THAT the true ceremonial law of God is connected with this chapter in Colossians is evident from the fact that it says, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” Comparing this with Heb. 10:1, 4, and calling to mind our study on the same in a former number, all will see this fact. But when it came to the matter of judging Christians for nonconformity to those shadows of the body of Christ, the persons who did the judging, judged the Christians according to the rabbinical interpretation of that ceremonial law. And this involves all the additional laws concerning which we have studied, together with an infinite number that we have not studied. “They had added tradition to tradition, . . . till the commandments, ordinances, and service of God were LOST in a ceaseless round of MEANINGLESS rites and ceremonies. Their religion was a yoke of bondage.”—Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. II, page 108.
How do we know that the judging here referred to would involve all this ceremonialism of which we speak?—Simply because man is not the judge of his fellows. “He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is ONE lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?” James 4:11, 12. It is therefore evident, since there is only ONE JUDGE, that when man begins to judge his fellow man, he usurps the place of Another. When he does this, he arrays himself against God; for he “speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law.” And in his self-appointed office, as judge, he must construe the law, that is, interpret the law. This, in the days in which the book of Colossians was written, would throw the Jew, or the Jew who professed Christianity, back upon the mass of interpretations and traditions that we have already considered. This was what did happen in the church of Antioch, and formed the basis for the council recorded in Acts 15. This was also what troubled the churches in Galatia. For these facts, see “Studies in Galatians,” which have been running in the REVIEW for several months. When the Pharisees judged Christ and his disciples in reference to their Sabbath-keeping, or in reference to the washing of hands before eating, it was always according to the “tradition of the elders.”
Thus it was that, having “made void the law of God by their tradition,” their whole mass of “meaningless rites and ceremonies,” which were “connected to the laws of God by the thinnest thread,” became, as is expressed in Colossians 2, only “the commandments and doctrines of men.” But the “philosophy and vain deceit,” which was “after the rudiments of the world,” the “worshiping of angels” (demon, or ancestor worship, as the case might be),—this, together with the “punishing, or not sparing, the body,” introduces us to the philosophy and asceticism of the pagans. With one mighty sweep, therefore, the man who is delivered from the sins of his flesh, through the cross of Christ, is also delivered from all the commandments and doctrines of men. Not from civil law, unless it is in conflict with the law of God; but from all ecclesiastical law founded on the precepts and doctrines of men.
Whence came the doctrine of purgatory? of prayers for the dead? of the invocation of saints? of Mariolatry? Whence came the doctrine of infant baptism? of sprinkling for baptism? Whence came the Sunday sabbath? If these things are not found in the word of God, are they not of “the commandments and doctrines of men”? Will not every man who is delivered from the “body of sin,” from the “law of sin,” from “the carnal mind,” which “is enmity against God,”—yes, IS he not delivered from all the traditions and ceremonies that are the outgrowth of the natural mind? “If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, after the commandments and doctrines of men?”
“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me FREE from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” And why was all this?—“That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Rom. 8:2–4.
In the first six articles, the ceremonial law of God was shown to be a remedy—strictly, the type, or shadow, of the Remedy—for the transgression of the law of God.
In the last six articles we find the ceremonial laws of men, springing from the carnal mind, which is enmity against God, and not subject to his law. We find that this carnal mind, with the laws which it originates, IS the transgression of the law of God. Christ has delivered us from the “law of sin” which is in our members; and from all the outward forms of that law, in the deliverance from the “law of sin” which is in our members. And this is done in order that the “righteousness of the law [of God] might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
And last, but not least: Among those who have “put on Christ,” “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: FOR YE ARE ALL ONE IN CHRIST JESUS.”
In such, and among such, there are no partition walls of race, nation, creed, party, or class. But, as with the traditions and ceremonies, so with the partition walls; we abandon them no faster than we are separated from the law of sin which is in our members. “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but, if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” E. J. HIBBARD.
