ARE THE COMMANDMENTS ABOLISHED?
By R. F. Cottrell
My Dear Friend: Before the Heaven-sent message concerning the law of God and his Sabbath was preached in your place, the above question did not trouble your mind at all. You had been taught at home, at Sunday school, at meetings, and everywhere, that it was sin to break one of the ten commandments, and had been warned especially of the evil consequences of breaking the Sabbath, as this would lead the way to all kinds of iniquity. No one had ever warned you that if you truly kept the Sabbath of the Decalogue, you would fall from grace, as long as you took it for granted that Sunday was the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. But when you saw that this was false, that there was not a word in the Bible in favor of the first day of the week as the Sabbath, and felt it a duty to turn your feet into God's testimonies, and truly keep the Sabbath of the Lord, then you began to hear that the “Jewish Sabbath” (a thing not mentioned in the Bible), was done away. Your pious friends and neighbors, some of them aged and venerable, who had never before uttered a word of warning against your keeping the fourth commandment, but encouraged it, now began to search up the evidence that it had been long ago abolished, being nailed to the cross; and failing to find any evidence that the particular precept concerning the seventh day had been singled out and expunged from the Decalogue, they have tried to force the Scriptures to say that the whole law, even that which was “written and engraven in stones,” has been done away—a position outrageous and presumptuous enough to make any one shudder, but for the soothing opiate, the intoxicating wine, that has been diffused among all nations, which makes men insensible to the guilt of blaspheming against God.
This has thrown you into a perplexing study. You have puzzled your brain over the book of Galatians, and 2 Cor. iii, till your Bible seems unwilling to open to any other place. But you are not satisfied, and your perplexity remains. I propose therefore to try to help you.
In the examination of this question, you must not forget that the “carnal mind,” which “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be,” will ever strive for the mastery, holding up earthly inducements to get you to decide against the truth. It will be so much more convenient, and tend so much more to your earthly prosperity and happiness, if the decision can be innocently made against the law of God. If you would arrive at the truth, the carnal mind must be crucified, and these considerations must have no weight in the decision.
Now, if you can get positive testimony that speaks right to the point, inferences from passages that do not thus speak are proved to be unnecessary and inadmissible, unless indeed the Scriptures contradict themselves, a conclusion, as I trust, you are not prepared for. You have read of not being “under the law,” and of being “delivered” from it by the reception of the faith of the gospel, but this may only mean that by faith in Christ we are justified from our sins that are past, so that we are no longer under its condemnation, but are delivered from its claims against us as sinners, and consequently from the penalty of a law which still remains “holy, just and good,” and which the spiritual still delight to obey. Bear in mind too, that the Apostle Peter advertises as of the fact that some would wrest the teachings of Paul to their own destruction. Now if we make Paul abolish a holy, moral law, one he has not told us is abolished, this will prove our destruction, when the penalty of that law comes to be executed. But should we err in favor of so good a law as the ten commandments, doing more in obedience of it than God requires, we cannot apprehend much danger, since he has nowhere forbidden us to keep any one of its precepts. You have found no place where Paul brings up the question of the abolition of the law, and plainly tells us that it is abolished. He nowhere teaches this doctrine so pointedly as one Eld. Levi H——— did in a discourse delivered against the Sabbath in Niagara Co., N. Y. Said he, “Levi, do you believe the law of God is dead? I DO!” The apostle in his writings has left no such decisive record. But on the other side of the question he has given an explicit decision; first raising the very question now at issue, and then deciding it most emphatically in the negative. “Do we then make void the law through faith?” he inquires. This is the very question you wish decided. Then hear the answer, and do not forget it: “God forbid! Yea, we establish the law.” To make void is to abolish; it is rendered from the same Greek term translated so in 2 Cor. iii. To establish is the very opposite of this. If the law is established it remains in full force. Does the apostle teach the very reverse of this? does he say that that which was engraven on stones is done away? No. He teaches that the ministration—service of a minister—connected with the giving of the law on tables of stone, and its glory, which was seen in the face of Moses the