, was comprised in the two great principles, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.' These two great principles embrace the first four commandments, showing the duty of man to God, and the last six, showing the duty of man to his fellow-men. The principles were more explicitly stated to man after the fall, and worded to meet the case of fallen intelligences. This was necessary in consequence of the minds of men being blinded by transgression." [Ellen G. White in Signs of the Times, April 15, 1875, p. 181.]
As the Ten Commandments are based upon the two great commandments, or principles, of love, so the sermon on the mount is a spiritual interpretation of the same Ten Commandments. (The Decalogue is the sermon on the mount stripped of all the spiritual interpretations.) The law finds its full expression from a heart quickened by the Spirit. The standard and requirements of the sermon on the mount are an expression of a heart and mind on which the Spirit has written the law of God.
This becomes obvious the moment we read the sermon on the mount. "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." Matt. 5:2 1, 22.
"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, That whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her bath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Verses 27, 28.
Certain principles for the right understanding and interpretation of God's law become apparent at once.
First, all those commandments and statutes and precepts, which are found in both the Old and the New Testament, and are concerned with the regulating of our lives and actions in relationship to God and to our fellow men, although they are not to be found expressly mentioned in the Decalogue, yet they may very aptly be reduced under one of the Ten Commandments.
Second, the affirmative commands include in them the prohibition of the contrary sin. The negative commands include the injunction of the positive duties.
Third, the same precept that forbids the external and outward acts of sin, forbids likewise the inward desires and motions of sin in the heart. The same precept that requires the external acts of duty, requires likewise those holy affections of the soul.
Fourth, the connection between the commandments is so close and intimate and they are so linked together that whosoever breaks one of them is guilty of all. When we infract one of these laws, we are apt to regard God's authority in respect to others in the same careless manner.
It is here that we come to understand the great difference between Christ's interpretation of the law and that of the Jews.
"But Israel had not perceived the spiritual nature of the law, and too often their professed obedience was but an observance of forms and ceremonies, rather than a surrender of the heart to the sovereignty of love." [Mount of Blessing, p. 75.]
Under the new covenant the law of God becomes married to the gospel by the Holy Spirit. Obedience is no longer a mechanical process, but a complete fulfillment through faith which works by love. The law and the gospel become inseparable as light and heat in the sun. God demands obedience under the law. God works obedience through the gospel. The law of God demands holiness of men. The gospel works holiness in men. As long as the law remains written merely on stone, men find the commandments hard to obey. While the heart is stony, the commandments appear stony.
A man upon whom the Holy Spirit has written God's law, readily consents unto the law that it is "holy, and just, and good." He no longer wishes to change either one jot or one tittle of the law. He no longer desires that the commandments were other than what they are. He is willing to call hate, murder. He is willing to call lust, adultery. He no longer wishes that God had ordained some other day of the week for the Sabbath. He consents with all his heart and mind unto the law of God.
Not only does man give consent unto the law that it is good, but he exclaims with the psalmist: "But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night." Ps. 1:2. The Holy Spirit has done a great work for a man when his heart delights in the law of the Lord. Then every violation of the law becomes hateful to him. Every transgression causes intense agony and sorrow, because God has written His law in the heart. The new covenant now becomes the clearest test of how genuine is a man's Christian experience-what a man delights to do.
c. In the third place, the fact that the Holy Spirit writes the law of God on the mind and heart proclaims in no unmistakable terms that this experience comes only by supernatural means and never by naturalistic means. The issue between letter and spirit, between righteousness by works and righteousness by faith, is this: Does man save himself, or does God save Him? The union of the law and the gospel in the life is something that God does for man, and that man cannot possibly do for himself.
Mrs. White declares that the greatest deception in the church is that mental assent to religion constitutes righteousness.
"He [Christ] declared that the righteousness upon which the Pharisees set so great value was worthless. The Jewish nation had claimed to be the special, loyal people who were favored of God; but Christ represented their religion as devoid of saving faith. All their pretensions of piety, their human inventions and ceremonies, and even their boasted performance of the outward requirements of the law, could not avail to make them holy..
"A legal religion is insufficient to bring the soul into harmony with God. The hard, rigid orthodoxy of the Pharisees, destitute of contrition, tenderness, or love, was only a stumbling-block to sinners." [Mount of Blessing, p 83.]
Some things we can do for ourselves, but we cannot shift our spiritual center of gravity by our own strivings. We cannot ourselves break the power of self-love. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." Jeremiah 13:23. The power that works through the new covenant is divine, not natural. We know that we have passed from the natural man to that of the spiritual.
d. Finally, to have the Holy Spirit write on our hearts the law of God means that we have shifted from self as the center of our lives to Christ. Here is the crux of the everlasting covenant. The greatest enemy of God is the pride of self-righteousness. The root problem of all self-righteousness is the inordinate importance that man attaches to himself. He magnifies himself, and consequently fails to magnify Christ.
