The Seal of God’s Law

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 27, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 22.

The Seal of God’s Law.

THE seal of a legal document is that which validates or authenticates the document, which tells who executed it, and his authority so to do. God has a law, and His law has a seal.

The one distinguishing characteristic of the true God is His creative power. “All the gods of the nations are idols, but Jehovah made the heavens.” This great fact is repeatedly emphasized in both the Old and the New Testament. This characteristic must be revealed in His law, and in the seal of that law.

The great constitution of God’s government is the Decalogue. In that great document, as spoken by His voice from heaven, His name, “Jehovah,” occurs eight times; namely, in the first five commandments. In the first, second, third, and fifth precepts we are simply told that He is “Jehovah thy God.” In the precept guarding His name that name occurs twice. In each of the others referred to, it occurs once, except in the fourth commandment, where it occurs three times. In that precept we are not alone informed that He is “Jehovah thy God,” but that He made “heaven and earth, . . . and all that in them is.” This shows who He is and that His jurisdiction is the heaven and the earth. The fourth precept of the Decalogue, the Sabbath precept, is therefore the seal of God’s law.

That seal therefore becomes “the seal of the living God;” for the seal is the authentication of the law, on the maintenance of which the stability of His government rests. Rev. 7:1-4; Isa. 8:16.

But no man is sealed with a mere acceptance of the fact of the Sabbath, or by its nominal observance. He only is sealed when that law is written in his heart, and that seal becomes a part of his very life. But this can only be done by the Spirit of God; and therefore the Spirit becomes the sealer, but not the seal. “Ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” The Sabbath may well be nominated God’s seal; the sealer is the Holy Spirit; while its reception is the writing of God’s law in all its fulness upon the heart of him who bows to all the authority of the Most High.