The Perpetuity of the Royal Law

Or, The Ten Commandments Not Abolished. Advent and Sabbath Tract, No. 4.

By J. N. ANDREWS

It is evident, therefore, that the death of our Saviour sustains the same relation to the law of God, that the death of the victim in the ancient typical system sustained to that law. The design of either was not that man should have liberty to violate the law of God, but that man who had violated that law, might have the offer of pardon.

The typical system could not, indeed, take away sin; but it pointed out the fact that without the shedding of blood there could be no remission of sins, and clearly pointed forward to the great Sacrifice which should be offered for the sin of the world. 

If it were possible for God to give men an adequate idea of the immutability of his sacred law, he has given it in the spectacle of his Son dying upon the cross for us. Those who think that the death of the Son of God abolished the very law which made that death necessary, are requested to consider the following points:-

1. If the law that condemned man could have been abolished, it would not have been necessary that the blood of Christ should be shed, that atonement might be made for its transgressors. But the Son of God died because the law which man had broken could not be taken back.

2. But if the death of Christ destroyed the law which condemned men, then they are delivered from its just sentence, whether they repent or not: in other words, Universalism is true. 

3. But this view makes the law of God, and the Son of God, both fall beneath the same blow, and without honoring God, or leading man to repentance: it destroys both the cherished objects of Jehovah's affection: subjecting the Son of God to a shameful death, and overturning the moral government of the great Law-giver.

4. But the conditional offer of pardon made to man through the gospel of the Son of God, plainly evinces that the law of God still exists, and that men can only be delivered from it, on condition of repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Hence the law of the Most High is not abolished by the death of the Son of God. His death indeed permits mercy to enter and offer pardon to guilty man; but the law of God abides all the while; and when the work of mercy is accomplished, our great High Priest will leave the tabernacle of God, no more to plead for sinful man, and the penalty of the law, the second death, will be awarded to its transgressors. 

It is clearly established, therefore, that the death of the Son of God did not blot out the law of God the Father. On the contrary, his death is that fact which, above all others, testifies to its immutability.

But we cannot employ so strong language on this point as that which Paul has used in summing up this very argument. He says: "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." Rom.3:31.

Having shown conclusively that the law of God was neither abolished by the teaching nor by the death of the Son of God, we will now examine the third question:-

TO BE CONTINUED….