The Two Covenants and the Sabbath
By Orno Follett
THE laws of nations are an expression of the character of the people who framed those laws. Good men will make good laws, and evil men will make evil laws. A nation without laws of some kind would become a stronghold for anarchists and confusion. Might would make right. The strong would domineer over the weaker ones, regardless of right, justice, and mercy. That is why Blackstone, the noted English statesman, said that a poor law is better than no law at all. God's law is a good law. Rom. 7:12. It is perfect. Ps. 19:7. It is eternal. Ps. 111:8. God is likewise good, perfect, and eternal. Therefore the law of God is the expression of His divine character. The transgression of God's law is sin. 1 John 3:4. "By the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20; 7:7); and "where no law is, there is no transgression" (Rom. 4:15). This same law will be the standard in the judgment. Eccl. 12:13, 14. The wages of sin—transgression of God's law—is death. Rom. 6:23. Abraham, through human weakness, and a temporary lack of faith, attempted to do for himself, in his own way, what God had promised to do for him. Read the fifteenth, sixteenth, and twenty-second chapters of Genesis. In Gal. 4:22-31, Paul compares this experience of Abraham with the old and the new covenant. The old covenant (agreement), as made between God and His people as a nation, is recorded in Ex. 19:3-9. This covenant was made concerning the Ten Commandments. Ex. 24:8. The people, not God, broke this covenant, or their part of it, over and over again; first when they made a golden calf (Exodus 32), and later by disobeying the requirements of the Ten Commandments. Heb. 8:9; Deut. 5:29. Rom. 7:1-4 is used by some to prove that God's holy law is done away. Read on to the twelfth verse. Notice that it is not the law that is dead; it is the old man, the man of sin. Now that sin has died out of our members, we are married to another, even Christ. Rom. 7:4. The same law still lives, and binds us to Him. Rom. 7:6, 7, 12; 3:31. Kind reader, will you be true to Him? In Heb. 9:16, 17, we read: "For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead; otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth." "Tho it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto." Gal. 3:15. Now, if you will read Luke 23:46-56 and 24:1-21, and notice especially the twenty-first verse, you will learn that the first day of the week can not be the Sabbath of the new covenant, because it came in three days too late, since the new covenant was sealed by the blood of Christ three days before the Sunday sabbath is even claimed to have been observed by Christians. As our Saviour hung upon the cross late Friday afternoon, He said, "It is finished," then sealed the new covenant with His blood. Since then, no man can disannul or add thereto. The new covenant is God's promise to write His law—not a new law, but His PERFECT AND ETERNAL LAW—within the minds and hearts of His people. Heb. 8:8-10. Therefore we can say with Paul: "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law." Rom. 3:31.