p. 21 | Letter and Spirit

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 16, 1879

Letter and Spirit.

A BROTHER who has received a letter from a friend, in which it was claimed that we are not to keep the letter of the law, but only the spirit, requests us to notice this point. We can do no better than to quote from our "Review of Baird," as follows :—

The author starts out with a very broad fling against the letter of the law. This course is becoming popular with those who, whether wilfully or otherwise, "darken counsel by words without knowledge" on this important subject. That position is really calculated to destroy the authority of God's written word. To justify his statements he says, David "found the demands of nature an ample justification for violating the letter of the law." There is no such distinction as he covertly claims in these words. In eating the show-bread David violated the letter of the law ; but did he keep it in the spirit? did he keep it in any sense? Admitting that the letter of a law may be kept while the spirit of it is not, it is not therefore true that the spirit of a law can be kept while the letter is violated. The letter and spirit always agree. The spirit may reach farther than the letter, but never in an opposite direction. The spirit neither requires nor permits anything which the letter forbids. If it did, we could only render spiritual obedience to God by doing just the reverse of what his commandments say!

The true tendency of this popular argument against "the letter" is to licentiousness, or freedom from just restraint ; for when the letter is set aside, each one becomes the judge of what it is to obey in spirit, and revelation becomes a nullity. Its falsity may be exposed by examination of the position often assumed on Matt. 5 : 21-28. It is claimed on this text that the Saviour set aside the letter of the sixth and seventh commandments and substituted something more entirely spiritual in their places. This is far from the truth. He taught the spirituality of those precepts by affirming that, in the sight of God, he who hates his brother, or is angry with him, is guilty of violating one, and he who harbors lust in his heart is guilty of violating the other. The position of those who oppose the letter is just this : The Saviour taught that hatred is wrong, but he abolished the law which forbids murder ; and he taught that lust is wrong, but he abolished the law which forbids adultery ! and thus are we released from "the bondage of the letter." The unavoidable conclusion from this is, that in this dispensation of "gospel freedom" it is not wrong to kill your neighbor if you do not hate him ; and it is not wrong to commit adultery if you have no lustful desire ! We challenge any one to show that our conclusion is not just, from the premises of those who oppose the letter of the law.