Taken from Grace and Truth Magazine 1923
There are those who teach Jl that the law of Sinai contained in the ten commandments, although given primarily
to the Children of Israel, was ordained for the whole world; that the whole world is under bonds
to keep it; and that Christians
particularly are responsible to
make it the rule and regulation of
their daily life.
This teaching is without foundation in Scripture.
It is a false exegesis.
It is a perversion of the truth.
It is a darkening of counsel by words without knowledge.
The teaching of Scripture is clear and simple.
The Law was never given to any other nation or people but the Children of Israel.
This is the statement of the
Apostle Paul.
He says:
"When the Gentiles, which have
not the law, do by nature the things contained in
the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto
themselves" (Romans 2:14).
This language admits of no
misunderstanding nor quibbling. Speaking by the Holy
Spirit, the Apostle authoritatively says:
"The Gentiles, which have not
the law."
"The Gentiles, these having not
the law."
This is the Holy Ghost's
definite, dynamic declaration that in Paul's day the
Gentiles did not have the law.
If they did not have it in
Paul's day, they did not have it
before his day, because there is
no account of it having been
taken away from them at any time
previous to his day. If they
neither had it in his day, nor
before his day, they have never
had it in any time since his
day. If they did not have it
before his day, in his day, nor
since his day, they do not have
it in this day. The statement of
Paul is therefore the
unqualified affirmation that—
The Gentiles as Gentiles never
have been, and are not today, under the law of Sinai.
If the Gentiles never were under
the law and are not under it now, then, and beyond
all controversy —
The law of Sinai
was given
exclusively to the Children of Israel.
This is just what Moses the
lawgiver himself says:
Hear what he does say:
"For what nation is so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all
things that we call upon him for?
"And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and
judgments so righteous as all this
law, which I set before you this
day?" (Deuteronomy 4:7, 8.)
That the Gentiles knew nothing of the law and were not
under it as a system publicly
delivered unto them is the testimony of
Pontius Pilate, the Roman
Procurator of Judea, when our Lord Jesus Christ was brought before him by the Jews on the charge of being
a malefactor.
Pilate said to them:
"Take ye him, and judge him according to
your law" ( John
18:31) Plainly and definitely Pilate
makes a distinction between Jewish law and Roman law.
He affirms the Mosaic law was the law of the Jew,
not the law of the Roman.
Remember he did not say,
speaking as a Roman, "our" law, but as a haughty Roman,
despising the Jew — "your" law.
Officially and corroboratively,
therefore, Pilate says the Gentiles were not under the
law in his day and therefore not under the law before
Paul's day, and consequently not under the law in Paul's
day; and still more corroboratively not under the law
in our day; and thus Paul and Pilate stand together to
support the testimony of Moses that the Gentiles
never were under the law.
Scripture tells us that the law
of Sinai was a covenant between the Lord God and
the Children of Israel; as it is written:
"And Moses called all
Israel,
and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and
judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye
may learn them, and keep, and do them.
"The Lord our God
made a covenant with us in Horeb (Sinai).
"The Lord made not this covenant
with our fathers, but with us, who are all of us
here alive this day" (Deuteronomy 5:1-3).
Again:
"The Lord gave me the
tables of
stone, even the tables of the covenant" (Deut.
9:11,15). A covenant requires two parties.
The Lord God was one of the
parties. The Children of Israel were the
other party. The Children of Israel —
not the
Gentiles.
Here are three- witnesses that
the law was never given to the Gentiles.
Moses, to whom God handed the
law. ' Pilate, who as a Gentile, denied
the law belonged to them.
Paul,
a Hebrew of Hebrews and a
Pharisee of Pharisees, who
declares the Gentiles did not
have it in his day, and
necessarily could not have had
it since; and demonstrably,
never have had it since, as
there is no record of the law of
the ten commandments given to
the Gentiles between Paul's day
and this. What shall we say then to these
things? What can we say, what else dare
we say than that —
The law of Sinai was never
given to the Gentiles, and the Gentile
world is not under
the law today.
