The seventh-day Sabbath was not given to the Gentile world. It would require just as plain and positive legislation to bind it upon us as it did to establish it in Israel. It was a sign between God and the Hebrews. Ezek. xxxi, 13-18. “Moreover, also, I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Jehovah that doth sanctify them.” If there are any Gentile Christians upon the earth who think it is essential to know that it was the Lord that sanctified the children of Israel, set them apart from the surrounding nations, I would say to such, It is sufficient to your salvation that you know the Lord, as manifested in the flesh in the person of Christ Jesus, and that you love and obey him. I can not see that the seventh-day Sabbath, as a sign upon a Gentile, would tell the truth, for the Lord never sanctified the Gentiles in the sense of setting them apart from the surrounding nations. Again, if our friends could succeed in making it universal, it would cease to be a sign. It was a national badge, or sign, between God and the Hebrews. Its object was to keep in their memory that which was true of them alone. “Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence with a mighty hand and a stretched out arm, therefore the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.” Deut. v. Can any Gentile obey this instruction? It is impossible! Moses said, “Behold I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep, therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding, in the sight of the nations which shall hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day.” Deut. iv, 5. The authority and glory of Christ forbid all such Judaizing as that which we speak against. “He was given of God to be head over all things to the church.” “And He is head of all principality and power.” The Father put all things under Him. [pg 169] The prophet Isaiah said, “He shall not fail, nor be discouraged till He hath set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for His law.” Ch. xlii, 4. And Paul said, “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Gal. vi, 2.
The object of law is to regulate the exemplification of principles. Some principle is exemplified in every act that man performs. And one principle may be in a great variety of acts. The principle of hatred is exemplified in a great many different actions; and the principle of love to God is manifested, or exemplified, in every act of obedience to God. So the spiritual may be brought out under different dispensations, and by different laws, while it remains always the same. Indeed, principles are unchangeable; they belong to the nature of things. Covenants, priesthoods, dispensations and laws have changed, but principles, never. So the moral objective of every law is the same, viz., to bring out and develop the spiritual in man. To accomplish this great end it is necessary that the evil principles of a carnal, or fleshly nature, should be restrained by the penal sanctions of law, and the principles of man's higher nature brought out by its motives of good. Such being the nature of principles, and the facts of law, Paul says, “We know that the law is spiritual.” And again, “The law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” “Do we then make void law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish law.”
I have left the article out of this text because it is not in the original. B. Wilson translates the verse in these words: “Do we then nullify law through the faith. By no means; but we establish law.” The negative use of law is to restrain the evil; and the affirmative is to bring out the good, the spiritual. So, without any interference with the spiritual of any law that ever was, either divine or human, we have a better covenant, or testament, than the old testament; one that is established upon better promises, which contains “A new and living way into the Holiest,” which Paul says, “Is heaven itself.” This new way was consecrated through the flesh of Christ. The rule of life in this way is the “Law of Christ.” [pg 170] It is a better law, for us, because its precepts are not limited to our neighbor. The following is a part, at least, of the contrast:
the decalogue given to israel.
“Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor. Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor's wife. Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not kill.”
the law of christ bound upon the world.
“Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. But I say unto you, love your enemies. If thou mayest be made free use it rather. Be ye not the servants of men. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet. Whosoever looketh upon a woman and lusteth after her hath committed adultery already in his heart.”
I have presented a sufficient amount of each law to show you a part of the great contrast which exists on account of the ancient law being given to a people set apart from all the surrounding nations by a legal wall interfering with them in their social walks in life. That law was sufficient for all practical purposes among the Jews. But, since that “Middle wall of partition” has been taken down, it is utterly useless to talk about a law limited to your neighbor being any longer worthy of God, or a perfect rule for man's conduct in his associations with all men. Indeed, it never was a law regulating a man's conduct with all men. The middle wall was taken out of the way, and Jews and Gentiles have shook hands in Christian fellowship under the new institution. Let us see how this was brought about. When the law brings about a separation, nothing short of law can undo it, and bring about the union of the parties separated. But, as authority, that controls law, is alone competent to remove legal results, we must look for this, as a matter of necessity, lying at the foundation of the new institution. It is just there that we find it in these words: [pg 171] “All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” The result of obedience to this law of Christ is expressed in these words: “But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity; even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace.” Eph. ii, 13-15. The God of Abraham said unto Rebecca, “Two nations are in thy womb.” Gen. xxv, 23. This language had its fulfillment in the decendants of Jacob and Esau. The political history of the children of Jacob begins at Sinai with their beginning as a nation among the surrounding nations. The law given at Sinai was a political law, for it was addressed to a community, pertained to a community, and was accepted by a community.
