The LORD is well pleased for his righteousness’ sake; he will magnify the law, and make it honourable.
The Lord in His own righteousness delights to lift up His law and surround it with honor, and this work is accomplished in the Messiah Jesus, whose gentle ministry of teaching and healing shows what honoring the law truly means rather than lessening its force or adding crushing human demands. He magnified it by uncovering its full spiritual reach into thought, motive and heart, by stripping away rabbinical traditions that hid its meaning, and by a life of perfect obedience in human nature proving it can be kept. His suffering and death did not weaken, change or set it aside but exalted it as unchangeable and still binding, meeting its claims and paying its penalty so that justice and mercy are seen together. The law thus honored is the moral law of the Ten Commandments, holy, just and good, which grace does not abolish but upholds, revealing sin and leading the sinner to Christ for pardon and power to obey. This is a prophecy fulfilled especially in the last days when the law is made void, as His chosen people stand firm to lift up His downtrodden commandments and proclaim them with the faith of Jesus to prepare the world to meet Him.
Servant and Immediate Context
The verse closes the portrayal of God's Servant, the Messiah Jesus, whose humble and compassionate work of bringing truth through teaching and healing shows what it means to honor the law. The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness' sake to display that righteousness by lifting up His law and giving it honor, and that law-honoring work is the work He assigns to His servants. A servant here is anyone He selects and appoints to do a certain work as minister of His will, even one as ignorant of that will as Nebuchadnezzar was, and He pledges His glory for the success of the work. That work is done now through a decided, startling warning message that awakens those dead in trespasses and sins, especially in cities and places where truth has no standing, a testing message that leads the blind and deaf by paths they have not known and makes darkness light before them.
The Messiah magnifies and honors the law rather than lessening its importance or loosening its binding claims. He also frees the divine precepts from burdensome human demands that discourage those seeking to serve God acceptably. The verse belongs with the promises and assurance of Isaiah 40, 41, 42, and 43, words the Lord will fulfill, calling His people to seek wisdom from God rather than turning to finite persons.
Its immediate setting joins the condition of His people as robbed and spoiled, snared in holes and hidden, made a prey and a spoil with none to deliver and none to say restore, to the declaration that He has redeemed those He has called by name. As He rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt by making a path through the sea for deliverance, so this calls for greater trust and confidence now to stand where He can work with His people and to honor and glorify Him in unknown times ahead. In the last days when His law is made void He will manifest His great grace to His chosen ones more fully than at any other time, and for His righteousness' sake He will magnify the law and make it honorable as a prophecy to be fulfilled.
Ezra's revival reflects this, for the law was exalted as the people were taught to study it, while the prophets' words of the coming Messiah brought hope and comfort to the weary. Prophecy and its fulfillment teach exalting God and His law while keeping the human agent out of sight and hidden in Christ. A remarkable manifestation from God is not meant to exalt a person but to magnify the truth believed. Covenant with Christ unites the majesty of an omnipotent King with the gentleness and tenderness of a caretaking shepherd, and the set time to favor Zion will soon come, with men and means provided to accomplish His work just as He ordained it without leaving His people to shame. He desires men to understand the claims He has upon them, His work is to be presented before the world in distinct holy sacred lines, His kingdom comes not with observation but by the gentleness of the inspiration of His word and the operation of His Spirit in the soul, and He will judge anyone who interposes between others and God to lead them into paths not cast up for the ransomed.
How Christ Magnified Law
Christ magnified the law by revealing its full spiritual meaning, its far-reaching principles, and its eternal obligation. The law requires obedience not only in outward acts but in thoughts, motives, intentions, and purposes of the heart known only to God, reaching inner sins of covetousness, lust, and anger and covering every part of life. He fulfilled it by fully meeting its requirements and living as an example of perfect conformity to God's will. It remains an unchanged, perfect rule of life founded on love to God and humanity, in force for every generation as the believer's rule and the sinner's condemnation, expressing humanity's whole duty to reject ungodliness and worldly desires and live soberly, righteously, and godly.
He expounded the moral law He Himself had spoken at Sinai amid flame and thunder and tempest. He stripped away the rubbish of rabbinical tradition, human exactions, and minute requirements that had made the commandments of no effect and hidden their real meaning. He rescued the commandments from companionship with error and placed them in the framework of the gospel in their true significance and importance, so that to listeners they seemed a new revelation. He took nothing from the sacredness of a single precept but revealed the whole law as exceeding broad and exalted in character, penetrating to the motives of the heart so that the lover of self is a transgressor.
He came to exalt the law, not to lessen its dignity, and this was especially seen in the Sabbath. The Jews had perverted the law by traditions and misconceptions and made it a yoke of bondage, a byword among other nations, hedging the holy day with senseless restrictions that made it almost unendurable, forbidding kindling a fire or lighting a candle, with views so narrow that people became slaves to useless regulations. Those rules were not the law's true requirements, for a just God has given no commandment which cannot be consistently kept by all, and necessary duties of life if sins would make men as guilty in employing others to do them as in doing them themselves. He deliberately healed the worst case at Bethesda on the Sabbath and told the man to carry his bed, making visible what is lawful, challenging extra restrictions, exposing traditions as void, restoring the Sabbath's intended blessing and holy dignity, and showing that acts of mercy accord with the law. His Sabbath observance and defense of His disciples show their actions were in harmony with the Sabbath commandment.
He magnified the law by keeping it in human nature as a true obedient Son, keeping His Father's commandments and coming not to do His own will but the will of Him who sent Him. His blameless, stainless life showed complete loyalty to right and perfect agreement between teaching and conduct, displaying the law in a living representative in whom no inconsistency or sin could be found. He pledged Himself to keep the law Adam transgressed and demonstrated that it is faultless, not arbitrary, and can be kept inviolate by man, so that sinners may obey God's holy precepts in His strength. In disobeying it man brings upon himself the very evils its restrictions seek to avert. God's love is magnified in His law by restricting and binding the impulse to work against the attributes of God, and human nature by receiving Christ by faith may become sons of God in copartnership with Christ.