The law was given to the
Children of Israel because they deliberately took
themselves off the ground of grace and put
themselves on the ground of the law.
The Lord had redeemed them from
the sentence of death against the firstborn of
Egypt by the blood of the passover Iamb.
He had brought them out of the
land of bondage by the right hand of His power.
He did this in fulfillment of
His covenant with, and His promise to, Abraham more
than four hundred years before.
It was an unconditional covenant
and a promise of pure grace.
When they came to Sinai the Lord
tested them. He rehearsed all He had done for
them. He bade Moses tell them what he
had done, how He had brought them so far as on
the wings of untiring eagles. If they would but obey
His voice and keep his covenant, they should be to Him
a peculiar treasure above all the people of the earth.
The people should have responded
to the Lord that as He had dealt with them thus
far in grace and by His mighty power, not their own, had
delivered and led them, they would gladly continue to
depend upon Him and not in any way upon themselves. This is the attitude they should
have taken, this is what they should have said and —
at once. Instead they answered and said:
"All that the Lord hath spoken
we will do" (Exodus 19:7, 8).
In giving this answer they
fatally affirmed their belief in their own ability to do
all the Lord required of them.
Immediately He drew a line about
the mount and forbade the people to pass under
pain of death.
Along with this came thunder and
lightnings, the sound of a trumpet so loud the
people trembled. Sinai was altogether in smoke as the
smoke of a furnace. The Lord descended upon the mount.
The mount shivered and quivered at His presence.
Instead of the God of grace and
protecting providence in the shielding cloudy
pillar by day and its welcome illumination by night,
there was revealed the God of righteousness and inexorable
law. And this is in the very nature
and logic of the case..
Grace brings man into the favor
of God. Law shuts him out and shuts him
up to himself.
In the issue of law it is no
longer a question of what God will do, but what man is
under bonds to do.
The law is set up to measure man
and not God. By their refusal to continue in
grace the people of Israel came under law.
The law would never have been
given had they not turned away from the Abrahamic
covenant and the ministration of divine and
measureless grace.
The law was given to the
Children of Israel, not to keep, but to break.
It is written:
"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).
The literal rendering is —
"It was added
for the sake (that
is, for the purpose) of transgressions."
It was given, not to make them
sin, but through transgressions to reveal the sin in
them; as it is written:
"I had not known sin. (the
nature of sin, that it is back of, and the cause of
transgressions), but by the law: for I had not known lust, except
the law had said. Thou shalt not covet" (Romans 7:7).
"By the
law is the knowledge of
sin" (Romans 3:20).
Again it is written:
"The law entered (was given at
Sinai) that the offence (the trespass) might
abound" (be overwhelmingly
revealed) (Romans 5:20).
The Children of Israel broke the
law spoken to them before they had received
a written transcript of it.
Moses, at the call of God, went
up into the mount to receive a copy of the law
written by His hand on tables of stone as a record of covenant
between Himself and the people.
He was gone for a long while.
The people became impatient.
They gathered about Aaron and
said to him: "Up, make us gods, which shall
go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that
brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is
become of him" (Exodus 32:1 ).
Aaron took the golden earrings
of the women and made a calf such as the people
had seen worshipped in the temples of Apis.
Then they made a proclamation
that on the morrow would be a feast of the Lord.
It was an attempted and shameful
combination of the service of God and the idolatry
of Egypt. "And they rose up early on the
morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought
peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and to
drink, and rose up to play" (Exodus 32:2-6).
The word "to play" has profound
significance.
It means they proceeded to give
themselves up to the abomination that went with such
worship; for it is written:
"The people were naked; (for
Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among
their enemies)" (Exodus 32:25).
That is, literally, Aaron had
"taken off the bridle," and had given them "free rein,"
unlimited license to indulge in the indescribable
things which in Egypt passed current for religious rites.
