SUBMISSION TO THE SIN-CONDEMNING WORD VERSUS CEREMONIALISM.
By W. A. Alway
THERE has ever been a tendency on the part of mankind to trust in the performance of a succession of set ceremonies or church rites for salvation, rather than the constant inflow of the divine life by a sincere submission to the full demands of the sin-condemning word of God. Read Isa. 1:11-18. It is so much more in harmony with the dictates of the fleshly desires than to surrender the cherished appetites and lusts of the flesh everywhere required by the word of God. 1 John 2:15-17; Gal. 5:24. If, for example, the impure, blasphemous, or intemperate man can feel assured that thru submission to the set forms of the Gospel, administered by one who has, thru some equally legal method, obtained unrestricted authority to execute these saving rites, he may secure absolution from the guilt and penalties of his sins, he is inclined to choose it as a possible means of escape from the necessity of the daily crucifixion of these propensities. For, if it be conceded that to certain men has been delegated unlimited authority to administer certain ordinances possessing inherent saving power, it is clear that when these ordinances have been administered by these men, then salvation is insured to the sinner. And when all these ceremonies have been fully performed, then salvation has been fully realized, and since salvation is in, and realized thru, the ceremony, it necessarily follows that he who believes that will ever point to their performance as the witness of his acceptance with God. When Only Ordinances Are of Worth.
Is it, therefore, conclusive evidence that I am right with God, or that I am accepted by Him as His child, because I am able to point to a complete round of church rites which I have performed, even tho they are in exact accord with the Scriptures, and administered by one whom I believe to be sent of God? I fully believe it is not; for it is not in the performance of a few selected ceremonies, even tho they are right, that I obtain life, but by submission to every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Ordinances have no saving value only as they become the test of the submission of the soul to the sovereign word of God. The Gospel ceremonies are given not to be the end of obedience, but as the beginning of a life of obedience. They stand as a public testimony that I have renounced the "hidden works of darkness," and have been renewed in the spirit of true holiness unto the "obedience of faith," not in respect to a few rites of the church only, but in the forsaking of the world with its sinful lusts. With the poet I will say: “Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my life, my soul, my all.” Divinely-Appointed Ceremonies
are of great importance when used as their Author intended, but when magnified to take the place of the “weightier matters” of the law, they become a snare to the soul. Ceremonial obedience, so far from being the test of a godly life, is itself dependent upon the conformation of moral rectitude in the life, in order to save it from the stigma of hypocrisy. A man may submit to all the ordinances of the Gospel from insincere or selfish motives, but no man can choose the pathway of daily crucifixion to self with its fascinating lusts, pleasures, and affections and not possess a true allegiance to God. Mere Form an Abomination.
In Isa. 1:11-18 we have a graphic portrayal of ceremonial righteousness without this accompanying proof of its genuineness. Altho all these forms and ceremonies in which Israel was participating were divinely appointed, yet Jehovah declares them all to be an abomination to Him, which could not be endured. Said He, “Your hands are full of blood,” and with all their ceremonial exactness they were moral lepers, whose defilement could alone be washed away by living faith and submission to the precious promise, “Tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Verse 18. So with the Pharisees in the time of Christ. They were exceedingly particular in respect to ceremonial purity. Circumcision, divers washings,—all that God Himself had required, with a multitude of ceremonies of their own devising,—these external signs of their relationship to God they observed with great care. When pressed hard by the burning messages of reproof for sin and moral weakness from the lips of Christ, they would point to their fleshly relation to Abraham. Did they not bear in their flesh the unmistakable evidence that they were his children, and therefore were not “in bondage to any man.” Dear reader, if you have ever been tempted to hide a deformed life of moral weakness behind this fig-leaf of ceremonial righteousness or church membership, then mark well the reply of Christ: “If ye were Abraham’s children,8 of Abraham; but now ye seek to kill Me; . . . this did not Abraham. . . . Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” John 8:39-44. “He that committeth sin is of the devil.” 1 John 3:8. the unfailing foundation of the kingdom of God is composed of two parts. 2 Tim 2:19. The first infallible evidence is “the Lord knoweth them that are His.” This is the Lord’s part. Man has ever been desirous of knowing and doing that which it is the Lord’s prerogative to know and do. In attempting to decide this difficult question and make it possible for man to know who are the Lord’s, men have often transferred the primary proof of man’s relation to God from an internal to an external basis, from the spiritual and moral which is measured by the motives of the soul and known only to God, to the ceremonial which is incorrectly measured by the exactness of outward forms. This perversion of God’s arrangement was well illustrated in the Jewish nation at the time of Christ. They had transformed the fleshly rite or ceremony of circumcision given to Abraham as an outward sign or seal of the righteousness which he already had, yet being not circumcised (Rom. 4:9-11), into that very righteousness itself. They then proceeded to condemn as dogs all outside of the ceremonial line. But Paul makes clear how impotent was their trust in circumcision while lacking that inward conformity to the moral precepts of God, when he said: “For circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law; but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision [or God-appointed ceremonies] is made uncircumcision.” Thus it is clearly seen that divinely-appointed ceremonies are valuable only as they are the external witnesses of a life in harmony with the character of God or His divine law. This brings us to the second or by which we may be confident that “the foundation of God standeth sure.” If I were to ask one who relies upon a code of set ceremonies how he knows that he is in the only right way of salvation, I would doubtless receive the following answer: “Why, I don’t believe, I simply know that I am in the right way; for I have been baptized by one holding the authority of the Melchizedek priesthood, and have had hands laid on me for the reception of the Holy Ghost.” But I do not find this evidence as a part of the seal described by Paul. “Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” The evidence, dear reader, of your union with a sin-hating God is the willingness on your part to separate from the revealed sins of your life. Are you in secret league with self, pride, lust, avarice, blasphemy, worldly pleasure? Would it take almost the crash of doom to shake you loose from the lusts of this world? If so, then, tho you were baptized a thousand times by an angel from heaven, yet would your iniquity remain in its deepest crimson dye.