minister, was to be done away and is abolished, being eclipsed or excelled in glory by the ministry of Jesus Christ, and the glory that shines forth from his character and office as the High Priest of the present dispensation. Death is used by a figure of speech to represent the law of God written on the tables, because to administer the law of God alone, to those who have transgressed it, could only bring death—the penalty of the law—upon them, while the ministration of Jesus Christ brings pardon for the violation of that same law, righteousness and life. But death, representing the law, is in the objective case, and governed by the preposition of, and consequently cannot be the subject of the affirmations expressed by the verbs in the clauses, “was glorious,” “is done away,” and “is abolished.” The language of the apostle must be violated, forced, wrested, to make him teach that that which was engraven in stones was to be done away, and is abolished. And what would be the result? Men would be at perfect liberty to break any and all of the ten commandments; for that which is abolished is no longer a law, and “where no law is, there is no transgression,”—no sin. And there is no re-enactment of one of these commandments in the New Testament. If I quote the commandments to enforce a doctrine, as Paul has done, (See Eph. vi, 1–3,) no one ever thinks that I am re-enacting them. This plea of re-enactment is a subterfuge to evade the legitimate and logical conclusion or consequence of their own teaching. My friend, do you wish the question concerning the abolition of the law, decided by apostolic authority? Paul has deliberately and distinctly enunciated the decision. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid! Yea, we establish the law.” If this direct and positive answer will not satisfy you, neither would you be persuaded though the apostle should rise from the dead and repeat it. He could not speak more to the point. He taught in perfect harmony with his Lord. See Matt. v, 17–20. Jesus Christ came not to destroy the law. “I came not to destroy.” But he did accomplish all he came to do, and no more. Therefore he did not destroy the law. And because the law was not to be abolished, nor a jot or tittle of it removed, he promised a blessing in the future kingdom of Heaven, to all that should do and teach all its commandments, in all time then to come. Can this be reconciled with the idea that he took all or even one of those commandments out of the way, nailing it to his cross? He died to make it possible that men might be pardoned their violations of that law. How utterly absurd the idea that his death to make pardon possible, took away the law, and thus made pardon unnecessary. Such thoughts are unworthy of man made in the image of God. The gospel fact that Christ died for man's transgressions of that law, establishes its justice, and makes it sure that if we do not obtain pardon through repentance and faith in him, we shall finally die for our transgressions. Thus the gospel establishes the law. Be not deceived, my friend, and lose your life. The opponents on this question cannot both be right. If you make a mistake and decide against the law by which you are to be judged in the last day, that mistake will be fatal; for the law you have decided against will decide against you. It is a fearful thing to trifle with the law of God; and to try to make an apostle contradict in one place, what he positively affirms in another. I beseech you then as you love life, and as you would love our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave his life for you, that you crucify the carnal mind, every selfish desire to have the law of God different from what it is, be willing to forsake each and every transgression of that holy law, coming to God through Christ for pardon for all the past, and grace to help you in the path of obedience in time to come, take the positive affirmations of Christ and the apostles concerning the moral law to mean just what they say, and regulate your conduct accordingly, regardless of worldly considerations. In so doing you will be delivered from the state of perplexity under which you now labor. The subject of the law of God will be clear and satisfactory, and you will realize in your own experience that you are no longer under the law, but under grace. Then can you say with David, “I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy precepts,” or with Paul, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” By reading Gal. v, 19–23, you can see that works of the flesh are disobedience to the law of God, and the fruit of the Spirit is a character conformed to that law. Those that are led by the Spirit, obey God, and are not under the law,—“against such there is no law.” May there be no law against you, my dear friend, in the Judgment; and may I enjoy the privilege of meeting with you from Sabbath to Sabbath in the new earth, where the sacred institution of Eden shall be a delight to all, and men will not load it with opprobrium and be willing to abolish the whole moral law to get rid of it.