The GOSPEL TRUTH

LECTURES ON THE

MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD.

 By

 NATHANIEL W. TAYLOR, D. D.,

1859

VOLUME II

 

SECTION III:

THE MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD AS REVEALED IN THE SCRIPTURES

 

LECTURE VI:

THE MOSAIC LAW A THEOCRACY.

 

The views of Paul in respect to this system. -- The premises from which he argued familiar to him and to the Jews: Rom. i. 17, 18; ii. 1, 2; R. 20; iii. 21; vil. 3-6; Gal. iii. 16, sqq.; Eph. ii. 15; Col. ii. 14 -- The Epistle to the Hebrews.

 

 

HAVING attempted to show by various considerations, that the Mosaic law was a theocracy, I propose also to unfold the views of the apostle Paul on the subject.

 

We shall see if I mistake not, that the apostle, as a Jew reasoning with Jews, derived his great, not to say all his arguments, in support of the doctrine of one common method or way of justification before God for all men -- in support of the Gospel in its great and essential truths, or God's moral government through grace over this sinful world -- from the great facts of the Jewish theocracy or the law given by Moses, in connection with other known and familiar facts of the Jewish revelation. We shall further see that he derived them from the same great facts from which, as I claim to have shown in the preceding discussion, the Jews, from the beginning to the end of their theocracy, ought to have derived the same, and would, aside from their almost incredible perverseness, their idolatrous degradation and stolidity, have actually derived them, and so have come to the same momentous conclusions with the apostle,

 

If these things shall appear from the epistles of Paul, then it will also be seen, not only what abundant instruction God furnished to men in the earliest ages of the world, especially by the Abrahamic covenant, but how this instruction, without withdrawing one ray of the light of revealed truth already given, was signally and impressively augmented by that theocracy in which God became the national king and tutelary deity of Israel. We shall further see how the great apostle of the Gentiles, in fully unfolding by revelation God's system for the salvation of a lost world, relied not on any merely legal system and its principles, but on a system modified by grace. Since man's apostasy in Eden there had been no such law, either moral or political, not even in any heathen nation. Nor of course did the apostle reason as theologians have commonly done, on the assumption that any of our race, much less that all of them are finally condemned for sin as the transgression of law as distinguished from unbelief. Nor yet, for the accomplishment of his purpose, did he rely simply, nor even chiefly, on his authority as an inspired teacher, but on the Jewish theocracy and the known facts of the Jewish revelation. As Luke tells us (Acts, xvii. 2, 3), "Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them (the Jews), and three Sabbath-days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging (_____________, fully evincing) that Christ must needs have suffered," &c. This mode of reasoning was, on this occasion, in a degree successful, as it was, after the close of the apostle's labors, eminently triumphant. Judaism and Christianity, in the time of this apostle, were in active conflict. A crisis had come in which one or the other must triumph. And now in the Jewish theocracy itself (with an occasional, and for some subsidiary purposes, a necessary reliance on the light of nature), our apostle finds his chief citadel of defense against every assault on the truth by Jewish ingenuity. From this also he takes his brightest armor and most effective weapons of onset on Jewish error and perverseness, even almost his whole equipment for victory in that conflict, which was to overthrow Judaism and to subdue all nations to the obedience of faith.

 

I cannot here pretend to refer to all the proofs and illustrations of the view now given which are contained in the writings of this apostle, but only to some of them, which must, I think, be satisfactory to any one who will even slightly examine the subject. Indeed, I shall confine myself chiefly to those facts respecting the Mosaic law to which I have before; referred, as these are employed by the apostle in his reasonings with Jews, especially as these will show that the Jews had the same means of coming, and were therefore bound to have come, to the same great conclusion respecting justification with the apostle. And here it may be well briefly to advert to some instances in which the apostle makes a simple appeal to the authority of the Old Testament in support of his doctrine. In some of these, it is true, he appeals to the later prophets; but then not on the hypothesis that a later and new revelation of the doctrine was made to them, as many are apt to suppose. For there is not only no intimation of such a fact, but as we shall see, he appeals to the Pentateuch and even to the decalogue, which shows that he did not consider the later prophets as acquiring new knowledge on the subject by any, new and special revelation made to them, but only by more justly interpreting and more fully understanding the revelation by Moses.

 

(Rom. i. 17.) "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ," &c. Here he affirms that "the Gospel is the power of God to salvation, &c. -- to the Jew first." How to the Jew first? Plainly as first revealed to Jews not by the preaching of Christ, but in their own Scriptures; for he adds that therein, i.e., in the Gospel, "the righteousness of God by faith -- the ground of justification by faith (__ _______), which is of God's providing, is revealed (___ ______) to faith, as it is written, The righteous by faith (__ _______) shall live." Here then, in the beginning of this epistle, he affirms the fact by no means unimportant to his purpose, that the Gospel was first revealed to the Jews in their own Scriptures.

 

(Verse 18.) "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." Here the kind of revelation spoken of is evidently the same as that in v. 17. The revelation of the one fact (v. 17) is based on the revelation of the other (v. 18). The revelation of the truth spoken of in the New Testament is, for the most part, supernatural revelation. Thus, the apostle not only asserts that the doctrine of justification by faith, now fully revealed in the Gospel, was first taught the Jew in his revelation, but also that the wrath of God was revealed in the same as the original basis for the doctrine of gratuitous justification.

