2437.-Moses' Law by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 25, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 13.

2437.—Moses' Law.

By Editor

Will you kindly tell us what is Moses law, and where in the Bible is the Ten-Commandment Law called the moral law?

The word "moral" is not found in the Scriptures. Theology has made that distinction between laws that pertain to morality and laws that are ceremonial, arbitrary, or merely positive. The ceremonial law had to do with the regulation of rights and ceremonies, the moral law pertaining to rightness of conduct and motive. Moses' law in a general sense may be applied to the whole Pentateuch; that is, to the first five books of the Bible. It is sometimes used in that comprehensive sense, as including all that is written in these books, being equivalent to the term, Books of Moses. In this comprehensive sense it includes the written moral law and all the judgments pertaining to the civil government of Israel, as well as to the ceremonial law. When we reach the time of Christ, those types and ceremonies which pointed forward to the death of Christ expired by limitation. The moral law, so designated by various denominations, continued of course to exist, as it is founded in the very nature of things. See Ex. 24:12, where it is distinctly called "a law." Note also that when Moses repeated it in Deut. 5:22, he expressly said that God "added no more." The law was complete in itself. The many moral precepts which we have in the word of God are simply the drawing out of that law into more express and particular duties. This is beautifully stated in Hosea 8:12, in the American Revised Version: "I wrote for him the ten thousand things of My law, but they are counted as a strange thing."