The Nobility of the Moral Law

LAW

 Seventh-day Adventists have always distinguished the moral law, or Ten Commandments, from the ceremonial law, or the ritual requirements of the Jewish religious system. The moral law is a transcript in human language of the character and will of God, and of the principles by which His creatures are to live. Because the moral law comes from God and expresses His character, and because God’s character is changeless, the principles this law sets forth are likewise eternal.

Both the OT and the NT sum up the 10 precepts of the moral law, though often worded in the form of two great commandments-love to God (the first four), and love to our fellowman (the last six; Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:34–40). In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ explained some of the principles of the moral law and made a practical explanation of them to life situations. Originally God implanted these principles in the very fiber and being of Adam and Eve, together with a natural inclination to live in harmony with them. The Creator also endowed humanity with the faculty of free choice; people might choose to acknowledge the lordship of the Creator by voluntary obedience, or they might choose to disobey. Obedience would guarantee eternal life; disobedience would incur condemnation and death. Humanity would find true liberty through obedience motivated by love. The moral law has never been against humanity; it is our guarantee of freedom in Christ.

The moral law requires righteousness and condemns unrighteousness. By His perfect life as a man, Christ met all the requirements of the law and demonstrated that it is just and good. By His vicarious death on the cross He satisfied the righteous demands of the law upon transgressors. By His grace He exchanges His own perfect righteousness for humankind’s unrighteousness, and enables people to overcome every sinful tendency and to grow up, point by point, into the fullness of Christ’s perfect character. All of this is accomplished by faith, apart from works of law.

In the heart of the repentant, forgiven sinner, transformed by divine grace, there will be a sincere desire, motivated by love, to live in harmony with all the divine requirements-not in order to be saved by any supposed works of merit on his or her part, but because he or she has already found salvation by faith in the infinite grace of Christ. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law” (Rom. 3:31). Forgiveness for past transgressions of the divine law does not carry with it a plenary indulgence to keep on transgressing that law. “God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Rom. 6:2).

The principles set forth in the moral law are eternal. As we have seen, the Creator implanted these principles in the hearts of our first parents when He created them. At Mount Sinai He set forth these principles in the form of 10 explicit commands, in language suitable to the condition of humanity, fallen in sin. These commands He uttered with His own voice and inscribed with His own finger upon two tables of stone.

Subsequently He revealed to Moses the ceremonial code, whose types and symbols were designed to point forward to Christ and to help humanity understand and lay firm hold on redemption through the infinite sacrifice of Christ. Its rites and sacrifices could neither actually take away sin nor set the conscience free, but they could lead to faith in the coming Redeemer, in whom they all met fulfillment and reality. Without faith in that one great Sacrifice, divinely provided and promised, they were meaningless (Heb 9:8–15).

The moral law is spiritual and can be kept only by those whose hearts have been renewed by the Spirit of God. Never in any age has its Author sought from humanity a mere outward response to the letter of the law. The moral law exercises its authority upon the inner person. It reveals sin as a conscious violation of the known will of God, thereby compelling sinners  to acknowledge themselves as such, and thus to prepare to seek for, and receive, the mercy of God in Christ. It forbids not only outward acts of transgression, but every thought and motive that would lead to such acts. It requires submission of heart as well as life to God, and in so doing exposes sin at its source and in all its forms, and points the sinner to Christ for forgiveness. All attempts to earn righteousness by adhering scrupulously to legal requirements, even those of the moral law, are futile.

Christ’s life and His teachings were altogether in harmony with the moral law. He vindicated this law, established it, confirmed it, and honored it by perfect obedience to its requirements. Those who choose to follow Christ will seek to become like Him. God’s moral law will be written on their hearts and minds. All who have been truly converted and saved by grace will find their supreme joy in loving submission to the divine authority of the moral law, for in acknowledging that authority they acknowledge the authority of its Author, Jesus Christ.

The proper function of the moral law is to make a clear-cut distinction between right and wrong, to make known to humanity the standard of conduct of which God approves, to condemn all conduct that falls short of that standard, to convict those guilty of such conduct, and to convince sinners of their need for salvation by faith in the grace of Christ. But the moral law cannot justify sinners who violate it, nor can it provide either the desire or the ability to live in harmony with its precepts, nor does observance of it ingratiate a person with God. These are improper uses of the moral law and constitute what is known as legalism, which is the belief and attempt to find salvation and acceptance with God by one’s own effort to keep the law, in contradistinction to salvation by grace alone. SDAs insist that there can be no salvation by works of law (see Legalism).

The gospel brings a change, but that change is not in the moral law. It is the transformation of believers by virtue of their new relationship to Christ. The gospel releases believers from the penalty of the law, but not from their obligation to live in harmony with its precepts.

In general, Protestants have affirmed belief in the binding force of the moral law, or Ten Commandments (see SB, Nos. 970–986), a position SDAs recognize as being in harmony with the teachings of Scripture. But when SDAs insisted that the fourth commandment requires observance of the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath as a logically inevitable corollary, they encountered the vigorous assaults of certain groups who insisted that such Pauline passages as Col. 2:14–17 indicate the abolition of all OT law in the Christian Era, including the moral law. SDAs, in turn, called attention to the sharp distinction between the moral and the ceremonial law, as to character, function, and binding force in the Christian Era. For instance, in a book entitled The Law of God (1854) J. H. Waggoner called attention to the following: “Under the Jewish dispensation were incorporated two kinds of laws. One was founded on obligations growing out of the nature of men, and their relations to God and one another, obligations binding before they were written, and which will continue to be binding upon all who shall know them, to the end of time. Such are the laws which were written by the finger of God on the tables of stone, and are called moral laws.

“The other kind, called ceremonial laws, related to various outward observances which were not obligatory till they were commanded, and then were binding only on the Jews till the death of Christ” (pp. 120, 121).

Elsewhere he says of these two laws: “By comparison, we find that two different laws are spoken of in the New Testament: one which is not made void through faith in Christ, which he came not to destroy; and another which he blotted out, and nailed to his cross” (ibid., p. 73; cites Matt. 5:17, 18 and Col. 2:14–16 to illustrate this distinction).

Concerning these two laws, J. N. Andrews wrote: “The law within the ark was that which demanded atonement; the ceremonial law which ordained the Levitical priesthood and the sacrifices for sin was that which taught men how the atonement could be made” (The Two Laws, p. 28).

“Surely these two codes should not be confounded. The one was magnified, made honorable, established, and is holy, just, spiritual, good, royal; the other was carnal, shadowy, burdensome; and was abolished, broken down, taken out of the way, nailed to the cross, changed, and disannulled on account of the weakness and unprofitableness thereof. Those who rightly divide the Word of truth will never confound these essentially different codes, nor will they apply to God’s royal law the language employed respecting the handwriting of ordinances” (ibid., pp. 31, 32).

See also Faith and Works; Law and Grace; Legalism; Justification; Righteousness by Faith; Sanctification.

For a discussion of the Hebrew and Greek terms translated “law” (tôrah and nomos) see SDADic. 641, 642.