p. 117 | THE TWO LAWS by Joseph Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, February 24, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 8

THE TWO LAWS.

By Joseph Clarke

BY JOSEPH CLARKE.

JEREMIAH, in expostulating with backsliding Israel, addresses them thus: “For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices; but this thing commanded I them, saying: Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.” Chap. 7: 22, 23.

It is evident that Jeremiah well understood the relation of the moral law to the laws of sacrifices; and he spoke to a people who well understood his words, for he had no need to explain. Let any person of ordinary mind read the two verses just quoted, and weigh them fairly, and use just a little common sense, and he will see a clearly defined line drawn between the moral and ceremonial laws. And this very quotation furnishes us a key to the dissertations of the Apostle Paul on the same points. If any doctor of divinity, or any other teacher of moral ethics, will study thoroughly the Pentateuch and the writings of Paul, and take this quotation from Jeremiah as a key to the question of the two laws, he must conclude that there always was a difference between these laws. The moral law was positive, permanent, eternal; while the ceremonial law is remedial, and expired when Christ nailed it to the cross. (See Col. 2: 14).