The man who lives under the old covenant feeds on the sense of his own importance, and thereby exaggerates it. Nothing is so sweet to human ears as words that tell of one's beauty or strength or intelligence or virtue. Men hang on words that magnify them.
"In their professed service to God, the Jews were really working for self. Their righteousness was the fruit of their own efforts to keep the law, according to their own ideas, and for their own selfish benefit. Hence it could be no better than they were." [Mount of Blessing, p 84]
The reason the ancient prophets found their most difficult task of securing genuine repentance from the Jews was that they actually believed they were obeying the law when they were not. The Jews continually sinned against the law even in their devotion to it. This is always the sin of self-righteousness, of salvation by merit. The form becomes more important than the spirit. "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is a commandment of men which bath been taught [them]: .. . the wisdom of their wise men shall perish." Isaiah 29:13, 14, margin.
Repeatedly Christ stressed the need for inner spirituality in the life. "A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit." Matt. 7:18, R.S.V. "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth evil." Matt. 12:34, 35, R.S.V. "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, slander, pride, foolishness." Mark 7:21, 22, R.S.V.
It is the essence of the new covenant that man's responsibility to God is altogether unintelligible except in personal fellowship with God, in putting Christ at the center of his life. The warping, distorting factor in man's life is precisely his dependence upon and worship of his own inherent powers of mind, soul, and body. Thus man magnifies himself rather than his Maker and Redeemer.
The deceptive character of separating the law and the gospel in life is extremely difficult to grasp. Man clothes his actual motives with reasons compatible with his own self-estimate. He does away with the law of God while claiming to defend it. In the ministry of the church too often the desire for prestige and power is greater than love for the Lord Jesus Christ. In education it is the Doctor's degree, and the great institution graduated from, not what they represent, that motivates much of our graduate study. It is the recognition rather than the quality of our work that is so often our chief concern.
To the degree that all this pride possesses a man, he is unable to hear or rightly understand the true experience of the law of God which is offered to him. "How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" John 5:44, R.S.V.
"As a golden treasure, truth had been entrusted to the Hebrew people.. . . Yet when Christ came, the Jews did not recognize Him to whom all these symbols pointed. They had the word of God in their hands. . . . The spiritual import of the sacred writings was lost. The treasure-house of all knowledge was open to them, but they knew it not." [Christ's Object Lessons, p. 105]
The Sabbath the Seal of the Everlasting Covenant
4. Once again in these last days the ancient covenant of Jehovah, once delivered unto Israel, is now delivered unto us to be "our refuge and strength." That covenant unites law and gospel. This is our task as the remnant church.
"It is only as the Law of God is restored to its rightful position that there can be a revival of primitive faith and godliness among His professed people." [The Great Controversy, p. 478]
"That which God purposed to do for the world through Israel, the chosen nation, He will finally accomplish through His church on earth to-day. He has 'let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, even to His covenant-keeping people, who faithfully 'render him the fruits in their seasons.' Never has the Lord been without true representatives on this earth who have made His interests their own. These witnesses for God are numbered among spiritual Israel, and to them will be fulfilled all the covenant promises made by Jehovah to His ancient people." [Prophets and Kings, pp. 713, 714]
One notices in the study of all the revivals and the renewals of God's covenant, beginning with Sinai, also with Joshua, Josiah, Hezekiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah, that two classes of people develop -- those who were true to the ancient covenant, as were the Levites; and those whose stubborn pride and rebellion led to Pharisaism and ultimately to the destruction of the nation of Israel. Always there is a remnant who submit to God and exercise the faith of Abraham. Always there is a majority who do the opposite. Never is there a change in the law, but there is a change in the nature of the people of God.
Mrs. White discussed the great revival that came to Israel under the leadership of Ezra after they had returned from exile.
"They saw the sacredness of the law spoken at Sinai, and many trembled at the thought of their transgressions..
"'Then arose Ezra, and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel, to swear that they should do according to this word.'
"This was the beginning of a wonderful reformation. .. . Above all else, Ezra was a teacher of the law; .. . he sought to impress the people with the holiness of this law, and the blessings to be gained through obedience.
"Wherever Ezra labored. . . the law of the Lord was exalted and made honorable..
"In this age of the world. . . there is need of men who can cause many to 'tremble at the commandment of our God' There is need of true reformers, who will point transgressors to the great Lawgiver, and teach them that 'the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.'...
"Between the laws of men and the precepts of Jehovah will come the last great conflict of the controversy between truth and error. Upon this battle we are now entering -- a battle not between rival churches contending for the supremacy, but between the religion of the Bible and the religions of fable and tradition." [Prophets and Kings, pp. 622-625]
As we examine the law of God in the light of the everlasting covenant, we find that it is the Sabbath commandment that sets God's seal upon it, and at the same time becomes the symbol and test of the new covenant experience.
"Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layed hold on it; that keeps the sabbath from polluting it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. . .For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant. Isaiah 56: 1-4.
Isaiah's reference here is to the everlasting covenant. The Sabbath is connected in some way to the righteousness of Christ that is to be revealed with His coming, and is an indispensable part of the covenant.
The Sabbath commandment, more than any of the others, signifies the unity of the law and the gospel. It signifies the rest of the completed work of God in the soul, the rest of righteousness by faith. It is the seventh-day Sabbath that is appealed to throughout Israel's history as the test of the work of the Spirit through the everlasting covenant.
The principal book in the New Testament concerned with the new covenant is the book of Hebrews. At the heart of it we find the message of the rest of God, signified by the seventh-day Sabbath.
In these verses the rest of God into which the Christian is to enter, is related to three things: first, it is related to faith -- one cannot find this rest without faith; second, it is also related to the creation week; and third, it is related to the seventh-day Sabbath.
Why is this so? Surely it is not merely a matter of keeping holy the seventh day of the week. Verses nine and ten give us the key: "So then, there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God; for whoever enters God's rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his." The text declares that the significance of the Sabbath is related to the completed works of God at creation. God completed His works of creation in six days with nothing more to add to it. Then God rested. God's rest, then, is the rest of the completed work of God either in creation of the world or in the re-creation of the human soul.
c. Third, Christians are to enter into that rest -- a rest like unto God's. "There remained therefore a rest [or a keeping of the sabbath] to the people of God. . . . Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief." Verses 9-11, A.V. Christians enter into the rest of God when they enter by faith into the finished work of God for them. They do it when they rest and trust in His completed work of salvation, and when they cease from their own works as God did from His.
d. Fourth, this chapter states that God has offered this rest from the very beginning of creation down to Paul's day, and for all time. The rest was set forth from the first Sabbath at creation. God has offered it every day since then. It is more than keeping a day. Israel had kept the seventh day Sabbath throughout their history, yet they had failed to enter into the rest of God. Time and again, in Joshua's and David's day, He had offered His rest to them. He still offered it to them in Paul's day.
The reason for Israel's failure is indicated plainly. It was never God's plan to have Israel work or fight for the Promised Land. It was called the Promised Land because God had promised it to them. Therefore it was already a completed work, just like the work of creation. They did not rest in God; they rested in the law. (Romans 2:17.) They tried to add to God's work; they sought it not by faith but by works of the law. Consequently, they never entered into God's rest. In Hebrews 3:7-11 God does not condemn Israel for all the sins of immorality and idolatry. He charges them and holds them responsible for not entering into that rest of faith, righteousness by faith.
The rest of God, even though it is signified by the seventh-day Sabbath, is not something which comes one day a week. "Now is the day of salvation." The Christian is to experience this rest of God's completed work of salvation every day. Only in this way can God's Sabbath truly be kept.
This rest of God signified by the seventh-day Sabbath is very definitely indicated at the cross, when Christ completed the work of re-creation. Just before the sun went down on Friday, Christ cried out: "It is finished." Then He rested in the grave on the Sabbath according to the commandment. Nothing more was to be added to the work of redemption. It was completed once and for all. The Christian is to enter into the finished work of redemption and cease entirely from his own works.
e. Fifth, if true rest of soul depends upon entering into the finished work of Christ, if true rest means that the law and the gospel are united in the heart through the Holy Spirit, how can the Christian hope to possess this rest when His work is not completed in the life?
When Christ imputes and imparts His righteousness unto me, He sees in me at this moment the completed work of redemption. I can rest in God, because He will complete the work He has begun in me. How did Paul enter into that rest? Romans 7 pictures Paul's great unrest and struggle of soul. He was held up by a law whose tendency was meant to be spiritual, but instead of the law giving him peace and rest, it revealed to him how sinful and incomplete he was. Finally, Paul declares that rest came to him from Jesus. "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 7:25; 8:1."Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Matt. 11:28.
As the Christian enters into the completed work of Christ, God guarantees to complete the work in him. Perfection is not arrived at all at once. But we have confidence in the great Redeemer, who always completes His work. He has never left incomplete any work that He has begun.
The rest of God signified by the Sabbath means continual communion. Since Christ's completed work of recreation for me is not yet fully realized in my soul, there is need for continual fellowship and communion. The seventh-day Sabbath stands for eternal communion. There is relief from all anxiety, fears, and struggle. I enter into God's rest.
That such a commandment is to be found in the law of God reveals how closely are the law and the gospel tied together in the work of salvation. The message of the Sabbath promises that God will write His law in my mind and heart more and more each day until I reflect the image of Jesus fully, for He will work in me "both to will and to do of his good pleasure."
Then when we stand before the great white throne, we shall exclaim: "Not unto me, but unto thy goodness and thy love and thy wisdom be the praise of my salvation for ever and ever."