“The Jews, at the coming of Christ, being in a state of great spiritual darkness and grievous apostasy from God, did not well understand the nature and objects of their laws. Often they overlooked the spirit, and were superstitiously devoted to the forms. Some, after they embraced the gospel, thought that the ceremonial as well as the moral laws were binding; others, more enlightened, thought that they were not. This led to contentions among them. Paul, in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, presented such considerations as were adapted to lead them, in this matter, to a right decision.
“‘One man,’ he says, ‘esteemeth one day above another. Another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it.’ Both mean to honor God, and he will accept them. But what day does he speak of? ‘The Sabbath’ of the fourth commandment, associated by God inseparably with the moral laws? Read the connection. What is it? Is it, one man believeth he must worship Jehovah; another, who is weak, worshipeth idols? One believeth that he must not commit murder, adultery or theft, and another thinks he may? Were those the laws about which they were contending, and with which were connected the days that he speaks of? No; about those laws there was no dispute.
“But ‘One believeth that he may eat all things,’ (which are nourishing, whether allowed in the ceremonial law, which regulateth such things, or not); ‘another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not, judge him that eateth, for God hath received him.’ Those were not the laws about which they were contending, and with regard to which the apostle was giving them instruction. It was not the moral, but the ceremonial laws; and the days spoken of were those which were connected, not with the former, but with the latter.
“So, in the second chapter of Colossians, ‘Let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbaths.’ The sabbaths spoken of are not the Sabbath associated with, Thou shalt not commit murder, or adultery, or theft; but the sabbaths associated with meats and drinks, and new moons, which were indeed shadows of things to come. But to take what he said about those sabbaths which were associated by God with the ceremonial laws, and which the apostle himself, in this very discourse, associates with them, and apply it, as some have done, to ‘The Sabbath’ which God associated with moral laws, is wrong.” pp. 133, 136.
All types point forward to something connected with the work of redemption. They have no other design than this. Hence no type would ever have been introduced had not man fallen and needed a redemption. They all originate, therefore, this side of the fall. But the Sabbath was instituted before the fall, before man needed redemption, and before anything was, or could have been, reasonably given to foreshadow that work. All the types that were ever instituted had no meaning except as they recognized the work of Christ in redemption; but the seventh-day Sabbath was from creation a holy day, and all the facts to which the fourth commandment points would have been just as true as they are now if Christ had never died. While the types, among which were the typical sabbaths of the Jews, recognized man’s guilt, and signified God’s willingness to save, the seventh-day Sabbath would have occupied the same place it now occupies, and ever has occupied, even if man had never sinned. The typical sabbaths were shadows of things to come; the seventh-day Sabbath was and is a memorial of things past. The two classes of sabbaths point in opposite directions, and hence cannot be classed together. The one pointed forward to redemption; the other points back to creation. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” The seventh-day Sabbath therefore is not a type, if reason and revelation may decide this question.
William Miller’s views respecting the perpetuity of the Sabbath, and its distinction from the sabbaths of the Jews, is also worthy of notice.
“I say, and I believe I am supported by the Bible, that the moral law was never given to the Jews as a people exclusively, but they were for a season the keepers of it in charge. And through them the law, oracles and testimony have been handed down to us. See Paul’s clear reasoning in Rom. ii, iii, iv, on that point. Then, says the objector, we are under the same obligation to keep the sabbaths of weeks, months and years that the Jews were. No, sir; you will observe that these were not included in the decalogue.... Only one kind of Sabbaths was given to Adam, and only one remains for us. See Hosea ii, 11. ‘I will cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.’ All the Jewish sabbaths did cease, when Christ nailed them to his cross. Col. ii, 14-17. ‘Blotting out the hand-writing of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.’ These were properly called Jewish sabbaths. Hosea says, ‘her sabbaths.’ But the Sabbath of which we are speaking, God calls ‘my Sabbath.’ Here is a clear distinction between the creation Sabbath and the ceremonial. The one is perpetual; the others were merely shadows of good things to come, and are limited in Christ.”—Miller’s Life and Views, pp. 161, 162.
Here let it be distinctly understood that those who hold that no change has taken place in the law of God, excepting in the fourth precept, have no right whatever to appeal to those texts usually quoted to prove the abolition of the entire code.
Those who took the extreme position that all ten of the commandments were abolished, relied with great confidence on what the apostle has said respecting the two ministrations. 2 Cor. iii. These seemed to overlook the fact that a law is one thing, and the ministration of that law quite another thing. Paul is here contrasting two ministrations of the same law. He is contrasting the ministration of the law of God under Moses, (which was a ministration of condemnation and death,) with the ministration of the same law under Christ (which is the ministration of the Spirit). It is the ministration of death that is done away, to give place to the more glorious ministration of God’s law, called the ministration of the Spirit. But we would inquire, Why should all ten of the commandments of God be slain at the cross, even if it were necessary to abolish the fourth? All agree that nine are good, yea, indispensable for the Christian dispensation. Was it an oversight in the Lawgiver in placing the Sabbath in the midst of nine moral precepts? And did he have to slay the whole ten in order to get rid of the Sabbath? But if all ten were abolished at the cross, how is it that nine are still binding? “Why,” says the objector, “nine of them were re-enacted by Christ for the gospel.” But here is a serious difficulty; the objector has nine of the commandments re-enacted during Christ’s ministry, before the ten were abolished at his death!
If it be said that the apostles re-enacted nine of the commandments for the gospel after their Lord ascended and the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them, we reply that according to this view there was a space between the abolition of the ten, at the cross, and the re-enactment of the nine; a space when there was no law, consequently no transgression, and men might blaspheme, murder, &c., and not commit sin! But if the objector takes the ground that the nine commandments were re-enacted at the cross at the time when he thinks the ten were abolished, then we shall understand him that Heaven aimed a blow that killed all ten of the commandments, and that the same blow, at the same moment, brought nine of them to life again! And all this to get rid of the Sabbath which Christ says was made for man.