The Appeal to Law by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 22, 1910

The Appeal to Law

By Editor

GOD constituted man a self-governing agent. To this end He made him free morally to choose and do the good. This of itself involved freedom to do evil and receive the penalties of wrong doing. For God to make man free morally was to constitute man in a large sense like Himself. God both wills and does in accordance with the good pleasure of His will; and He gave man the same power to will and to do. It follows therefore that for God to make man like Himself in being free morally, gave man the possibility of willing against right, against God Himself, and of choosing evil.

Man has chosen evil. It is useless for us to say that Adam chose evil; for we are all either repeating his choice or rejecting it. But God again, through the great Gospel of Jesus Christ, has made it possible for man to be a self-governed being; and if we fail to govern self, if we fail to choose the right, if we fail to will and to do as God would have us, we are simply making the choice of Adam our choice, we are accepting the situation which he bequeathed to us. But if on the other hand we accept the power that Christ offers, or that Christ will be in us, then we reject the evil and choose the good.

And so still in the plan of God man is to be a self-governed being. He is to choose, he is to direct; and the victory is to be his.

But man does not always thus govern himself, more is the pity. Every man without Christ tends away from this self-direction, this self-power, this government of the soul, into a system of government that depends upon creeds, rituals, formal laws, rites, ceremonies, outward observances,—anything that will avoid his actual fight against evil and will save him from utter renunciation of all that is wrong.

History repeats itself. We can get multitudes of illustrations, exemplifications of this principle, from the history of the people who have lived before us. See how it was with the ancient people of God. Trusting in the lineal descent from Abraham, they supposed they were truly Israelites, and forgot, if they ever knew it, that character had anything to do with sonship. Trusting in blood relationship with Abraham, they ignored the sinful corruption of their lives, which contradicted everything but a material connection with the father of the faithful.

Christ said to them and of them, “If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the works of your father. . . . Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do.” John 8: 39-41, 44. Their trust in Abraham was really a trust in the flesh, for only through the flesh were they kin with Abraham. This was a trust in man, a trust in the flesh, notwithstanding the fact that God had pronounced a curse upon him who trusted in man and made flesh his arm.

Claiming to believe in the Word of God through Moses, they were really making that Word of no value whatever by their false interpretations and vain tradition. They really did not know what was God’s Word through Moses; they had misconstrued the Scriptures according to what they thought was true. Said Christ: “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” John 5: 45-47.

“Moses in whom ye trust.” They were trusting in man, or rather in their own conceptions of that man, in their own ideas of what he taught; and so trusting in the purely human, they refused the divine. This is the constant result of substituting legalism for the power of God.

All Christ’s teachings are directed against the mistake made by the Jews. Over and over He shows them that they are trusting in pure ceremonialism, legalism, outward forms, rites, and ceremonies; and that only one thing in all this universe is acceptable with God, and that is a life conformed to God’s will.

Notwithstanding this terrible mistake and all its consequences, notwithstanding the plain lessons in the Word of God from the Christ of God, men in our day are attempting the same sort of thing, losing the power of the spiritual life, finding it vanishing from the earth. They think to bring in the blessing of God by a system of laws which will compel outward conformity to the certain principles which they believe are divine.

In the first place, the laws for Sunday observance are in no sense divine. There is no law for Sunday-keeping that originates with God. It is in every sense of the word man-made. Whatever power or authority or appearance of sanctity it may have, is put upon it purely by man himself. It is wholly a system of legalism, of ritualism, of ceremonialism.

And if the ritualism, the ceremonialism, the outward forms and practises which God instituted; we say, if these things which God gave were an injury when trusted to by God’s people, to the exclusion of a righteous life, will not the man-made ritualism and ceremonialism be as injurious and even more injurious than were those, when it leads away from that life which God would have a man live?

The state is ordained of God to prevent that which would endanger life and property, to give a place of ordinary peace and safety where man can live and establish character. Such a state is merely civil; but in matters that are strictly moral, there is absolutely no value whatever in anything but heart religion. All appeals to law and all reliance upon legal measures is but to founder upon the same rock that God’s people made shipwreck on two thousand years ago.

Why is it that the great men of the present age can not see the utter valuelessness of morality that is purely outward, that is mere conformity to legal enactments? Moral quality must emanate from the heart. Christ Himself has told us that from the heart proceeds all the evil that defiles man; and any system of civil enactments, all the laws that man can pile up, can not touch the heart, can not change its quality, can not affect the life.

But God has given the Gospel to reach the heart, to purify the soul, to cleanse the fountain of being, to make man a self-governed and self-governing creature who is at the

same time absolutely in accord with the divine will.

God forbid that we should trust in laws of man, or in anything that pertains to man. God help us to trust in His Gospel, not to be ashamed of it. "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." Rom. 1:16. R.