When Moses beheld what the
people did, instead of going down to preach the law to
them, he cast the tables of stone on
which God had written
it out of his hands and brake them beneath the
mount. Instead of preaching the law he
went back to the presence of God to make an
atonement and intercession for the people.
He said to them:
"Ye have sinned a great sin: and
now I will go up unto the Lord; peradventure I
shall make an atonement for your sin" (Exodus 32:30).
The ceremonial law was given to
the Children of Israel as a memorial
that they had broken the moral law: that they
needed an atonement for sin through
sacrificial death: and as prophecy that God would
send the Lord Jesus Christ to redeem them
by His own blood from the curse of a
broken law and bring them again into the
full blessing of the covenant and promise of
grace. Every time an Israelite brought
a sin offering to the gate of the Tabernacle, and when
once a year on atonement day sacrifice was made for
the sin of the whole people, it was a proclamation
that "without shedding of blood is no remission."
These offerings were simply
shadows, types, figures of the true offering.
"For the law having a shadow of
good things to come, and not the very image of the
things, can never with those sacrifices which they
offered year by year make the comers thereunto perfect. * * *
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats
should take away sins" ( Hebrews 10:1, 4).
The moral law contained in the
ten commandments was a witness of the failure of
the people to meet it and the ceremonial law as a
consequent and inseparable part of the moral law took the place
of a schoolmaster (the word means the slave who took
the children of a well to do household to the teacher) to
lead the people to Christ; as it is written:
"The law was our schoolmaster
(the schoolmaster of the Israelites — and in Paul's
day that part of Israel called Jews) to bring us unto Christ"
(Galatians 3:24).
By the tabernacle in all its
construction, furniture and service; by the offerings
and sacrifices, God was continually preaching an incarnate,
sacrificial and redeeming Saviour, a risen Lord and
coming King. By all these things He was preach ng Christ
to them. By their whole history, their
ritual and providential movements. He was testifying to
them of their natural weakness, their need of grace
and the full provision He had made for them in a coming
Messiah. He was setting before them every
day that Christ was the seed in whom all the
promises made to Abraham concerning them should be
fulfilled; as it is written:
"Now to Abraham and his seed
were the promises made. He saith not, And to
seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is
Christ" (Galatians 3:16).
The coming in of the law did not
make the unconditional covenant of Abraham of
no effect; but the people having
repudiated that covenant
and putting themselves on the basis of law and good
behaviour, the law was added to seal home to them their
need of grace and the assurance that Christ was the
eternal depositary of the covenant, the unfailing
guarantee of its promised
blessings and the source whence all grace
should again come to them.
Wherefore it is written:
"The covenant that was confirmed
before of God in Christ, the law, which was four
hundred and thirty years after, cannot
disannul, that it should make the promise
of none effect" (Galatians 3:17).
The law brought them face to
face with their innate sinfulness, their
helplessness to live up to the standard of
God's righteousness, the futility of their
own. righteousness at its best, and shut
them up to a faith that looked forward to a
redeemer and saviour; as it is written:
"The Scripture hath concluded
all under sin, that the promise by
faith of Jesus Christ might come upon them that
believe. "But before faith came, we were
kept under the law, shut up to the
faith which afterwards should be revealed.
(Doesn't the logic of the thing run ahead
and tell you that if they were kept under
the law till faith should be revealed,
after that faith should be revealed they
would no longer be kept under the law?) The law of Sinai
was been done away in Christ, and
both Jew and Gentile have been put completely under the grace of the Abrahamic covenant.
By the hand of Moses law came
demanding that the people should
by their obedience and perfect living
earn the blessings promised in and by the
covenant. By our Lord Christ came the
grace that is ready to bestow the wealth
and riches of the covenant blessings upon
all who are willing to receive them
through faith; as it is written:
"The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ" (John 1:17).
The law was a temporary addition
"till the seed (Christ) should come to
whom the promise was made" (Galatians
3:19). "The law entered, that the
offence might abound. But where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound:
"That as sin hath reigned unto
death, even so might grace reign
through righteousness unto eternal life by
Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 5:20, 21).
