Did Christ Abolish the Law?
By Rev. F. S. Schenck
It is claimed by some that the Lord Jesus Christ has abolished the Ten Commandments. On the contrary, Christ claims that He came not to destroy but to fulfil the law. The law can give no ability to keep it—that is not its province. It shows the rule of duty, awakens the conscience, holds before us God’s lofty ideal, incites all the power within us to highest action; but here its mission ends. It evokes all the power within, but confers no power from without. The same thing is true of the teaching and example of Christ. However high and noble they are, even perfect, they are limited in their effect by the capacity of the disciple. They incite, they draw out all the power within, but they give no ability to attain, they confer no power from without. Now Christ brings to us power from without, the power we need. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” Christ reveals and brings to us the true nature of God, the grace we need, forgiving sin and conferring new life. The teaching and example of Christ and the law they so clearly set forth should lead us to see our sinfulness and to seek forgiveness and new life in Christ; and this new life in Christ follows His teaching and example to the complete keeping of the law. That it obeys the law not reluctantly but heartily, so much the more honors the law. The skilled carpenter loving his work does not have to be told how to hold his plane, as does the obstinate apprentice, but nevertheless he holds it according to the rule, and the more thoroly since he does not regard it a hardship but a pleasure. Christ abolish this commandment? and God no longer claim the highest place in man’s thoughts and affections?—No, never! Man may degrade himself, but God will never degrade him. Christ came bringing divine power to restore man from degradation to the high nobility of keeping this commandment. His glorious work is not to set it aside, but to re-establish it as the rule of life to all His followers.—Rev. F. S. Schenck, in “The Ten Commandments in the Nineteenth Century.”