p. 172 | THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL by Albert Stone

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 28, 1878

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL.

By Albert Stone

Since Adam and Eve were expelled from the lovely bowers of Eden, the only divinely authorized religion has been the religion of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. The plan of redemption, based on the free-will offering of Christ upon the sacrificial altar, was made known to Adam immediately after the fall. The saved of every age, from Adam to the end of the world, will be those, and only those, who believe in the Saviour promised to Adam as the seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent’s head. They will have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Blood in figure, pointing forward to the literal shedding of the blood of Christ on the cross, characterized the entire period before the crucifixion. Blood in figure, pointing backward to the cross, characterizes the period from the cross to the second coming of Christ. The blood of animal offerings before the cross, and the consecrated wine of the eucharist since the crucifixion, are the divinely appointed figures for these purposes respectively.

The object of the divine plan in both dispensations was the same, namely, to call the attention of mankind to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

The relations of the law and the gospel to each other and to mankind are unchanged by the change of dispensation. The crucifixion of Christ did not disannul the law, or create the gospel. Both existed before and after the death of Christ the same, and man’s relation to either differed not from what it was fifty years before or fifty years after that event.

If the death of Christ did away the law and gave power to the gospel as a saving institution, if the one steps in to supersede the other, why did not the law take its exit when the gospel began to have power to save? In the purpose of God, Christ was a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and the purpose of God in this respect gave power to the gospel to sanctify and save men in the patriarchal the same as in the apostolic age.

The whole gospel plan was devised and executed in the purpose of God from the foundation of the world, and so the gospel has been the power of God, and the wisdom of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, whether he lived in the days of the patriarchs or in those of the martyrs.

But why talk about the law of God as being done away at any point of time? The principles of the law are the effect of the existence of God. The law is the radiance of the divine character and perfections. God bears the same relation to the law as the sun bears to the rays of light which it reflects. It would be manifestly inconsistent to eulogize the sun, and at the same time despise its legitimate office of dispensing light and heat. And would it not be most incongruous to praise God, and reject his law with the same breath?

Is it not reasonable to conclude that those who love the spiritual worship of God will also love the law of God, which Inspiration says is holy, just, and good? Can one be a loyal subject of a government whose laws he rejects? Can any inherit the kingdom of God in whose heart the law is not written?

It should be considered that the gospel has no office more important than to indemnify the law for damage sustained on account of man’s sin. In the very act of giving his life, the Saviour yielded to the just claims of the law in man’s behalf. He did not therefore by his death destroy the law, but paid to it the highest reverence of which the Son of God was capable.

ALBERT STONE.