The Moral Law | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Oct 10, 1865

The Moral Law.

It is said that "God has a written law and a gospel; the law humbles us, and the gospel comforts us; the law casts us down, and the gospel raises us up; the law convinces us of our misery, and the gospel convinces us of His mercy; the law discovers sin, and the gospel discovers grace, and Christ."

When the grace of God is accepted, it leads the receiver to forsake the ways of disobedience, and he feels as the Psalmist has expressed, that God's precepts are lovely and perfect; and he learns from the sacred word that they are unchangeable and everlasting.

Concerning this law of perfect precepts, which some presumably believe has been changed, while others affirm that its requirements are not binding in the present dispensation, the noted J. W. Nevin, D. D. in his summary of Biblical Antiquities, gives the following remarks:

The Moral Law, summarily comprehended in the ten commandments uttered from Mount Sinai, requires in all its precepts, a spiritual obedience. It contemplates the heart. It carries its authority into all duties; even such as were ceremonial in their nature, were enforced by its power; because when the will of God is understood, whatever it may prescribe, the obligation to regard it flows from the first principle of natural and unchangeable reason; namely, that the creature should in everything render a willing obedience to its infinitely perfect Creator. Thus, for an ancient Jew to eat swine's flesh, while it brought him under the penalty of the ceremonial law, was an offense, also, if willfully done, against the moral law, not less truly than it would have been for him to take his Maker's name in vain, or to steal his neighbor's property. Our Saviour teaches us that the sum of all the moral law is expressed in two great precepts. (Matt. xxii, 37-40.) Love to God will secure natural obedience to all his will, and "love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." (John xiv, 23, Rom. xiii, 8-10.) This law is that which Paul speaks of as being written in the hearts of men. (Rom. ii, 15.) Man was originally made so as to have a natural sense of its obligation, and a natural knowledge of its precepts. And, although, by the fall, the clearness of this knowledge has been much obscured, it has not still been utterly taken away; but some vestiges of it are to be found in every age, among all people. (Rom. i, 19-21.) It is still only by reason of sin, that men do not all learn the glory of God from his works, and are not all moved by their inward sense to understand the moral law, and to make it the rule of their conduct.

This law, we have said, never loses its force. Every human soul is at all times under its authority. Nor will it in any case give up the smallest part of its claim. It requires full obedience, or tremendous punishment, such as falling upon a creature like man, must doom him to everlasting destruction. The law is holy, just, and good—and whosoever offendeth in one point is guilty of all—for it is written, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them," and again, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Rom. vii, 12, James ii, 10, Gal. iii, 10, Matt. v, 18.) According to this law we are to be judged in the great day. Reader! have you not broken it times without number? How then will you appear before the judgment-seat of God? How will you stand in that awful trial, where a single offense is enough to condemn you forever? Can it be that you have not yet begun to look out for some way of escape from so fearful a prospect?