His equality with the Father made Him fully sufficient to become a sin offering for transgressors and to magnify the law and make it honorable. His suffering and death did not abolish, weaken, diminish, or set aside the law but exalted it and proved it unchangeable, unalterable, and still binding, confirming its sacred claims upon the transgressor. If the law could have been changed or set aside to save humanity, He would not have needed to die to save from sin's penalty; He met its claims, paid the debt, fulfilled its demands, and showed God will not set aside the penalty. He did not suffer to abolish the law or weaken its force but to bring light and immortality to light, and respect for its claims leads to promised blessings while choosing sin brings its sure consequence. The cross is the unanswerable proof of the law's unchangeable nature, and the law will stand thoroughly vindicated in the great day of God when every case is decided, firm as the throne of Jehovah, condemning all who had light but refused it and accepted error to avoid the cross.
The law identifies sin and reveals the sinner's guilt and need of a Savior, but cannot pardon or save the transgressor. Christ bears the transgressor's sins as substitute, surety, and righteousness, suffering its penalty and curse in the sinner's place so that people might escape its curse through a life of obedience and be reconciled to God through His imputed righteousness. He sheds His blood to make full atonement when man's sentence was death, so transgressors have hope and the law stands forth without a mar, full of power and majesty.
He came not only to redeem humanity but to magnify the law before human minds, before the world, before the worlds God created, before angels, and throughout the universe. His death demonstrates its claims could not be set aside and its transgression required atonement. The Father's and Son's costly sacrifice shows justice and mercy are the foundation of God's law and government. The law Satan questioned and claimed must be changed is beyond change, faultless, perfect, holy, just, and good, with not one jot or tittle moved from its foundation though Satan threw his whole might against it and drew many holy angels to his side, proving God perfect in wisdom for giving a law that is the foundation of government in heaven and earth and can be obeyed. At the cross the law and the unchangeable character of God's government are displayed before the heavenly universe, Satan, and humanity, settling doubts about God's justice, vindicating a God of justice and mercy before all heaven and the human family, securing the throne of justice even if humanity were lost, with the human race saved by returning to allegiance; Christ alone could restore honor to God's government, and this forever settles the controversy, proving through eternal ages that God is unchangeable and will not alter the word gone from His lips.
By His death He vindicated the law's claims and gave to world and angels an unanswerable argument that Jehovah's law is unchangeable. This disproves Satan's arguments that sin can be immortalized, that Christ abolished the law, and that evildoers can be in favor with God. The love displayed on Calvary magnified the law and vindicated its immutability; there the law is seen magnified and made honorable. His grace, peace, pardon, and eternal life are for all who are obedient, and that sacrifice purchased the crown of immortality for all who look to Christ and live.
He did not suffer in Gethsemane to give liberty to transgress the law but because it had been transgressed, to give it all honor and respect while saving the sinner by Himself enduring the penalty. This exposes Satan's falsehood that leaves the Christian world transgressing, where men by tradition make void the law instead of leading to obedience of all its commands. He magnified the law in dying and thereby purchased a second probation for the race, and respect for that sacrifice requires obedience to the law He magnified, for those who do not obey can never enter the city of God, since habits of disobedience and rebellion formed on earth would bring a second rebellion if carried into heaven.
The verse is fulfilled in the great day of atonement now, with Christ standing in the heavenly sanctuary before the mercy seat making atonement for His people. Because He died to exalt the law and make it honorable, those who love God must honor Him by strict obedience and must not manipulate the law to suit convenience, especially by spending the hours of His holy Sabbath for themselves. He magnified the law by accepting its condition, completing redemption through sacrifice, then ascending to continue His mission by sending the Holy Spirit to His disciples.
He came to make God's law great and honored by a life of self-denying love, and died to lift it up and show God's character never changes. His death exalted the law and testified its character is changeless, so those who join Him in proclaiming it can look to Jesus for comfort, help, and His promised presence always to the end of the world. His sufferings magnified and exalted the repudiated law, and His perfect obedience upheld its honor. By bearing the penalty He upheld the law as holy, just, and good, exposed sin's true character, and maintained the honor of God's authority, and His sinless incarnation and voluntary sacrifice secured eternal life while exalting the law.
Law's Enduring Holy Character
The law He honored is the moral law, the Ten Commandments, which remains the holy rule of God's government and the rule of life obligating all people. Only the ceremonial law with its ceremonies, sacrifices and offerings was done away and abrogated at His death, while the moral law was not nailed to the cross. He alone can free transgressors from the consequences of breaking it, and favor is received through repentance for past sins, faith in His atoning sacrifice, and a life of obedience in harmony with and subjection to that rule. Those who profess Him as Saviour while at war with God and refusing obedience will finally be told He knows them not.
It is the same law He Himself proclaimed from Sinai in terrible grandeur, and He came to magnify it and make it honorable, not to change it or abolish it. No change in it is necessary, and His death on Calvary in the sinner's behalf proves the law of heaven unchangeable, for if it needed change or could be changed Satan's rebellion would be justified and would show Satan wiser than God with right to supreme authority. To call that law an old rickety dead and buried law, an old thunder-and-lightning law, an old bloody Jewish law not deserving a gravestone, is blasphemous contempt against the Most High that pleases Satan and are the great swelling words of the man of sin. The change made in the day of rest and acceptance of the false sabbath therefore places people unwittingly under the banner of the prince of darkness, though God overlooked times of ignorance and now commands men everywhere to repent and honor the unchanged law.
God's downtrodden law is to be magnified and made honorable by being displayed in its true character as holy, just, and good, which His people do by obeying His commandments and bringing its principles into every business transaction. He does not use grace to do away with the law or to take its place, for for His righteousness He upholds it. The law is truth, perfect and in complete harmony with grace, and an imperfect law would have perpetuated sin. He lifts it from beneath trampling feet through Jesus condemning sin in the flesh and bearing sin's curse while keeping His Father's commandments, and grace when received and allowed to work testifies to the validity of the law by carrying out its living principles, which man can keep only by sharing the divine nature and drawing near to God by faith.
