More Trouble with Moses.
By Uriah Smith
The Restitution, of March 5, 1874, says:— “We learn that there are certain Seventh-day Adventists who are muddling the brains of a number of honest-hearted persons in different parts. Their specious arguments are presented in such a way as to deceive those who are but young in the cause of truth, and the result is, that not being able to answer them they are almost persuaded to yield obedience to the law of Moses.” Inasmuch as Seventh-day Adventists never try to turn people to the law of Moses, it is utterly unaccountable how inability to answer their arguments should lead people to such observance. This is one of the false issues that are continually held up by those who assert that God’s law has been abolished. And if the arguments which prove the perpetuity of the moral law could be answered, there would be no need of resorting to such an artifice. They claim that every argument used by the advocates of the law has been met and answered. What they have answered is just such false issues as is here noticed. They have simply attacked men of straw of their own creation. “There is nothing clearer,” says the writer, “to our mind than this, that there is no such thing as mixing the two dispensations—that of Moses and Christ.” Any mind to which such a point as this is not clear must be marvelously obtuse. Who claims that the two dispensations are mixed? It is evident that the conductors of the Restitution are the ones who are “muddled” in this matter. The dispensations are just as distinct as type and antitype, shadow and substance. But who does not see that the dispensation of Moses related in figure to the same thing that the dispensation of Christ relates to in fact? That was the type, this the antitype; that the shadow, this the substance; that the figure, this the reality. And what was the object of that dispensation? and what is the object of this? To take away sin. The object is the same under both dispensations. Sin is the transgression of the law. There was real sin in the former dispensation, a real law transgressed. Men did not sin figuratively back there by transgressing a figurative law, which was in time to give place to something real. Sin was real, and the moral law, written upon the tables of stone, and deposited in the ark, the center of the sanctuary worship, was a real law. Sin, under that dispensation, at least, consisted in the transgression of that law; but the forgiveness of sin, or the atonement for these transgressions, was a work then done in figure; for the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin. The blood of Christ alone can do this. Those offerings prefigured the sacrifice of Christ as the true offering for sin. Now does his offering relate to a different law from that to which those offerings related which were types of his? We can scarcely conceive of a greater absurdity than to suppose such a thing. In such case, how could those offerings be typical of Christ’s offering? How could an offering made back there for one purpose be a figure, type, or representation of the offering of Christ, if his offering was made for another purpose? The typical work of the former dispensation related to the ten commandments written on the tables of stone, and deposited in the ark, and the very fact that a figurative or typical service was performed to that law showed that a real or antitypical work was to be performed to it, else the figures were figures of nothing, and the types had no antitype. But all antitypical work is connected with Christ; hence his offering and ministration relate to the same law. And Paul assures us that this is the case; for he says that the death of Christ not only provides eternal redemption for us (Christians), but was also “for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament.” Heb. 9:15. Now does Christ’s one offering atone for acts in the case of one individual, which are permitted in the case of another? Does God’s standard of moral rectitude vary in different ages? Are some things sin at one time and all right at another? Will God curse the men of one age, for doing the very things which in the men of another age are acceptable to him? To such questions, arising of necessity from that view, the no-law system absurdly answers, Yes. And this is what we want the people to see, that nothing but absurdity pertains to the no-law system throughout. How much better to accept that which the Bible so clearly teaches: that God is unchangeable; that his great rule of right is the same from beginning to end; that the transgression of this is sin in every age, 1 John 3:4; that this is the only instrument to show what sin is, Rom. 3:20; that previous to Christ, the people of God received forgiveness for their transgressions of that law in figure through the blood of the typical offerings; and that we now receive forgiveness for our transgressions of the same law, in fact, through the offering of Christ. Says the Restitution, “We are either under the law or under Christ.” Well, who does not believe that? But will our opponents show us a passage which says that any one is under grace who has not a personal interest in Christ? The fact is, all except converted persons are under the law, not under obligation to practice the Mosaic or typical law, which came to an end with that dispensation, but under the condemnation of