p. 4 | WHEREFORE THE LAW? by J. A. L. Derby

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 17, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 38.

WHEREFORE THE LAW?

By J. A. L. Derby

“Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions.” Gal. 3:19.

THERE are a few instructive thoughts on the debasing nature of sin, which, tho often touched, I have never seen very fully amplified in exposition of this text.

Let us begin with a few familiar truths in this connection.

“It was added because of transgressions.” Transgressions of what?—Of law. It is therefore plain that law existed before it was “added.” The time when this addition took place is mentioned in verse seventeen of this chapter: it was four hundred and thirty years after the covenant made with Abraham. This locates the event at the time of the encampment of Israel at Sinai. Two distinct kinds of law were here given—moral and typical; or, since every command of God implies moral obligation, perhaps it would be better to say that both were moral, but one, the Ten Commandments, being a statement of unchangeable principle, is eternal, the other, consisting of rites, prophetic and typic, were in their nature temporary.

Was either of these laws “added” as something which had been previously non-existent? Not the ceremonial (we use the term for convenience); for sacrifices and offerings were practised from the time of Cain and Abel to that of Moses. It was in this connection that the murder of Abel occurred.

Abraham built an altar of sacrifice at each permanent stopping-place in his pilgrimage. Moses may have enlarged the ritual, but he did not introduce ritualism. Not the moral (again to save circumlocution); for murder—the sixth commandment’s violation—was sin in the days of Cain; and violation of the seventh commandment was one of the glaring sins of Sodom. Numerous other illustrations might be given showing that both these forms of law had pre-existed. It is evident that “added” can not be understood to imply original creation, inventive promulgation, or legislation, of either. But the record, in the chapter a portion of which we are studying, speaks of no law outside of these two. Hence “added” must mean the work performed at that time upon either or both of these. What was that work? This: they were reduced to written form. And why written?—“Because of transgressions.” Here begins a deeper study.

Our first inquiry shall be concerning the form of the eternal part of the law, previous to its graphical promulgation at Sinai. Was it something carried only in the memory of men; or was it something fundamental in their nature. If eternal, it must still exist to-day, even among men who know nothing of it as a written code; for, “if we [any one anywhere] say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” 1 John 1:8. But as sin is transgression of the law (1 John 3:4), the law must be with all men everywhere, as says the apostle, in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

One step deeper: In what form have all men, even the heathen, the law? Certainly not delineated in words, for millions have not written language, nor are they able to reproduce—or rather produce—this law from their memory. Paul explains it. He says they have the “work of the law written in their hearts.” Rom. 2:15.

It thus becomes clear that God has placed within the mind of man a certain organic or fundamental principle, to which the latter feels an intuitive obligation to conform all his acts. This principle must be the gist or essence of the Ten Commandments. The texts which reveal what this is are probably familiar to all. A few passages may be cited: Rom. 13:10; Matt. 22:37-40; 1 Tim. 1:5. This regulative principle is love. This is the summary of the law.

Love, therefore, and love only, is the one absolutely right or good thing in the universe.

What resolutions or reformations are wrought into this mighty word! How contemptible in its light appear all our carping criticisms of what others eat or drink or wear! I wish we might grasp the infinite force of this word. Love does not excoriate or judge or hawk at. Love is eternal reinforcement. Love helps. It knows the faults of others, but does not herald them abroad. It extenuates to others while it labors to inspire and aid the stumbling ones. But how puerile and partial are all these words, for love is the law and the prophets. This is the one thing written on the hearts of men.

But a step deeper. If every command of the Decalogue is eternal and unchangeable in its nature, then, in the beginning, when man was nearer the perfection in which he was created, he could discern intuitively in this principle each of the Ten Commandments in detail. Here our subject broadens into the whole of moral science, the foundation of all right doing, and the rationality of faith. Let me try to make clear by a simple illustration, the form in which this moral sense existed in the mind of Adam, and its mode of action, and then let me prove it by a scripture.