The law will be magnified because it is the revelation of the character of Jehovah, which is why Satan is so bitter against it. Believers who lift it up are not alone, for God Himself will vindicate His downtrodden law as truth is given line upon line and precept upon precept until error flees and the sunshine of Christ's righteousness rolls back false doctrine to victory. As Head of humanity He fulfilled all righteousness to show man can do the same work and meet every specification of God's requirements, furnishing treasures of grace so not one need miss heaven and making the path of commandment-keeping easier. Truth, holiness and perfection of character are attainable to all who strive for them, and this is the very foundation of the new covenant with no substitution of a changed law, for the law taught on the Mount of Blessings is the same law from the beginning and from Sinai whose far-reaching principles He applied and which remain forever the great standard of righteousness by which all shall be judged, the tree of which the gospel is the blossoms and fruit.
God set apart the seventh day and gave it to humanity to keep holy, and His covenant word cannot be broken or changed, so those loyal to Him honor Him by obedience even when the law is widely treated with contempt. He came to exalt the law and prove it immutable and binding, bringing light and immortality to light by suffering and dying because it is binding, and upholding its claims plainly and decidedly. To belittle its claims reproaches Christ, opposes Jehovah, opposes Christ, contradicts and denies His plain teaching, for law and gospel are in harmony and the gospel does not set the law aside.
He came not to nail the holy law to the cross or make it void, and those who testify it is nailed in the Christian age and make it void crucify that law just as He was crucified between two thieves in the Jewish age. They will be companions of His crucifiers wailing because of Him beholding in His glory Him whom they pierced, seized with terror when judgment sits and the books are opened and every man is judged according to things written in the books, as his works have been. Jehovah's law has been broken down and trampled underfoot, with a breach made by Satan and the man of sin who said the fourth commandment was changed, and He came to build it up and make up that breach. God will set everything in heaven to work to accomplish His purpose, and those who join Him in building it up are called the repairer of the breach. The Father gave the law and the Son died to magnify it and make it honorable, so talking about the law honors both Father and Son and exalting the law does not set aside Jesus. Through His life of suffering and death in human nature He made full provision to lift people up so they could keep the law, which is the standard of holiness and rule of right and continues to condemn sin to the end of time.
Grace Gospel and Obedience
Preaching grace never puts the law aside but declares its importance, for the law exposes sin and wakes the sense of need for Christ, and faithful ministry therefore upholds the law while leading sinners out of sin into a purer life. Christ stands in His true place as the sin-pardoning Savior who died both to uphold the law and give it honor and to justify the sinner who trusts wholly in the merits of His crucified and risen blood, so that pardoning work and vindication of the law belong together and must be held together in the mind. The glory of the law is Christ, and whenever the law is presented hearers are to be pointed to His righteousness and to the throne of promise arched with the rainbow, where mercy and truth meet and righteousness and peace embrace. Looking to Him in penitence, praise and thanksgiving upholds law together with mercy and forms character to represent Him to the world, for the law is not to be set forth as justice alone but together with mercy in Christ.
He magnified the law by elevating it, expanding every precept, and proving its immutability by His obedience and by His death to save men, leaving in His obedience an example that man also may meet its demands. The truth as it is in Jesus is acquaintance with the holy, just and good law thus magnified, with obedience to every precept of Jehovah from the heart, exalted before worlds unfallen and the fallen race without abating one jot or tittle, as changeless as God's throne. Understood apart from Christ the law has crushing power that blots the sinner out of existence, but understood in connection with Christ and received by faith as substitute and surety it makes the sinner a prisoner of hope. He exalted the law by living it in perfect purity and holiness and by bearing the world's sin in His death on Calvary's cross where He paid the debt, which shows the moral law changeless and standing forever, and He could no more abolish the law than abolish Himself.
His obedience makes it possible for people to keep the law, for He gives believers His righteousness so they may share the divine nature, strive for victory over sin, be found obedient, and cease the crimes and murders by which men overlook nature's laws. His unwavering obedience showed the law is the standard of righteousness for all, and His sacrifice did not abolish the law or lower its standard but upheld justice and gave humanity another opportunity. The law cannot pardon its breakers but reveals guilt and points to Christ, who bears sin and imputes His righteousness to those who accept Him, and through His power people can keep the commandments. His mission as Redeemer was to exalt the law and by His own righteousness put man where obedience to its precepts is possible, so genuine faith requires repentance toward God for transgression and coming into harmony with God's government by obedience.
Those who claim Christ as Savior while the heart stays at war with the law and refuses obedience will find Him of no avail and will at last be rejected as unknown to Him. He died to vindicate and exalt the law before all nations, tongues and peoples, and to be redeemed is to cease from sin, for no heart stirred to rebellion against the law has any union with Christ. To claim to be holy and sinless while loathing the law as a yoke of bondage and charging its keepers with falling from grace is self-deceived, selfish, spotted Pharisaic complacency, while right decision is revealed by action in harmony with the law and heavenly blessing rests on obedience cleansed by Christ, who does not save by the law yet will not save in disobedience. He died for each person not to abolish the law but to make it honorable, so no greater light can come while trampling His holy commandments, and mere profession makes no one a Christian.
Those who keep transgressing cannot promote God's glory and have no entrance into the city of God, but Christians following the pattern of Christ's life may be confident of eternal life measured by the life of God. Only the loyal and true who by obedient lives exalt the law meet its fulfillment and receive welcome with abundant entrance into the future immortal inheritance and eternal weight of glory, clothed in white robes and crowned as true subjects of His kingdom. Those who schooled themselves to treat the law as null and void, choosing false theories in place of truth and holiness and righteousness, see the inconsistency of uniting with the loyal to honor it, have nothing in them to change their sentiments, have no passport, and cannot be trusted through the gates. He fulfills the law without abolishing it, and making it honorable means upholding its principles rather than setting them aside, so grace never authorizes breaking the law to follow natural desires or to justify tyrannical action.
To magnify the law is to uphold and honor it by obedience even before enemies, and God gives no strength to use for justifying disobedience, transgression and sin, which stands opposite to dishonoring God by partnership with satanic agencies to make His word of no effect. The law is perfect, and when Christ abides in the heart His sacrifices in the plan of salvation are truly grasped and something of that perfection is understood, filling the heart with wonder and love, melting it with His manifested love, bringing devotion to His service, refusal to let time and attention be absorbed by selfish worldly interests, and making obedience precious. He exalted the law through obedience, and true commandment-keeping people share that work by showing unspotted integrity and testifying by their course that the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. His righteousness was perfect obedience to His Father's commandments, and God's people magnify the law by their own perfect obedience to Jehovah, which fights the good fight of faith against obstacles and refuses to bow to Baal.
