Untitled article by W. C. G.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 20, 1867

THE SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH.—IS ITS OBSERVANCE BINDING.

By W. C. G.

(Continued.)

HAVING now disposed of the ten commandments by making them the first covenant, and having that covenant abolished, because it was faulty, Mr. B. now gives us the following as a reason why it was faulty:

“This covenant we are told is faulty; and it is so in this respect: it neither teaches love to God, nor love to our neighbor. It does indeed speak of love; but not in such a way as to make it a part of the ten commandments. “And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me AND keep my commandments”—the love being quite different from the commandments. Those only got the blessing who did both. A person may obey without love; but cannot love without obeying what is obligatory.”

Does he believe this, or does he say it to evade the force of the magic word love, contained in the commandments? We think it must be the latter, for how can a man in his senses, declare that a “person may obey without love.” Hear the apostle on this point: “For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments.” 1 Jno. v, 3. Love and the keeping of the commandments, are here shown to be one and the same thing, and obedience without love is simply impossible.

But let us see about the faultiness of these commandments. David says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the statutes of the Lord are right,” &c. Ps. xix. Now one of two things must be true: the psalmist was speaking of the ten commandments, and they could not therefore be the faulty covenant; or, he referred to some other law. Aside from the ten commandments, which alone are called a law, we have in the former dispensation the law of commandments contained in ordinances. One of these two must therefore be the perfect and right law. But Paul shows conclusively that it could not be the latter, for he calls that “carnal,” and says “it made nothing perfect,” and “could not make him that did the service perfect,” &c. Hence we are compelled to believe that the law in which David delighted, and which Paul himself called “spiritual,” was God’s moral law of ten commandments, and not the “faulty” covenant which waxeth old and vanisheth away.

To further strengthen his position he now takes refuge in the seventh chapter of Romans. The “blindness of mind” which characterizes our antinomian opponents is made apparent by their appeals to this testimony, which proves upon examination, to be a convincing chapter on the perpetuity of those very commandments our opponents would have it abolish. He first admits that Paul here has reference to the ten commandments by the use of the following language: “Now the apostle seems to draw a comparison between the law of the land and the law of God; for it is this law he is speaking of as we can see by reading verse 7; for it is the same law all the way through. ‘Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet! That law is the one forbidding covetousness; hence the one brought in here by Paul—the law written on stone.”

Now before giving what we believe to be the apostle’s true meaning in this chapter, we would like to ask Mr. B. how in the name of reason and common sense an old dead law, which waxed old and vanished away at the cross, could have been instrumental in converting Paul thirty years this side of the cross, and without which he “had not known sin?” and how that law which he calls “faulty,” can be the same one that Paul calls “holy, just and true” in the 12th verse of this same chapter? When he can harmonize these difficulties perhaps he will not be so muddled with regard to the true meaning of this chapter.

W. C. G.

(To be continued.)