If you were a naked savage in the heart of Africa, and should pick up a pair of pants, you would certainly be removed a long way from the original intelligence of your first parents if you did not on a short examination discern their use. If you saw another person using them, say, as a coat or a bag, you would feel that such was not their proper purpose. Plainer still, if you saw a sheepskin used as a wine-bottle, you would know immediately that was not the original end or purpose of the skin. With any new machine you may see in machinery hall at the World’s Fair at St. Louis, in 1904, you will make the attempt to study out the end for which it was made. And when you perceive that end, to use it for any other object, would be unreasonable. For instance, to use a threshing machine to break stone or grind cornstalks is unreasonable; to use a buck-saw exclusively to cut butter, or a water pail for a hat, are alike foolish. A fool is a person who does an unreasonable thing. The individual who, in the face of multitudinous evidences of an intelligent cause of all things on every hand, can say, “There is no God,”

is pronounced by the Bible a fool; and rightly. The self-wise pygmies of to-day, to whom the Bible is ancient mythology; Christ, if historic at all, a demi-god of superstition, and God a total and absolutely unnecessary fiction of the mind—these, as we shall presently see, if we do not see it already, are the greatest evidence of the unfathomable degeneration of the race.

For look at Adam. He knew at sight the purpose of every living thing. Do you want proof of this? Read in Gen. 2:19-20. “God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” He saw the features and characteristics which revealed the purpose and individuality of every animal, and he gave it a name which was a type and summary of all these. Just as the word “love” is the gist of the law and the prophets, so the names given by Adam were an epitome of the nature or individuality of each creature. Looking at himself, what did he see? He saw his own dignity as the crown of all creation. He saw his own humble station as less than nothing in the sight of an infinite God. He saw the manifest goodness of God on every side, and his dependence on Him for his very existence.

Looking at his own constitution, he could behold the purpose for which he was made, as clearly as with his physical eye the nature of every animate thing. He saw that the purpose of his appetite was to minister to the well-being of the body. Above and higher than these, he saw the desires designed for the well-being of the mind. In all these he discovered the law of their use, namely, an activity appropriate to their end. To him the use of tobacco or whisky would have been immoral—a sin, indeed; for, so far as contributing to the well-being of the body, indulgence in them would have been a perversion of appetite for the ruin of the physical frame; and the appetites were not designed to aid destruction, but to build up. With unclouded vision he could perceive the same relation between the mind and its desires, continued existence, knowledge, property, power, and good-will. But these were still further irradiated by the light from a still higher—the highest—set of faculties, the affections. In his constitution he found nothing higher than these. But affection, what is it?—LOVE. But love is not self-centered. It does not look so much to the good of self as of others. Affection looks beyond, outside of self. It seeks an object more satisfying than self. Adam saw what you and I may see in ourselves,—that we have two phases of affection. These are the moral and the natural; the former implies God, and is presided over by conscience; the latter finds its satisfaction in other beings like ourselves. And this is Christ’s own summary of the Decalogue: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matt 22:37-40.

Adam in the perfection of all his faculties could see all this, and infinitely more, at a glance. Did he need the written law?—Assuredly not. Neither did his immediate posterity. But as time went on, the mental and spiritual powers of men were dulled, and blunted, and dimmed by sin. The degeneracy manifested in the shortening of life from the nine hundred sixty-nine years of Methuselah to the paltry third of a century which now constitutes the average life of man, is but a faint type of what has occurred in man’s intellectual and moral faculties. How many men now can discover by natural intuition, or even by a lifetime use of their natural reason, that they were made to love and serve God? How many discern their true end? How many scientists find God?

The law “was added because of transgressions,” and remain it must till transgression is no more.

As regards the temporary part of the law of God—the ceremonial, I am not prepared to say that even rites, in the nature of positive commands, have not, during the years of time at least, a necessary principle underlying them. Else why baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, and the ordinance of humility? And why some form of ritual even from the time of the introduction of sin? The forms of this ritual may be changed at God’s pleasure, as they have been changed, while the basilar principle of some positive commands to represent, typify, or commemorate certain new stages or facts in the development of God’s purpose—this principle may likewise remain. That the law was added “till the Seed should come,” could with perfect harmony and consistency refer, as to the temporal and changeable part of God’s law, to the first advent; as to the written form of the Decalogue, it could, and certainly does, look forward to the second advent.

J. A. L. DERBY.