Such obedience must never be blamed as the cause of His crucifixion, for blessing is on keepers and curse on transgressors, so speech and pen must not praise leaders who carry Satan's banner and exalt the papacy against God's last-day work. The law is made honorable when its righteous principles are magnified, His teachings magnified them, and workers are to teach obedience by precept and example while reproving fraud and selfishness. The law expresses God's character and obedience meets His standard of righteousness, and disciples living in Christ's purity, faith and obedience through the Spirit were to witness for Him by exalting the law. In life and character by power from the Father He magnified and highly exalted the law without relaxing one iota to reconcile humanity, and His death did not annul it but showed its immutable changeless character.
Through bearing transgression's penalty He prepared pardon for the fallen, that repentant sinners may have elevated loyal minds brought by His power to the divine level in sanctified holy surrender to God's mind, crowned in honor and glory as partakers of divine nature, and for this saving work He died for a guilty world.
Prophecy for the Last Days
In the last days, when His law is made void, the Lord will manifest His great grace to His chosen ones more fully than ever, even more fully than at any other time, being well pleased for His righteousness' sake to magnify the law and make it honorable. This is a prophecy that will be fulfilled. That promise stands joined to the condition of His people as robbed and spoiled, snared and hidden, made a prey and a spoil with none to deliver or restore.
God's chosen ones stand firm while breasting a storm of opposition from the world to lift up God's downtrodden commandments and present them as holy and worthy of honor, and by that work they are the light of the world. No mortal man is given a message to pass judgment upon them while they do this, calling the church a harlot, Babylon, a den of thieves, a cage of every unclean and hateful bird, a habitation of devils, one making nations drunk with the wine of fornication, confederating with kings and great men of earth, growing rich through delicacies, with sins reaching heaven. No such message against Seventh-day Adventists has been given to any man to bear.
In the last days Christ will be rejected while antichrist is accepted. Human commandments and false laws will be rigorously enforced, human powers will try to nullify God's unchanging law which Christ came to magnify and make honorable, and Christ's followers will suffer persecution and death for the truth. Christ will manifest Himself to His loyal church, whose members have purified their souls through obedience to the truth, and the law of God will be magnified and honored.
Calling to Uphold Law
The verse foretells the present work of carrying the warning message to the world and explaining why obedience to God is believed and taught. Camp meetings belong to that work as places to give this information, and sanitariums are established as an educating power to reform people and restore in them the moral image of God. Through knowledge of the Word men are converted and then use their means and ability to extend knowledge of the truth. That same work arouses slumbering senses to see how far departure by worldly policy and conformity to worldly principles has gone from the Lord's ordinances, for such conformity is transgression against the law of God, and the law is magnified and made honorable by calling people back to obedience.
For His righteousness' sake the Lord exalts His law and makes it honorable, and Jehovah's law in its holy character and claims is to be set forth clearly and made widely known so its claims rest with greatest weight on human minds. This setting forth belongs to the third angel's message, so that each person hears the truth and chooses whether to obey God rather than man. The proclamation accompanies the worldwide message of Christ's righteousness preparing people to meet Christ at His second coming, as the final message of mercy to a perishing world.
This magnifying applies to the message for this time, which upholds the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus and includes the messages of the first and second angels. The world will answer to the Lawgiver for His broken law, so the law must not be put out of sight. Its claims must be presented in their true sacred character so people can decide for or against the truth. Proclaiming it in this way is part of the warning message to the world that prepares the way of the Lord.
That presentation includes defending God's sanctified memorial, the Sabbath, against efforts to compel honor to a false sabbath, while the message of Christ's righteousness is proclaimed throughout the world to close the work of the third angel. God's law is magnified by raising the banner of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, making obedience to God's law the great issue never allowed out of sight. This means striving to arouse both church members and those making no profession to see the claims of the law of Heaven and to obey them. The verse is fulfilled when the perpetuity of the law is preached publicly before unbelievers, speaking of its continuing binding force in evangelistic meetings so large congregations hear its claims, many are strongly convicted, and hearts are prepared for the Sabbath question that follows.
The law is made honorable when magnified in daily life, and parents who live by it help their children see its honor. Its precepts are to be magnified by words and actions, and those who honor it will be honored by it in the judgment while those who treat it with contempt will be condemned by it. God requires His law magnified in word and deed in His institutions, honoring Him and keeping the true faith of the Bible prominent rather than fashioning after the world or hiding the truth. Health institutions and sanitariums are to honor God in word and deed, make Bible truths prominent before those they serve, and uphold obedience including the Sabbath commandment as the sign of allegiance.
The health and temperance institution at Battle Creek was not to be fashioned after any other institution in the world but to stand distinct as a Seventh-day Adventist institution giving character to His cause, with truth as the all-important thing shining openly and the true Bible faith ever prominent before patrons, serving as an asylum where those accepting the truth could resort when sick. Schools after the pattern of the schools of the prophets likewise keep God's works continually before students and teach Scripture and the way of the Lord, including justice and judgment, preparing them to obey His law. Magnifying God's law is work done by men and women led and guided by the Holy Spirit together with advancing the kingdom of grace, and as long as they do this the work goes forward. When they give evidence of the fruits of the Spirit in heart and life and character, souls are reached and saved.
The one great point on which all the strength and efforts of Christ's army are to be concentrated is magnifying the laws of His kingdom before the world, before angels, and before men. This requires concerted united action in solid straightforward lines in obedience to orders, with the will of every soldier wholly submitted to God, not independent atoms doing desultory meaningless acts. Disorder breaks and disorganizes the ranks and serves Satan's effort to defeat the work. Everything possible is to be done to uphold the law when sharing the truth with visitors to Battle Creek. God's people are to magnify His law and make it honorable while it is trampled by the disloyal, for the gospel brings people back from breaking God's commandments since sin is transgression of the law.
