LAWS, PHYSICAL AND MORAL by A. Stone

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, January 22, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 4

LAWS, PHYSICAL AND MORAL.

By A. Stone

BY ELD. A. STONE.

THE physical and moral laws by which God governs the world are immutable. No change could better adapt them to their respective uses in the divine economy. They possess both the qualities of infinite precision and exactitude. To take from them or add to them would mar their perfectness. The least change in the laws of nature would doubtless be fraught with incalculable mischief to the physical world. To abrogate or change moral law would tend to the annihilation of goodness and the destruction of the moral world. The laws of nature were made by the Creator to govern the physical world. Moral law depends on the existence of God, and is inseparable from it. Though these laws differ in their objects and operations, yet they are in harmony, and are prime parts of that stupendous whole which constitutes the universe of God. Man cannot change them. Divine wisdom and goodness has placed them beyond the reach of man's power or skill. The worst that he can do is to transgress them, and incur the penalty.

It is, indeed, passing strange that in the nineteenth century a controversy should arise among the professed followers of Christ respecting the claims of the moral law of God, on the basis of law or no law in the gospel dispensation. Long-cherished and well-established theories are made to give way before the rolling tide of human fancy, that the moral law of God expired with Christ at the crucifixion. This view is advocated with an earnestness and zeal worthy of a better cause.

Do our no-law friends refuse to take stock in the express declaration of Christ, that he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it? Will they listen to Paul, who expressly says that the gospel of faith does not make void the law, but establishes it? Rom. 3:31. Does not the apostle further teach that Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us? But there can be no lawful curse if the law is done away.

If they believe not Moses and the prophets, Jesus Christ and the apostles, they would not believe though one should rise from the dead. To annul the law is to reject the concurrent testimony of nearly all the inspired writers, and at the same time make the gospel of no effect. In the name of truth and consistency, we ask, If the law is done away, of what use is the gospel? Just none at all. The gospel was not in the original plan, neither was it brought in after the fall of man as a substitute for the law, nor to kill the law, but as a remedy to help the sinner back to the perfection which the law required.

The gospel is an effort put forth, at infinite expense, to obtain the consent of the law to the salvation of penitent believers. The law condemns the transgressor to death. It is the office of the gospel to cancel the claims of the law for past sins, and obtain its consent to the salvation of believers. Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, will raise the saints from their graves, and give them eternal life; but he will do it only as the law is satisfied, and consents. An effort to obtain friendship with Christ while living in rebellion against the law, is a direct insult to both the Father and the Son.

“The law commands, and makes us know What duties to our God we owe; But ’tis the gospel must reveal Where lies our strength to do his will.” —Watts.