Such is a political law in the strictest sense of the term. This law was given to the Jews, the decendants of Jacob. Moses said, “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.” Horeb is a synonymous with Sinai, and means, properly, ground left dry by water draining off. So, Horeb and Sinai occur in the narrative of the same event. The children of Jacob are known as a commonwealth, from the giving of the law onward until their overthrow by the Romans. Paul, speaking of the Gentiles, in past times, says “They were aliens to the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise.” The Jews called them “dogs.” This great enmity had its origin in the two-fold consideration of the Jew being favored in a temporal and political point of view, and the pride of his heart, which exalted him in his own imagination above even his moral superiors. This corruption of the heart, with the liability of its return, being removed by the abrogation of [pg 172] all that was peculiar to the Jews and their conversion to Christ, Paul says, “That all are one in Christ.” Christ was the bond of union, all were joined to him. But the same authority that separated them by legislation must legislate with reference to this grand change that was to take place between these decendants of Jacob and Esau. The law of commandments separating the Jews limited them in moral duties to their neighbors. It was unlawful for them to go in unto one of another nation. It limited them in trade and traffic to their own countrymen; also limited them to their own people in matrimonial relations. So God must be heard again, I say, heard! for He was heard at the giving of the law, which is now to be taken out of the way. When Jesus took Peter, James and John up in a high mountain and was transfigured before them, Moses and Elias, the great representatives of the Patriarchial and Jewish dispensations, appeared unto them and “a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my well-beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him.” Math. xvii, 5. Here is the authority that gave the institution peculiar to the Jews legislating with reference to Him whose doings were to end that system of things, and lead all into “a new and living way.” Paul says: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.” So Christ took away the first will and established the second. See Heb. x, 9. Paul says: “As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.” This relation of duty to the reception of Christ has direct reference to the character in which we receive him. He was given to rule, to exercise Lordship. He is Lord of all. The term Lord signifies “ruler by right of possession.” If He is not Lord of all there is an abundance of false testimony upon this one subject, and Christianity is diseased in the head. And if he is Lord of all, then we should leave that old mountain that shook and burned with fire, and all the political paraphernalia of Sinai, and consider ourselves complete in Christ, who is “Emanuel, God [pg 173] with us.” If any man does this he is not troubled with the old “bond woman.” Jehovah said of Christ: “I have given Him for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles.” Isaiah xlii, 2. New duties appear before us in the New Testament, with new obligations lying at their foundation. Jesus said: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for their sins.” Again: “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both Me and my Father.” John xv, 22-24.
Justification turns no longer upon the ancient law, and the sacrificial and typical system of blood is no longer the means of pardon. The law contained a shadow of good things to come, but the body was of Christ. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. Everything turns in this dispensation upon Christ and his Law. Jesus told his disciples to teach their converts to observe all things which He had commanded them to teach, and they filled their mission. Paul said, He “shunned not to declare the whole counsel of God,” “kept back nothing.” With reference to law, he said, “If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write are the commandments of the Lord.” For the glory of Christ, as his just meed of praise, it was written, “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” “Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” In this major proposition the minor, of the seventh-day Sabbath, is involved. The Lord said of Israel, “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.” Hosea, ii, 11. No man is threatened, by Christ or any of his apostles, on account of Sabbath-breaking, or any of those things which are peculiar to the Jews. But men are threatened for disobedience to the [pg 174] Gospel of Christ. The New Testament is of Christ. Its religion is not “the Jews' religion,” but Christ's. There was much in the Old Testament that is in the New, but it is there by the authority of Christ. Hence, we are “complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power.” Much in the laws of the United States was first in the laws of England, but we do nothing with reference to English authority. So it is with us, as respects all who went before Christ, we do nothing in reference to them, but do all in reference to Christ, and for His name. The Old Kingdom of Israel, with its political law, statutes and judgments, has passed away, and Christ reigns “all in all.” To Him “be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.” Jude, xxv.