The Lord in His own righteousness delights to lift up His law and surround it with honor, and this work is accomplished in the Messiah Jesus, whose gentle ministry of teaching and healing shows what honoring the law truly means rather than lessening its force or adding crushing human demands. He magnified it by uncovering its full spiritual reach into thought, motive and heart, by stripping away rabbinical traditions that hid its meaning, and by a life of perfect obedience in human nature proving it can be kept. His suffering and death did not weaken, change or set it aside but exalted it as unchangeable and still binding, meeting its claims and paying its penalty so that justice and mercy are seen together. The law thus honored is the moral law of the Ten Commandments, holy, just and good, which grace does not abolish but upholds, revealing sin and leading the sinner to Christ for pardon and power to obey. This is a prophecy fulfilled especially in the last days when the law is made void, as His chosen people stand firm to lift up His downtrodden commandments and proclaim them with the faith of Jesus to prepare the world to meet Him.
Servant and Immediate Context
The verse closes the portrayal of God's Servant, the Messiah Jesus, whose humble and compassionate work of bringing truth through teaching and healing shows what it means to honor the law. The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness' sake to display that righteousness by lifting up His law and giving it honor, and that law-honoring work is the work He assigns to His servants. A servant here is anyone He selects and appoints to do a certain work as minister of His will, even one as ignorant of that will as Nebuchadnezzar was, and He pledges His glory for the success of the work. That work is done now through a decided, startling warning message that awakens those dead in trespasses and sins, especially in cities and places where truth has no standing, a testing message that leads the blind and deaf by paths they have not known and makes darkness light before them.
The Messiah magnifies and honors the law rather than lessening its importance or loosening its binding claims. He also frees the divine precepts from burdensome human demands that discourage those seeking to serve God acceptably. The verse belongs with the promises and assurance of Isaiah 40, 41, 42, and 43, words the Lord will fulfill, calling His people to seek wisdom from God rather than turning to finite persons.
Its immediate setting joins the condition of His people as robbed and spoiled, snared in holes and hidden, made a prey and a spoil with none to deliver and none to say restore, to the declaration that He has redeemed those He has called by name. As He rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt by making a path through the sea for deliverance, so this calls for greater trust and confidence now to stand where He can work with His people and to honor and glorify Him in unknown times ahead. In the last days when His law is made void He will manifest His great grace to His chosen ones more fully than at any other time, and for His righteousness' sake He will magnify the law and make it honorable as a prophecy to be fulfilled.
Ezra's revival reflects this, for the law was exalted as the people were taught to study it, while the prophets' words of the coming Messiah brought hope and comfort to the weary. Prophecy and its fulfillment teach exalting God and His law while keeping the human agent out of sight and hidden in Christ. A remarkable manifestation from God is not meant to exalt a person but to magnify the truth believed. Covenant with Christ unites the majesty of an omnipotent King with the gentleness and tenderness of a caretaking shepherd, and the set time to favor Zion will soon come, with men and means provided to accomplish His work just as He ordained it without leaving His people to shame. He desires men to understand the claims He has upon them, His work is to be presented before the world in distinct holy sacred lines, His kingdom comes not with observation but by the gentleness of the inspiration of His word and the operation of His Spirit in the soul, and He will judge anyone who interposes between others and God to lead them into paths not cast up for the ransomed.
How Christ Magnified Law
Christ magnified the law by revealing its full spiritual meaning, its far-reaching principles, and its eternal obligation. The law requires obedience not only in outward acts but in thoughts, motives, intentions, and purposes of the heart known only to God, reaching inner sins of covetousness, lust, and anger and covering every part of life. He fulfilled it by fully meeting its requirements and living as an example of perfect conformity to God's will. It remains an unchanged, perfect rule of life founded on love to God and humanity, in force for every generation as the believer's rule and the sinner's condemnation, expressing humanity's whole duty to reject ungodliness and worldly desires and live soberly, righteously, and godly.
He expounded the moral law He Himself had spoken at Sinai amid flame and thunder and tempest. He stripped away the rubbish of rabbinical tradition, human exactions, and minute requirements that had made the commandments of no effect and hidden their real meaning. He rescued the commandments from companionship with error and placed them in the framework of the gospel in their true significance and importance, so that to listeners they seemed a new revelation. He took nothing from the sacredness of a single precept but revealed the whole law as exceeding broad and exalted in character, penetrating to the motives of the heart so that the lover of self is a transgressor.
He came to exalt the law, not to lessen its dignity, and this was especially seen in the Sabbath. The Jews had perverted the law by traditions and misconceptions and made it a yoke of bondage, a byword among other nations, hedging the holy day with senseless restrictions that made it almost unendurable, forbidding kindling a fire or lighting a candle, with views so narrow that people became slaves to useless regulations. Those rules were not the law's true requirements, for a just God has given no commandment which cannot be consistently kept by all, and necessary duties of life if sins would make men as guilty in employing others to do them as in doing them themselves. He deliberately healed the worst case at Bethesda on the Sabbath and told the man to carry his bed, making visible what is lawful, challenging extra restrictions, exposing traditions as void, restoring the Sabbath's intended blessing and holy dignity, and showing that acts of mercy accord with the law. His Sabbath observance and defense of His disciples show their actions were in harmony with the Sabbath commandment.
He magnified the law by keeping it in human nature as a true obedient Son, keeping His Father's commandments and coming not to do His own will but the will of Him who sent Him. His blameless, stainless life showed complete loyalty to right and perfect agreement between teaching and conduct, displaying the law in a living representative in whom no inconsistency or sin could be found. He pledged Himself to keep the law Adam transgressed and demonstrated that it is faultless, not arbitrary, and can be kept inviolate by man, so that sinners may obey God's holy precepts in His strength. In disobeying it man brings upon himself the very evils its restrictions seek to avert. God's love is magnified in His law by restricting and binding the impulse to work against the attributes of God, and human nature by receiving Christ by faith may become sons of God in copartnership with Christ.
