p. 7 | Shortening the Decalogue by SANFORD B. HORTON

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 4, 1916

Shortening the Decalogue

By SANFORD B. HORTON

SANFORD B. HORTON

AT the triennial convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, to be held in St. Louis next October, the special commission appointed to recommend a revision and enrichment of the Book of Common Prayer will make a report in which a shorter decalogue will be submitted for acceptance, according to press reports at this writing. The commission will recommend the following form:—

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work.
Honor thy father and thy mother.
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor’s.

Some of the reasons governing the commission in its recommendations are as follows:—

“The decalogue seems by its very title—Ten Words—to indicate commands essentially brief and definite.

“The argumentative part of any command is not of its essence, and in the fourth and fifth is local and national.

“In the fourth commandment the reasons for the command are different in Exodus and Deuteronomy, and therefore are not a part of the command. Ex. 20: 8-11; Deut. 5: 15.”

Justification for thus shortening the decalogue is assumed from such scriptures in the New Testament as Mark 12: 29-31, and from Mark 10: 19 and Luke 18: 20, where only five of the commandments are briefly referred to; namely, the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth.

It seems inconceivable that a body of Christian people should assume such responsibility as to change in any way the law of God in face of the following scriptures:—

“These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.” Deut. 5: 22.

It will be noted in reading the entire chapter that Moses was merely rehearsing the history of the giving of the law on Sinai about forty years before, not proclaiming it as something new, nor assigning any other reasons for requiring obedience thereto.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.” Ps. 19: 7, 8.

“The works of his hands are verity and judgment; all his commandments are sure. They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness.” Ps. 111: 7, 8.

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”—Jesus Christ, Matt. 5: 17.

Commenting upon this pronouncement by the Saviour, the noted Spurgeon, in a sermon on “The Perpetuity of the Law of God,” published in the Australasian, March 3, 1894, says:—

“Jesus did not come to change the law, but he came to explain it, and that very fact shows that it remains; for there is no need to explain that which is abrogated. . . . That the Master did not come to alter the law is clear, because after having embodied it in his life, he willingly gave himself up to bear its penalty, though he had never broken it, bearing the penalty for us, even as it is written, ‘Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.’ . . . If the law had demanded more of us than it ought to have done, would the Lord Jesus have rendered to it the penalty which resulted from its too severe demands? I am sure he would not. But because the law asked only what it ought to ask, namely, perfect obedience, and exacted of the transgressor only what it ought to exact, namely, death as the penalty for sin,—death under divine wrath,—therefore the Saviour went to the tree, and there bore our sins and purged them once for all.”

With equal emphasis did John Wesley exalt the law of God. In his “Sermons,” Vol. I, No. 25, pages 221, 222, he said,—

“The moral law contained in the ten commandments, and enforced by the prophets, he did not take away. It is not the design of his coming to revoke any part of this. . . . Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages, as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstance liable to change, but on the nature of God, and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other.”

Neither did the apostles abrogate or change or modify in an iota or tittle the law as spoken by Jehovah at Sinai’s mount, and written by his own finger on tables of stone; on the contrary, they exalted it. Paul said it pointed out sin (Rom. 7: 7) and testified to righteousness (Rom. 3: 20-22), and that it would be the rule of judgment in the end (Rom. 2: 12, 16). John, the expounder of love, wrote, “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.” And as a climax in blazing the path to heaven, he was told to write, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”

The second and third reasons of the commission should receive a further but brief notice. Desiring to escape the duty of observing the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath required by the fourth commandment, the commission asserts that “the argumentative part of any command is not of its essence,” and that the fourth is “local and national.” If by reason of the series of thoughts contained in the fourth commandment there is lack of “definiteness,” then, pray, how is that commandment improved by the proposed third commandment of the shortened decalogue, which says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”? What day is contemplated by this third commandment? Is God glorified by the proposed change? and is Sabbath observance in general encouraged thereby? Too plainly is it revealed that the one object Satan has in laying hold of and changing the fourth commandment is to rid the earth of a weekly testimony to the true God and the fact that he is the one above all others to whom worship and adoration should be ascribed.

The claim that the Sabbath of the decalogue as found in the Bible is of “local and national” restriction is an unfortunate one in that it bespeaks misunderstanding, to say the least, in regard to the origin of that institution. The Saviour said, “The Sabbath was made for man.” When was it made? What is comprehended by the word “man”? Twenty-five hundred years before the Jews went down into Egypt the record in Gen. 2: 2, 3, tells us that the Creator “rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made,” and that “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” The Sabbath, like the other created things and institutions, was finished and made for man—not for the man in Eden only, not for the immediate posterity of Adam and Eve, not for the patriarchs and the Jews merely, but for man, wherever found, of whatever nationality or clime. Mark 2: 27.

Is it any wonder that the world should be in such a lawless condition when the so-called Christian civilization can be so severely challenged? Is it any wonder that anarchy should be written on the political horizon of all nations, when religious men and organizations will dare to handle the law of Jehovah so carelessly, and as if it were a light thing to revise that which the hand of Omnipotence placed with his own finger on imperishable rock, and “added no more”?

The same report upon which this article is based says that there is objection on the part of some Episcopalians to the proposed change. We trust that the triennial convention will not only refuse to ratify the work of the commission, but will study the whole Sabbath question in the light of the Bible, and ask God to help them and all mankind to return to the Sabbath of Jehovah.

Kalamazoo, Mich.