The world today is not under the "reign of law," but under the
"reign of grace."
By virtue of the cross and the
empty grave; by virtue of the blood
which the risen and ascended Lord took up
within the vail, the throne of judgment
has been transformed into a throne of
grace, and the "much more" of grace reigns
with its mercy over a world of sin.
By that grace men are now called
to turn to the Lord and through
faith receive the life which will enable
them to triumph over sin in them, rebuke
transgressions and walk pleasingly
before God and in blessing to men.
The law demanded righteousness.
Grace bestows it.
Because grace reigns judgment is hushed and God waits to know
what man will do with His offered
mercy.
The law is not the ground of
salvation to the sinner.
The reasons are manifold:
1. Because the law demands a
perfection of life
and character no man can give. The law in its essence has been
defined by our Lord Jesus Christ.
He said:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind.
"This is the first and great
commandment. "And the second is like unto it,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself. On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets" (Matthew
22:37-40). The first commandment requires
perfection of love to God.
Perfect love to God means
perfect obedience to the will of God in
deed, in word, in thought and the intents
and purposes of the heart.
It means perfect righteousness,
the soul like a mirror reflecting the
character of God, not a mere reflection of
goodness, but Godness; so that, God shall be
lived and breathed, perfectly revealed and
completely expressed by the soul —
such a condition would be sinless
perfection.
This is the demand God makes of every soul of man, not by any
mere law written in tables of stone, but
in the very nature of God. God himself,
being holy, perfect, cannot admit into
fellowship with Himself anything less
perfect than His own character; to do so
would be to condone sin and imperfection in
man.
For man to love his neighbor as
himself, he must deny himself and
make the self of another first, not only
in deed, but in heart and intent. This would
be perfection of man toward man.
Nor must there be a failure or
lapse in any particular of this
attitude of man to man and man to God.
To break one link in a chain
that holds a ship to its anchor is to
break the whole chain.
To break the law at any one
point, so far as the law can link a man
to God, is to break the whole law. This is
the declaration of Holy Writ.
"For
whosoever shall keep the whole
law, and yet offend in one
point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10).
He is guilty of all because the
law demands no less than perfect
obedience, not partial obedience, but obedience
in all points.
You may have a piece of costly
ermine, whiter than the heart of a lily;
it is not the great spot, but the small
one that spoils it — it is the
surrounding whiteness that will reveal it. Should you
keep the law in every respect but one,
the one failure would be conspicuously
revealed by the otherwise spotless
perfection; but .that one failure would cry
aloud that you had missed the actual demand of
the law — perfect obedience. Sinless perfection!
That is the demand of the law to
all who, throwing themselves on
their own resources, boasting in their own
righteousness, seek to be justified
by the deeds of the law.
What man is there on earth who
can respond to this demand?
He who declares himself perfect
is guilty of folly. His folly shall
condemn him as guilty of sin and his
acts shall prove him to his neighbors as
one who has fallen short. If he shall be
ignorant of his failure or seek to
conceal it to himself his fellow men will know it
and proclaim it in his ears.
There is no difference!
Hear what God himself says:
"For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:22,
23). 2. Because sentence of death has
been passed upon all men, and the
law does not ask a condemned sinner to keep
it or bring forth a good character
under it.
"Death passed upon all men"
(Romans 5:12).
"It is appointed unto men once
to die, but after this the judgment"
(Hebrews 9"27) No matter how much a man
condemned by the state to die should offer
to keep the law on condition that he should
be saved from the sentence, the law would
be deaf to every plea. It would
mercilessly say to him: "Pay me that thou owest.
Pay me thy life. Thou must
die. Nay! the law is not the
ministration of life. It is the ministration of
death; as it is written:
"The ministration of death,
written and engraven in stones" (II
Corinthians 3:7).
"The letter killeth" (V. 16).