His equality with the Father made Him fully sufficient to become a sin offering for transgressors and to magnify the law and make it honorable. His suffering and death did not abolish, weaken, diminish, or set aside the law but exalted it and proved it unchangeable, unalterable, and still binding, confirming its sacred claims upon the transgressor. If the law could have been changed or set aside to save humanity, He would not have needed to die to save from sin's penalty; He met its claims, paid the debt, fulfilled its demands, and showed God will not set aside the penalty. He did not suffer to abolish the law or weaken its force but to bring light and immortality to light, and respect for its claims leads to promised blessings while choosing sin brings its sure consequence. The cross is the unanswerable proof of the law's unchangeable nature, and the law will stand thoroughly vindicated in the great day of God when every case is decided, firm as the throne of Jehovah, condemning all who had light but refused it and accepted error to avoid the cross.
The law identifies sin and reveals the sinner's guilt and need of a Savior, but cannot pardon or save the transgressor. Christ bears the transgressor's sins as substitute, surety, and righteousness, suffering its penalty and curse in the sinner's place so that people might escape its curse through a life of obedience and be reconciled to God through His imputed righteousness. He sheds His blood to make full atonement when man's sentence was death, so transgressors have hope and the law stands forth without a mar, full of power and majesty.
He came not only to redeem humanity but to magnify the law before human minds, before the world, before the worlds God created, before angels, and throughout the universe. His death demonstrates its claims could not be set aside and its transgression required atonement. The Father's and Son's costly sacrifice shows justice and mercy are the foundation of God's law and government. The law Satan questioned and claimed must be changed is beyond change, faultless, perfect, holy, just, and good, with not one jot or tittle moved from its foundation though Satan threw his whole might against it and drew many holy angels to his side, proving God perfect in wisdom for giving a law that is the foundation of government in heaven and earth and can be obeyed. At the cross the law and the unchangeable character of God's government are displayed before the heavenly universe, Satan, and humanity, settling doubts about God's justice, vindicating a God of justice and mercy before all heaven and the human family, securing the throne of justice even if humanity were lost, with the human race saved by returning to allegiance; Christ alone could restore honor to God's government, and this forever settles the controversy, proving through eternal ages that God is unchangeable and will not alter the word gone from His lips.
By His death He vindicated the law's claims and gave to world and angels an unanswerable argument that Jehovah's law is unchangeable. This disproves Satan's arguments that sin can be immortalized, that Christ abolished the law, and that evildoers can be in favor with God. The love displayed on Calvary magnified the law and vindicated its immutability; there the law is seen magnified and made honorable. His grace, peace, pardon, and eternal life are for all who are obedient, and that sacrifice purchased the crown of immortality for all who look to Christ and live.
He did not suffer in Gethsemane to give liberty to transgress the law but because it had been transgressed, to give it all honor and respect while saving the sinner by Himself enduring the penalty. This exposes Satan's falsehood that leaves the Christian world transgressing, where men by tradition make void the law instead of leading to obedience of all its commands. He magnified the law in dying and thereby purchased a second probation for the race, and respect for that sacrifice requires obedience to the law He magnified, for those who do not obey can never enter the city of God, since habits of disobedience and rebellion formed on earth would bring a second rebellion if carried into heaven.
The verse is fulfilled in the great day of atonement now, with Christ standing in the heavenly sanctuary before the mercy seat making atonement for His people. Because He died to exalt the law and make it honorable, those who love God must honor Him by strict obedience and must not manipulate the law to suit convenience, especially by spending the hours of His holy Sabbath for themselves. He magnified the law by accepting its condition, completing redemption through sacrifice, then ascending to continue His mission by sending the Holy Spirit to His disciples.
He came to make God's law great and honored by a life of self-denying love, and died to lift it up and show God's character never changes. His death exalted the law and testified its character is changeless, so those who join Him in proclaiming it can look to Jesus for comfort, help, and His promised presence always to the end of the world. His sufferings magnified and exalted the repudiated law, and His perfect obedience upheld its honor. By bearing the penalty He upheld the law as holy, just, and good, exposed sin's true character, and maintained the honor of God's authority, and His sinless incarnation and voluntary sacrifice secured eternal life while exalting the law.
Law's Enduring Holy Character
The law He honored is the moral law, the Ten Commandments, which remains the holy rule of God's government and the rule of life obligating all people. Only the ceremonial law with its ceremonies, sacrifices and offerings was done away and abrogated at His death, while the moral law was not nailed to the cross. He alone can free transgressors from the consequences of breaking it, and favor is received through repentance for past sins, faith in His atoning sacrifice, and a life of obedience in harmony with and subjection to that rule. Those who profess Him as Saviour while at war with God and refusing obedience will finally be told He knows them not.
It is the same law He Himself proclaimed from Sinai in terrible grandeur, and He came to magnify it and make it honorable, not to change it or abolish it. No change in it is necessary, and His death on Calvary in the sinner's behalf proves the law of heaven unchangeable, for if it needed change or could be changed Satan's rebellion would be justified and would show Satan wiser than God with right to supreme authority. To call that law an old rickety dead and buried law, an old thunder-and-lightning law, an old bloody Jewish law not deserving a gravestone, is blasphemous contempt against the Most High that pleases Satan and are the great swelling words of the man of sin. The change made in the day of rest and acceptance of the false sabbath therefore places people unwittingly under the banner of the prince of darkness, though God overlooked times of ignorance and now commands men everywhere to repent and honor the unchanged law.
God's downtrodden law is to be magnified and made honorable by being displayed in its true character as holy, just, and good, which His people do by obeying His commandments and bringing its principles into every business transaction. He does not use grace to do away with the law or to take its place, for for His righteousness He upholds it. The law is truth, perfect and in complete harmony with grace, and an imperfect law would have perpetuated sin. He lifts it from beneath trampling feet through Jesus condemning sin in the flesh and bearing sin's curse while keeping His Father's commandments, and grace when received and allowed to work testifies to the validity of the law by carrying out its living principles, which man can keep only by sharing the divine nature and drawing near to God by faith.
