A DISTORTED MEDIUM by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 28, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 42.

A DISTORTED MEDIUM.

By Editor

HOLDING error in doctrinal truth, especially when that error is an essential part of one's belief, is like looking at things through imperfect glasses. They distort every image. So reading the truth through error distorts the truth. Here is an instance of that taken from one of our contemporaries, a neighbor across the bay, the Pacific Christian:—

"The Signs of the Times interprets Paul's saying, 'Ye are not under the law,' curiously. 'He only is under the law,' says the writer, 'who is condemned by it, who is out of harmony with it, who transgresses it.' 'Necessity is the mother of invention.' This interpretation is an invention, but appears rather clumsy in the light of some other things Paul said. One is this: 'But before faith came we were kept under the law shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.' According to the Times, that statement means that they were kept out of harmony with the law, in transgression of it. The poor Jews were to be pitied while thus shut up to such awful necessities. Worst of all, they were punished for the transgression. But in immediate connection with the text quoted by our friendly neighbor, Paul says, 'but under grace.' If our neighbor is right, this phrase must mean that the Roman Christians were out of harmony with grace, etc. If 'under the law' means to be out of harmony with it, under grace, in the same sentence, must mean to be out of harmony with it. And the Roman Christians, accordingly, must have been in about as bad a fix as the Jews had been."

Our contemporary has for one of his glasses the error that God's law is abolished, and for the other that God has divided himself and his moral truth into different dispensations, with a different standard in each; therefore the perverted vision. According to it, Gal. 3:23, quoted above, refers to the Jews before the crucifixion, though Paul wrote it twenty-seven years after that event, to Gentiles who were converted from the "service" of "them which by nature are no gods!" When Paul says, "But before faith came we were kept under the law," he means himself and every other justified soul to whom God sends his inspired Word through the apostle. Every sinner is shut up by the law to but one way of escape, namely, the faith of Jesus Christ. That faith could be revealed only to sinners, those who felt the condemnation, the shutting up by the law, such as did Paul. See Rom. 7:7-25. This was the case in every Jew who was condemned that he might be justified in the past; it has been true of every saved sinner since that day. It is a present Gospel truth, to be applied to-day; and, to do good, must be preached and applied and received in the present tense.

The law to the sinner condemns. That is its object, to condemn sin. "For the law worketh wrath." "By the law is the knowledge of sin." But grace is favor, unmerited favor, to all. It is over all God's creatures; and all God's creatures, sinful man among them, are continually receiving showers of grace from above. It makes a difference whether one is under bolts of wrath or a shelter from the wrath.

If our neighbor would correct the strabismus of his glasses by the Gospel of God, there would be no trouble with the law. How we wish he would!