By the "letter" is meant the law
graven in stone.
The man who turns to the law for
salvation is as guilty of senseless
folly as the sentenced criminal who should go
to the electric chair expecting to get
life instead of death.
The law is not the ground of
salvation. 3.
Because salvation is not a
matter of good works.
Good works are set aside, not
only because of man's inability to
render them, not only because the sentence of
death nullifies them, but because God
will allow no man to boast in his own
righteousness; as it is written:
"Not of works, lest any man
should boast" (Ephesians 2:9).
"By the deeds of the law there
shall no flesh be justified in his sight"
(Romans 3:20).
"By the works of the law shall
no flesh be justified" (Galatians 2:16).
"Not by works of righteousness
which we have done" (Titus 3:5).
"Not according to our works" (II
Timothy 1:9).
"All our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6).
The law is not the ground of
salvation. 4.
Because God Himself has
achieved the work of redemption for lost
and dying men.
"Who his own self bare our sins
in his own body on the tree" (I Peter
2:24). "For Christ also hath once
suffered for sins, the just for the unjust"
(I Peter 3:18).
"Who was delivered for our
offences, and was raised again for our
justification" (Romans 4:25).
"Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures" (I Corinthians
15:3). "When Jesus therefore had
received the vinegar, he said, It is
finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the
ghost" (John 19:30).
That the work of redemption was
finished is proclaimed by our
Lord's resurrection and ascension to the
right hand of the glory.
In face of such a finished
redemption and one finished by such an
author as God in the person of His Son, there
is nothing left for man to do but receive
the salvation which it brings.
The law is not the ground of
salvation. 5.
Because God is dealing with
the world on the basis of the
Ahrahamic covenant reopened in Christ as the
true seed, and now made good to the
whole world in His death and resurrection.
"It (the law) was added because
of transgressions, till the seed
should come to whom the promise was made"
(Galatians 3:19).
"He saith not, And to seeds, as
of many, hut as of one, And to thy seed,
which is Christ" (Galatians 3:16).
"And this I say, that the
covenant... was confirmed before of God in
Christ" (Galatians 3:17).
The Abrahamic covenant, it is to
he remembered, is an unconditional
covenant, a covenant and promise of grace. "By grace are ye saved"
(Ephesians 2:8).
"The grace of God that bringeth
salvation" (Titus 2:11).
It is sovereign grace that brings
salvation. It is not of man nor law
devising, but of the Lord; as it is written:
"Salvation is of the Lord" (Jonah
2:9). "Salvation belongeth unto the
Lord" (Psalm 3:8).
"It is not of him that willeth,
nor of him that runneth, but of God
that sheweth mercy" (Romans 9:16).
"Who hath saved us, and called
us, with an holy calling, not according
to our works, but according to his own
purpose and grace, which was given us in
Christ Jesus before the world began"
(II Timothy 1:9).
The law is not the ground of
salvation. 6.
Because salvation by the
decree of God is wholly through faith
and not works.
"The righteousness of God
without the law is manifested being
witnessed (foretold) by the law and the
prophets. "Even the righteousness of God
which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto
all and upon ail them that believe" (Romans
3:21, 22). "By grace are ye saved through
faith" (Ephesians 2:8).
"Therefore we conclude that a
man is justified by faith —
without the
deeds of the law" (Romans 3:28).
There are those who teach the
law convicts men of sin, and because of
that conviction brings them to
repentance and to the Gospel which saves them.
It is true the Gospel saves, but
it is not true the law convicts the
individual sinner and leads him under the
consciousness of that sin to receive the
Gospel. The law it is certain has
brought the whole world in as guilty before
God; but it has done so because it has
revealed the sin and failure in Israel; as it
is written: "Now we know that what things
soever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law (the Jews): that
every mouth may be stopped, and all
the world may become guilty before God"
(Romans 3:19).