The law will be magnified because it is the revelation of the character of Jehovah, which is why Satan is so bitter against it. Believers who lift it up are not alone, for God Himself will vindicate His downtrodden law as truth is given line upon line and precept upon precept until error flees and the sunshine of Christ's righteousness rolls back false doctrine to victory. As Head of humanity He fulfilled all righteousness to show man can do the same work and meet every specification of God's requirements, furnishing treasures of grace so not one need miss heaven and making the path of commandment-keeping easier. Truth, holiness and perfection of character are attainable to all who strive for them, and this is the very foundation of the new covenant with no substitution of a changed law, for the law taught on the Mount of Blessings is the same law from the beginning and from Sinai whose far-reaching principles He applied and which remain forever the great standard of righteousness by which all shall be judged, the tree of which the gospel is the blossoms and fruit.
God set apart the seventh day and gave it to humanity to keep holy, and His covenant word cannot be broken or changed, so those loyal to Him honor Him by obedience even when the law is widely treated with contempt. He came to exalt the law and prove it immutable and binding, bringing light and immortality to light by suffering and dying because it is binding, and upholding its claims plainly and decidedly. To belittle its claims reproaches Christ, opposes Jehovah, opposes Christ, contradicts and denies His plain teaching, for law and gospel are in harmony and the gospel does not set the law aside.
He came not to nail the holy law to the cross or make it void, and those who testify it is nailed in the Christian age and make it void crucify that law just as He was crucified between two thieves in the Jewish age. They will be companions of His crucifiers wailing because of Him beholding in His glory Him whom they pierced, seized with terror when judgment sits and the books are opened and every man is judged according to things written in the books, as his works have been. Jehovah's law has been broken down and trampled underfoot, with a breach made by Satan and the man of sin who said the fourth commandment was changed, and He came to build it up and make up that breach. God will set everything in heaven to work to accomplish His purpose, and those who join Him in building it up are called the repairer of the breach. The Father gave the law and the Son died to magnify it and make it honorable, so talking about the law honors both Father and Son and exalting the law does not set aside Jesus. Through His life of suffering and death in human nature He made full provision to lift people up so they could keep the law, which is the standard of holiness and rule of right and continues to condemn sin to the end of time.
Grace Gospel and Obedience
Preaching grace never puts the law aside but declares its importance, for the law exposes sin and wakes the sense of need for Christ, and faithful ministry therefore upholds the law while leading sinners out of sin into a purer life.
Christ stands in His true place as the sin-pardoning Savior who died both to uphold the law and give it honor and to justify the sinner who trusts wholly in the merits of His crucified and risen blood, so that pardoning work and vindication of the law belong together and must be held together in the mind.
The glory of the law is Christ, and whenever the law is presented hearers are to be pointed to His righteousness and to the throne of promise arched with the rainbow, where mercy and truth meet and righteousness and peace embrace.
Looking to Him in penitence, praise and thanksgiving upholds law together with mercy and forms character to represent Him to the world, for the law is not to be set forth as justice alone but together with mercy in Christ.
He magnified the law by elevating it, expanding every precept, and proving its immutability by His obedience and by His death to save men, leaving in His obedience an example that man also may meet its demands.
The truth as it is in Jesus is acquaintance with the holy, just and good law thus magnified, with obedience to every precept of Jehovah from the heart, exalted before worlds unfallen and the fallen race without abating one jot or tittle, as changeless as God's throne.
Understood apart from Christ the law has crushing power that blots the sinner out of existence, but understood in connection with Christ and received by faith as substitute and surety it makes the sinner a prisoner of hope.
He exalted the law by living it in perfect purity and holiness and by bearing the world's sin in His death on Calvary's cross where He paid the debt, which shows the moral law changeless and standing forever, and He could no more abolish the law than abolish Himself.
His obedience makes it possible for people to keep the law, for He gives believers His righteousness so they may share the divine nature, strive for victory over sin, be found obedient, and cease the crimes and murders by which men overlook nature's laws.
His unwavering obedience showed the law is the standard of righteousness for all, and His sacrifice did not abolish the law or lower its standard but upheld justice and gave humanity another opportunity.
The law cannot pardon its breakers but reveals guilt and points to Christ, who bears sin and imputes His righteousness to those who accept Him, and through His power people can keep the commandments.
His mission as Redeemer was to exalt the law and by His own righteousness put man where obedience to its precepts is possible, so genuine faith requires repentance toward God for transgression and coming into harmony with God's government by obedience.
Those who claim Christ as Savior while the heart stays at war with the law and refuses obedience will find Him of no avail and will at last be rejected as unknown to Him.
He died to vindicate and exalt the law before all nations, tongues and peoples, and to be redeemed is to cease from sin, for no heart stirred to rebellion against the law has any union with Christ.
To claim to be holy and sinless while loathing the law as a yoke of bondage and charging its keepers with falling from grace is self-deceived, selfish, spotted Pharisaic complacency, while right decision is revealed by action in harmony with the law and heavenly blessing rests on obedience cleansed by Christ, who does not save by the law yet will not save in disobedience.
He died for each person not to abolish the law but to make it honorable, so no greater light can come while trampling His holy commandments, and mere profession makes no one a Christian.
Those who keep transgressing cannot promote God's glory and have no entrance into the city of God, but Christians following the pattern of Christ's life may be confident of eternal life measured by the life of God.
Only the loyal and true who by obedient lives exalt the law meet its fulfillment and receive welcome with abundant entrance into the future immortal inheritance and eternal weight of glory, clothed in white robes and crowned as true subjects of His kingdom.
Those who schooled themselves to treat the law as null and void, choosing false theories in place of truth and holiness and righteousness, see the inconsistency of uniting with the loyal to honor it, have nothing in them to change their sentiments, have no passport, and cannot be trusted through the gates.
He fulfills the law without abolishing it, and making it honorable means upholding its principles rather than setting them aside, so grace never authorizes breaking the law to follow natural desires or to justify tyrannical action.
To magnify the law is to uphold and honor it by obedience even before enemies, and God gives no strength to use for justifying disobedience, transgression and sin, which stands opposite to dishonoring God by partnership with satanic agencies to make His word of no effect.
The law is perfect, and when Christ abides in the heart His sacrifices in the plan of salvation are truly grasped and something of that perfection is understood, filling the heart with wonder and love, melting it with His manifested love, bringing devotion to His service, refusal to let time and attention be absorbed by selfish worldly interests, and making obedience precious.