the moral law; and so they will remain till their guilt is taken away by their acceptance of the offering of Christ. Rom. 3:19, shows that this is the sense in which Paul uses the expression, “under the law,” in this epistle. Again the writer says: “From Paul’s reasoning in Rom. 7, it is clear that all who are married to Christ are released from their obligation to the law. They cannot be married to both at the same time, any more than a woman can be married to two men at the same time.” Who are married to Christ? Only those who have made a profession of Christ. Then, on his own showing, sinners are not released from their obligation to the law. On Rom. 7, our opponents betray the most astonishing confusion of ideas. Paul there illustrates the condition of a person before and after conversion by the figure of marriage as regulated by the law of the land. In the illustration, there are four parties: the woman, the law regulating the marriage relation, the first husband, and the second husband. In the thing illustrated there are also four parties: the penitent, the law of God, the condition before conversion, and the condition after conversion. Let us see how these answer to each other. The woman represents the penitent. The law of marriage represents the law of God. The first husband represents that to which we are united before conversion. The second husband represents that to which we are united after conversion. When we are married to another, to the second husband, Paul says we are united to Christ. Christ, then, in the illustration is the second husband. Now what is the first husband? Is it the law? The Restitution speaks about our being married to the law! Look at Paul’s illustration. Was the woman married to the law of marriage? Such an idea is worse than nonsense; but it is no more palpably absurd than to speak of the sinner before conversion as being married to the law of God. No, the first husband is that to which we are united before conversion. And what is that? It is the carnal mind, Rom. 8:7, “the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,” Eph. 4:22, “our old man,” which must be “crucified with” Christ, Rom. 6:6, the “old man” which must be put off with his deeds. Col. 3:9. And when this old man, the first husband, is crucified, put off, and dead, then we are at liberty to “put on the new man,” or be married to Christ. And as the law of marriage shows the standing of the woman, so the law of God shows our standing. The law says that the woman can have but one husband. If, therefore, she takes two, the law pronounces her an adulteress. But if her first husband be dead, Paul says she is loosed or released from the law of her husband. Is the law dead because she is loosed from it? Does the law of marriage come to an end when her first husband dies? No, but she is loosed from the law because the law does not bind a living woman to a dead man. The law which bound her to that one man so long as he lived, ceases to bind her to him when the man is dead. Then, she can be married to another man, and still not violate the law. But the law exists all the while, and regulates her relation to both husbands. How is this as applied to the sinner? The law shows what sin is. So long as we live in sin, or maintain a union with the old man, the carnal heart, the law of God reveals that fact, it shows that union; and it prohibits any other so long as the old man is nourished and kept alive by us; for it is sin which gives the law its claims upon us. So then, if, while keeping up our union with this first husband, we attempt to unite with Christ, if we seek a union with him and with sin at the same time, we commit spiritual adultery. James 4:4: “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God”? We cannot have God and the world, Christ and sin, the old man and the new man, at the same time. That is adultery in the sight of God. What must be done? The first husband, the old man of sin, must die. And this is done in the body of Christ. In the 6th verse of the preceding chapter, Rom. 6, Paul has explained this. He says, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” And when this is accomplished, the law, which before showed us to be sinners, and while we continued in sin would allow of no other union, now sanctions our union with Christ, because it has no claims upon us as sinners; just as the law of marriage sanctions the union of the woman with the second husband after the first is dead, which it would not have sanctioned had that husband continued alive. The crucifixion of our old man, Paul calls our death. Sin dying in us, or our dying to sin, are with him synonymous expressions. Read Rom. 6:6, 7, and 8. In verse 6 he says, “Knowing that our old man is crucified with him.” Then in verse 8 he says, “Now if we be dead with Christ.” By these expressions he means the same thing. And when this occurs, we are dead to the law, because a death has been accomplished in us which meets the demands of the law. And in all his illustration in Rom. 7:1–6, Paul never once says or intimates that the law dies or ceases to exist, but every time it is the individual in which the death occurs. Yet men will deal so superficially with Paul’s reasoning and so distort and destroy his illustration as to talk about being married to the law! May Heaven look with compassion and pity upon such blindness and confusion. U. S.