If all the world were at that
time under the law, there was no need that
Paul should say, " to them who are
under the law," nor would there have been
any value in such a phrase; but the
fact that the Apostle makes such a
statement is a demonstration that he was making
a distinction, and that only a class
were under the law. That class we have seen
were the Children of Israel; and
their failure at Sinai, together with the
co-ordinate institution of the sacrifices, was
witness that if the nation chosen of God had
failed under law and were proven guilty,
how much more in the light and
demand of that law was it evident the
whole world was guilty before the God of
that law. The convicting power of sin in
this age is not the law, it is the
Holy
Spirit. He is here for that purpose.
But He is here not to convict
men of the violations of the moral law.
He is not here to convict men of
lying, cheating, robbery and such like,
the common law of the land will do
that: He is here to convict men of one
immense sin that includes all moral failure,
the sin of unbelief; as it is written:
"When he (the Holy Spirit) is
come, he will reprove (convict) the
world of sin, and of righteousness, and
of judgment. "Of sin, because they believe
not in me" (John 16:8, 9).
The sin of all sins is unbelief
in the Son of God.
For this He made no atonement.
This is the sin that never will
he forgiven. Neither here nor in eternity.
"He that believeth not is
condemned already, because (mark that
causation well) he hath not believed in the name
of the only begotten Son of God" (John
3:18). Condemned! because he has
hesitated a single moment; because he did
not, the moment he heard the Gospel,
believe at once.
This is the sin which will
render eternity an anguish and make endless
existence a curse.
No matter what argument I may
bring, nor how strongly I may speak, I
cannot convince a modern moral man, a
man upright in all his dealings,
meeting all his duties and discharging all his
responsibilities — I cannot convince such a
man that the sin that will shut him out
from eternal life and nullify all the
earthly good he may have done will be, failure
to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of
God, that God gave Him to die as a
sacrifice for sin and raised Him from the
dead to be the alone Saviour of men.
Nevertheless, this is the actual
truth. It is the truth because in this
age the question of all questions is not
the sin question. It is not an issue of
how more or less sinful a man may be;
nor, whether one nan is a greater sinner
than the other. That is not the question,
because God has concluded all under sin,
and in respect to meeting the standard
of God's glory which is hi' holiness, He,
Himself, has declared, "there is no
difference."
The supreme question that
outranks all others is the Son question.
Our Lord put that question in
definite form when He said, "What think
ye of Christ? whose son is he"
(Matthew 22:42)?
God the Father is putting that
question to the world today:
"What do you think of Jesus
Christ? Is He my Son whom I sent to
redeem the world and save the souls of
sinful men?"
That issue is mighty and
determining enough.
Heaven and Hell depend, not upon
what you do, but what you think, yes,
upon what you think about Christ.
If you think of Him as God
thinks and as God has clearly revealed His
thought in Holy Scripture; if you
confess and make known your thought, even
though you were the blackest sinner out
of hell, you are saved. If you do not
think of Him as God thinks of Him and has
commanded all men everywhere to
think of Him, even though you were the
whitest soul on earth, you are lost now,
and if you do not repent will be damned and
lost forever.
But what self-righteous man, I
repeat, will believe that, though I
spoke with the tongue of an angel and the force
of divine truth; nay, even though I should
quote scripture after scripture in
support of it? I assure you such a man would
not believe it.
All the thunder of the law, all
the flash of its lightnings would not do
it. There is only one person who can
bring the conviction of that truth
home to the heart and conscience of any
human being, and that is the Holy Spirit.
The law then is not the
instrument of conviction; it is not in any
wise the ground of salvation.
If it were so, if the keeping of
the law, if the establishment of a
satisfactory righteousness before God by the works
of the law could save, then the death
of the cross was the most criminal blunder
ever committed, the most useless
shedding of blood God ever permitted.
And this is the logic of
Scripture itself; as it is written:
"If righteousness come by the
law, then Christ is dead in vain"
(Galatians 2:21).
This settles it.
Christ did not, could not die in
vain. Therefore — the law is not the
ground of salvation to the sinner.
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