The Law and the Spirit

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 27, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 25.

The Law and the Spirit

It is not, inquiring reader, the Law against the Spirit; it is not the Law or the Spirit; it is the Law and the Spirit.

The Law to which we refer is the Law of God, the Spirit is the Spirit of God. Surely there should be no antagonism between the Law of God and the Spirit of God.

Yet we frequently hear professed followers of the Master and the Book argue against the observance of God's commandments, especially the fourth precept of His Law, the statute of God which defines the Sabbath day to be the seventh day, and enjoins God's children to keep it holy. It declares to us that the Creator made it holy and set it apart for man.

Christ the Lord by His Spirit inspired the utterances of the prophets. He testified through them. 1 Peter 1:9-11. Thus He witnessed through the Gospel prophet: "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord." Isa. 58:13, 14.

Does the eternal Spirit which inspired the words above quoted teach men now that it matters not whether they observe the Sabbath or do not observe it? It is not to be believed. Twice at least in the New Testament it is intimated of the Psalms that the words are "as the Holy Spirit saith." Acts 1:19, 20; Heb. 3:7. That Spirit said prophetically of Christ, one thousand years before He came, "Lo, I am come; . . . I delight to do Thy will, O My God; yea, Thy Law is within My heart." Ps. 40:7, 8. When Jesus came in fulfilment of that prophecy by the Spirit, God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit. Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38. Spirit-filled, He bore testimony to the truth of the prophecy: "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work." John 4:34. "I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love." John 15:10.

The Spirit of God led our Lord to obey God's Law; that Spirit wrote that Law on the tables of His heart. The Spirit of God and the Law of God and the Son of God were all in perfect harmony.

Once more: God gave His Spirit to convince of sin. John 16:8. "Sin is the transgression of the Law." 1 John 3:4. "Nay, I had not known sin, but by the Law." Rom. 7:7. Is it possible that God's Spirit convicts John Smith to-day of sin, but to-morrow, when he is converted, tells him, "You should or may transgress God's Law, which points out sin"? It is preposterous.

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." Heb. 13:8. The Spirit of Christ inspired the prophets. 1 Peter 1:10, 11. His Spirit therefore inspired the above quoted utterance of Isaiah regarding the Sabbath. In the yesterday of His first advent our Lord affirmed the Sabbath. He further said, "Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil." Isa. 56:2.

And this same blessing He extends to the stranger — the foreigner, the Gentile: "Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of My covenant." Verse 6.

In the to-day of His first advent He confirmed all that in His teaching and life. That in His special manifestations is this generation's yesterday. Is He not the same to-day? He is the same. The eternal Law has not changed. The teaching of the eternal Spirit is the same. That spirit, therefore, which teaches men to transgress that Law, is not the Spirit of Christ, but the spirit of evil. But to that soul who yields to the Holy Spirit's conviction of sin, who submits to God's authority, that Spirit will write God's Law in the heart forevermore.