He exalted the law through obedience, and true commandment-keeping people share that work by showing unspotted integrity and testifying by their course that the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.
His righteousness was perfect obedience to His Father's commandments, and God's people magnify the law by their own perfect obedience to Jehovah, which fights the good fight of faith against obstacles and refuses to bow to Baal.
Such obedience must never be blamed as the cause of His crucifixion, for blessing is on keepers and curse on transgressors, so speech and pen must not praise leaders who carry Satan's banner and exalt the papacy against God's last-day work.
The law is made honorable when its righteous principles are magnified, His teachings magnified them, and workers are to teach obedience by precept and example while reproving fraud and selfishness.
The law expresses God's character and obedience meets His standard of righteousness, and disciples living in Christ's purity, faith and obedience through the Spirit were to witness for Him by exalting the law.
In life and character by power from the Father He magnified and highly exalted the law without relaxing one iota to reconcile humanity, and His death did not annul it but showed its immutable changeless character.
Through bearing transgression's penalty He prepared pardon for the fallen, that repentant sinners may have elevated loyal minds brought by His power to the divine level in sanctified holy surrender to God's mind, crowned in honor and glory as partakers of divine nature, and for this saving work He died for a guilty world.
Prophecy for the Last Days
In the last days, when His law is made void, the Lord will manifest His great grace to His chosen ones more fully than ever, even more fully than at any other time, being well pleased for His righteousness' sake to magnify the law and make it honorable. This is a prophecy that will be fulfilled. That promise stands joined to the condition of His people as robbed and spoiled, snared and hidden, made a prey and a spoil with none to deliver or restore.
God's chosen ones stand firm while breasting a storm of opposition from the world to lift up God's downtrodden commandments and present them as holy and worthy of honor, and by that work they are the light of the world. No mortal man is given a message to pass judgment upon them while they do this, calling the church a harlot, Babylon, a den of thieves, a cage of every unclean and hateful bird, a habitation of devils, one making nations drunk with the wine of fornication, confederating with kings and great men of earth, growing rich through delicacies, with sins reaching heaven. No such message against Seventh-day Adventists has been given to any man to bear.
In the last days Christ will be rejected while antichrist is accepted. Human commandments and false laws will be rigorously enforced, human powers will try to nullify God's unchanging law which Christ came to magnify and make honorable, and Christ's followers will suffer persecution and death for the truth. Christ will manifest Himself to His loyal church, whose members have purified their souls through obedience to the truth, and the law of God will be magnified and honored.
Calling to Uphold Law
The verse foretells the present work of carrying the warning message to the world and explaining why obedience to God is believed and taught. Camp meetings belong to that work as places to give this information, and sanitariums are established as an educating power to reform people and restore in them the moral image of God. Through knowledge of the Word men are converted and then use their means and ability to extend knowledge of the truth. That same work arouses slumbering senses to see how far departure by worldly policy and conformity to worldly principles has gone from the Lord's ordinances, for such conformity is transgression against the law of God, and the law is magnified and made honorable by calling people back to obedience.
For His righteousness' sake the Lord exalts His law and makes it honorable, and Jehovah's law in its holy character and claims is to be set forth clearly and made widely known so its claims rest with greatest weight on human minds. This setting forth belongs to the third angel's message, so that each person hears the truth and chooses whether to obey God rather than man. The proclamation accompanies the worldwide message of Christ's righteousness preparing people to meet Christ at His second coming, as the final message of mercy to a perishing world.
This magnifying applies to the message for this time, which upholds the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus and includes the messages of the first and second angels. The world will answer to the Lawgiver for His broken law, so the law must not be put out of sight. Its claims must be presented in their true sacred character so people can decide for or against the truth. Proclaiming it in this way is part of the warning message to the world that prepares the way of the Lord.
That presentation includes defending God's sanctified memorial, the Sabbath, against efforts to compel honor to a false sabbath, while the message of Christ's righteousness is proclaimed throughout the world to close the work of the third angel. God's law is magnified by raising the banner of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, making obedience to God's law the great issue never allowed out of sight. This means striving to arouse both church members and those making no profession to see the claims of the law of Heaven and to obey them. The verse is fulfilled when the perpetuity of the law is preached publicly before unbelievers, speaking of its continuing binding force in evangelistic meetings so large congregations hear its claims, many are strongly convicted, and hearts are prepared for the Sabbath question that follows.
The law is made honorable when magnified in daily life, and parents who live by it help their children see its honor. Its precepts are to be magnified by words and actions, and those who honor it will be honored by it in the judgment while those who treat it with contempt will be condemned by it. God requires His law magnified in word and deed in His institutions, honoring Him and keeping the true faith of the Bible prominent rather than fashioning after the world or hiding the truth. Health institutions and sanitariums are to honor God in word and deed, make Bible truths prominent before those they serve, and uphold obedience including the Sabbath commandment as the sign of allegiance.
The health and temperance institution at Battle Creek was not to be fashioned after any other institution in the world but to stand distinct as a Seventh-day Adventist institution giving character to His cause, with truth as the all-important thing shining openly and the true Bible faith ever prominent before patrons, serving as an asylum where those accepting the truth could resort when sick. Schools after the pattern of the schools of the prophets likewise keep God's works continually before students and teach Scripture and the way of the Lord, including justice and judgment, preparing them to obey His law. Magnifying God's law is work done by men and women led and guided by the Holy Spirit together with advancing the kingdom of grace, and as long as they do this the work goes forward. When they give evidence of the fruits of the Spirit in heart and life and character, souls are reached and saved.
The one great point on which all the strength and efforts of Christ's army are to be concentrated is magnifying the laws of His kingdom before the world, before angels, and before men. This requires concerted united action in solid straightforward lines in obedience to orders, with the will of every soldier wholly submitted to God, not independent atoms doing desultory meaningless acts. Disorder breaks and disorganizes the ranks and serves Satan's effort to defeat the work. Everything possible is to be done to uphold the law when sharing the truth with visitors to Battle Creek. God's people are to magnify His law and make it honorable while it is trampled by the disloyal, for the gospel brings people back from breaking God's commandments since sin is transgression of the law.