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THE TWO LAWS

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Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 27, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 22

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THE TWO LAWS.

By A. Weeks

BY A. WEEKS.
The distinction between the moral and ceremonial laws is well understood by the religious teachers of the different denominations. It is thus expressed in the American Tract Society’s Bible Dictionary under the word “law”:—
“The ceremonial or ritual laws, concerning the forms of worship, sacrifices, priests, purifications, etc., were designed to distinguish the Jewish nation from the heathen, and to foreshadow the gospel dispensation. They were annulled after Christ’s ascension. Gal. 3:24; Eph. 2:15; Heb. 9; 10:1–22.” “The moral law, Deut. 5:22; Matt. 5:17, 18; Luke 10:26, 27, is more important than the others, from its bearings on human salvation. It was written by the Creator on the conscience of man, and sin has never fully erased it. Rom. 1:19; 2:12–15. It was more fully taught to the Hebrews, especially at Mount Sinai, in the ten commandments, and is summed up by Christ in loving God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves. Matt. 22:37–43. It was the offspring of love to man, Rom. 7:10, 12; required perfect obedience, Gal. 3:10; Jas. 2:10; and is of universal and perpetual obligation. Christ confirmed and enforced it, Matt. 5:17–20, showing its demand of holiness in the heart, applying it to a variety of cases, and supplying new motives to obedience, by revealing Heaven and hell more clearly, and the gracious guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some have argued from certain passages of Scripture that this law is no longer binding upon Christians; that they ‘are not under the law but under grace,’ Rom. 6:14, 15; 7:4, 6; Gal. 3:13, 25; 5:18; and the perversion of these passages leads men to sin and perish because grace abounds. Rightly understood, they harmonize with declarations of the Saviour. Matt. 5:17. To the soul that is in Christ, the law is no longer the arbiter of his doom; yet it still comes to him as the divinely appointed teacher of that will of God in which he now delights. Ps. 119:97; Matt. 5:48; 11:30.”
In the face of the above, we find ministers of the different denominations confounding the two laws, when the claims of the fourth commandment are presented, leading “men to sin and to perish because grace abounds.”