“For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). “Jesus the mediator of the new covenant testament, margin “ (Heb. 12:24). “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). Here are contrasted the two systems. The first was “the law” given by Moses, its mediator; the second is “grace and truth,” the new testament, which came by Christ, its mediator. The new testament is “the law of Christ.” This is the law Christians are now under.
In Isa. 42:1-7 we have a clear prediction of the coming of Christ and his redemptive work. “And the isles shall wait for his law” (vs. 4). The law of Moses was given to one nation—Israel. But of the law of Christ—the new testament—it was foretold that “the isles” should wait for it. “The isles” here mean the different nations of earth. The gospel is for all people and nations. The command is, “Preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), “Teach all nations” (Matt. 28:19). The gospel is “his [Christ’s] law.” The isles and the ends of the earth waited for this law; it is the standard of judgment in the earth.
Christ is the “one lawgiver” of this dispensation (Jas. 4:12). For God at “sundry times and in divers various manners” spake unto the fathers in time past, but “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1, 2). In the presence of Moses on the mount, God said of Christ, “This is my beloved Son; hear ye him” (Matt. 17:1-5). Moses and his law are ruled out of this dispensation, and Christ and his superior law now rule in its stead. To go back to Moses is to reject Christ. To go under the law is to ignore the gospel.
Christ taught the people “as one having authority” (Matt. 7:29). The precepts he taught are his law. We are under the “law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21). “Under Christ’s law.”—Emphatic Diaglott. His law is the truth (John 1:17). The law of Moses gendered to bondage (Gal. 4:24), while the truth makes men free (John 8:32). We obey and walk in the truth (3 John 3). The law of Christ is the standard of conviction to sinners. When guilty souls fall at the mercy-seat for pardon, the law of Sinai never enters their minds. They consider only how they have grieved the Spirit of Christ, and broken his law—the new testament.
The new testament is a much higher law than the old. It not only condemns all manner of sin, but lifts up a standard of holy living far above the stone-table law. The grandest lessons of moral and religious truth ever spoken to men were given in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. The New Testament condemns sin in every form, lifts up the standard of righteousness and holiness in life and experience, and offers life and salvation to all. It is “the perfect law of liberty” (Jas. 1:25), “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:2). To break Moses’ law— the Sabbath, etc.—was to be stoned to death. The penalty was temporal. But to break Christ’s law is to be worthy of eternal damnation. In the day of judgment the Decalog will not be our standard of judgment, hut “the word that I Christ have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last day” (John 12:48). “When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God,” punishment will not be meted out to those who disregard the letter of the law as written in the tables of stone, but punishment will then be given to those “that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:7-9). The law of Christ—the gospel—will be the standard by which we shall be judged in that day. To disobey the precepts of Christ is to sin. And to sin against his law is to make ourselves liable to eternal judgment and punishment. Obedience to Christ is what the New Testament enjoins (2 Cor. 10:5; Heb. 5:9). But not once in all the New Testament—the law of Christ, that law by which we shall be judged in the last day—are we commanded to keep the seventh-day Sabbath. We can observe every precept of the law of liberty, stand clear in his sight, and yet never observe the seventh day, which was one of the shadows of the law dispensation.
All chapters from The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day.
The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day. By H. M. Riggle, 1922. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.
- The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day - October 2, 2021
- 27. Sunday-Keeping is Not the Mark of the Beast - July 8, 2020
- 26. The Pope and the Sabbath - July 2, 2020