THE WITNESSING OF GOD by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 24, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 25.

Read the full edition

THE WITNESSING OF GOD

By Editor

THE BASIS OF OUR CONFIDENCE

By the Editor

VII. God’s Word Twice Written in Precept and Character

When Jesus Christ walked this earth, there were all kinds of questioning concerning Him and His mission. Whence His authority? He had never graduated—in fact, had never been taught in the great schools of the rabbis, they said. How does He know? Jesus answered these inquiries by declaring, “My teaching is not Mine, but His that sent Me;” and then He gave an infallible test by which they and we might know its truth:

“If any man willeth to do His [God’s] will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself.” John 1:16, 17.

These are the words of the perfect Teacher, in whom dwelt the fulness of wisdom and knowledge. In His utterance we find again the twofold witness:

First, His—the Father’s—will;

Second, the witness of that will in the life.

What is the Father’s will?—It is His holy law. Said the Anointed of God, through the psalmist David (Ps. 40:8), “I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my heart.”

The same thought is expressed in our Lord’s great sermon, where it is taught that the one who enters God’s kingdom will be “he that doeth the will of My Father who is in heaven;” and this character is set in contrast with those who profess great works, but of whom He says, “I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity [lawlessness].” Matt. 7:21–23.

As the doing of God’s will is set against lawlessness, His will must be His law.

That perfect law is summarized, as regards its great principles, in the Decalogue, preeminently distinguished and honored by the great facts that there were special preparations for its giving, that God spoke it from heaven with His own voice, amid such grandeur as earth never saw, and engraved it alone with His own finger on tables of enduring stone, “and He added no more.” Deut. 5:22; Ex. 32:16. This is expressly called the law of God in both Old and New Testament. Ex. 24:12; Rom. 7:7; James 2:8–12.

There is the clearest and best of evidence that the law was known in its positive form to Adam, and subsequently throughout the pre- and post-diluvian ages. Genesis is not a book of law, but a record of God’s providential care of the holy seed. While it therefore records, in its fifty short chapters, no law in its brief sketch of 2,500 years, yet it shows that every precept was recognized either in its observation or in its transgression.

Of that law the “preacher” declares: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” Eccl. 12:13, 14.

James calls this code of commandments the “royal law,” and the “law of liberty,” and names two of its precepts, the sixth and the seventh, and teaches that it will be God’s rule of judgment, as it is man’s standard of duty. James 2:8–12. That law as given in the 20th chapter of Exodus, verses 2–17, is as follows:

1. “I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”

2. “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate Me, and showing loving-kindness unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments.”

3. “Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain; for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.”

4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

5. “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee.”

6. “Thou shalt not kill.”

7. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

8. “Thou shalt not steal.”

9. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

10. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

This law is witness number 1. It is not of man, was not given by man; it did not grow out of the civilization of its time. Outside of the elect people, it had no existence in other nations. All the superior laws which existed in Egypt or Babylon were but perversions, or variations, or traditions, of this primal law. No law like it meets every duty of man toward God and his fellows. It is wholly of God. All morality is summarized in the wonderful code, and all other moral precepts of the Book are but enlargements or developments of the principles which are found in the Decalogue, and to which the prophet refers in God’s giving of the law to Israel: “I wrote for him the ten thousand things of My law.” Hosea 8:12.

Witness Number 2

But God wishes to bring His law into closer relationship to men than its writing upon tables of stone. He designed that that

should remain with His people. A chest, or ark, of imperishable material was made to preserve it. It was to remain there as the great regulator of conduct, by which sin was to be measured. But having that law in the midst of Israel did not keep Israel from sin. Reading it day by day would not keep Israel from sin. It must come into closer relationship than that. It must enter into the very soul itself; and so through the mind which sees its beauty and perfection it comes into the heart and is written there by the Spirit of God. This is the work of the new covenant, as recorded in Hebrews, the eighth chapter, the tenth to the twelfth verses:

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put My laws into their mind, and on their heart also will I write them: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people; and they shall not teach every man his fellow citizen, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more.”

Now from this scripture we must not get the idea that the new covenant was not in force until New Testament times, because it was in force from the very beginning, operative from the very beginning. Enoch knew it, Noah knew it, Abraham knew it, Moses knew it. All these eminent servants of God are representatives of many others who had God’s law within their minds and written upon their hearts, through all the ages of the past. What the language of Hebrews implies is this,—that those shall not be called the nation of Israel who simply have God’s law in a golden ark, but who are continually transgressing that law and following their own way; but that shall be the Israel of God whose heart enshrines the holy law.

Under the old covenant, the strength of performance was no greater than the weakest promise of the covenanters, and that was the promise of man; and so man failed, and the law only condemned. Thus it was with Israel, thus it was not with Moses. Israel did not know God, and consequently asked that God should not speak to them any more. Moses knew God, he had the twofold witness in God’s law and in his heart and life, and therefore he could plead, “Show me Thy glory.” Moses had willed to do God’s will; and willing to do God’s will, God’s Spirit could write the law in his heart. So also with the author of the 119th Psalm. He could say, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” Under sin men are under the condemnation of the law. In the new covenant they are with the law, the law is written within.

So again the author of that psalm,—“O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” The same thought is echoed in the New Testament in the words of the beloved disciple: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous.” Why?—Because they are enshrined in the affections. The heart would rather keep them than not. There is no restraint in the law in the heart. It is indeed a law of liberty. Having God’s law within the heart is having God’s character there. It is knowing God in a sense in which he who holds the law without can not know Him. He only knows of God, and sees only in that law that which condemns; but the man who has the law of God within, knows God’s character and power in his own life, he finds his life witnessing to that law that is written on stone; and the twofold witness abides. It is not a matter of feeling with him, or a matter of fear with him; it is a testimony of God’s twice-written law which abides with him just as long as his heart is submitted to the will of the Father.

There is much more to say on this subject, which will be brought out more clearly in the twofold witness to and in the believer.

[The next article in this series is “God’s Twofold Witness to and in Jesus Christ.”]

The cross in the above picture marks the spot on the huge rock where Moses is supposed to have stood when he read the commandments and the book of the law in the hearing of all Israel. The place surrounding this stone rostrum is a natural amphitheater where the great multitude could have stood to give audience.