 

By "the wrath of God revealed from heaven," we are not to understand temporal death, for to this, simply as such, the righteous by faith were hopelessly doomed (Gen. iii. 19). Indeed, to them it is "gain" (Phil. i. 21). But the wrath spoken of is the penalty of sin -- the full expression of God's anger against sin -- that eternal death which is the wages of sin (chap. vi. 23). This is the wrath of God, revealed in the Jewish Scriptures and in the Gospel, "against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," of all men "who (as a universal characteristic of determined sin, John, iii. 20) hold the truth in unrighteousness." The meaning plainly is, that they know the truth sufficiently as the basis of moral responsibility, but practically disregard it. Refusing reflection, they practically place the truth known in utter abeyance. Shutting away from the mind the full discernment of the practical relations of truth because they dislike them, they thus yield themselves to the control of their selfish and sordid inclinations with as little disturbance as may be, fostering their mental quiet by such false speculations, groundless convictions, and vain hopes, as only evince their willful ignorance as opposed to thorough reflective knowledge, and their mad desperation in sin. I need not say how explicitly this meaning of ___ ___ ________ __ ______ __________ is shown in the following context. Thus the apostle, that he may convince the Jews of the clear manifestation in their own revelation of God's wrath toward the wickedness -- of all mankind (vide his proofs derived from the Scriptures, chap. iii. 10, sqq.), proceeds to confirm the fact in that respect in which Jews might question or deny it (viz., in respect to Gentiles), by appealing to such flagrant and notorious wickedness on their part as no Jew could deny, and which rendered them worthy of the wrath which the Scriptures revealed in common against all, both Jews and Gentiles. With this digression, it is still apparent that he makes the Scriptures, God's revelation, the ulterior ground of his argument in placing Jews and Gentiles on a common level, as sinners justly exposed to the wrath of God.

 

(Rom. ii. 1, 2.) "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art, that judgest; for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure," &c.

 

We shall now see how the apostle in this verse, and in the following context to v. 17, continues his appeal to the Jewish revelation, in support of his views and principles concerning the final judgment.

 

In the passage now under consideration, his reliance on this revelation for his argument is obvious. As if he said, If the Gentiles under the light of nature are as you judge them to be in view of their flagrant wickedness wholly inexcusable and worthy of death the penalty of sin, you cannot be less so under your own revelation from God. In judging them therefore, you condemn yourselves; for you do the same things. You must therefore, in your view, be under the curse of your own law. To enforce the argument he adds, `And we know that the sentence of God, in accordance with this law, is according to truth upon them which commit such things.' Thus the apostle, in this argument with Jews respecting the final judgment, appeals to and relies on their own revelation. And to place this view of his argument beyond all doubt, he distinguishes (v. 3) their common judgment of the Gentiles and of themselves from the sentence of God. As if he had said, If you cannot escape your own judgment of self-condemnation, how can you escape "the sentence of God?" He then proceeds (v. 4, sqq.) to expostulate with them for the vain and presumptuous thought, that those thus exposed to this sentence of God at the final judgment, should escape it, while despising the only hope of so doing, furnished by the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, "not knowing," &c. -- should thus go on I treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God who will render to every man according to his deeds' -- good, in perfect and eternal blessedness to them that do good, and evil, as the full expression of his wrath for sin, to them that do evil. Thus then the apostle unfolds and affirms in this argument with the Jews, on the authority of their own revelation, the fact of the last judgment with its great and eternal issues.

 

On the same authority he still proceeds in his reasoning, still showing that his argument is a Jewish argument. In v. 11 he asserts the absolute impartiality and perfect justice of God in his treatment of sinners whether Jews or Gentiles, according to the great principle of judgment already specified (v. 6). In verses 12, 13, he still recognizes the same rule of judgment, affirming that as many as have sinned (i. e., shall be found on the day of account to be sinners as distinguished from saints) without a revelation, shall perish without a revelation; and as many as shall be found on that day to be sinners in the same sense (for such only can be the true meaning of his language), under revelation, shall be judged (condemned) by revelation. He then adds, in obvious rebuke of the Jews, and giving greater precision and particularity to his meaning, to convince them of their entire practical deficiency, that "not the hearers of the law (___ _____) are just before God, but the doers of the law (___ _____) shall be justified." By "the doers of the law" he must mean those described in verses 1 and 10 (vide James, i. 21, 22), i.e., he must mean those who obey the revealed rule of judgment. He can mean no other, especially in view of the absolute form of his language, "shall be justified." By thus using the article in this verse, he shuts the word law down to a particularity of meaning which it had not in v. 12, and thus administers a most pointed rebuke to the Jews for their entire disobedience to their own law. And now as he proceeds, he still presents the same authority of revelation as the only rule of judgment for all men. Thus in verses 14, 15, by asserting that when the Gentiles do by nature substantially the same things to obtain acceptance with God which are required by revelation, they show that substantially the same rule of judgment is written on their hearts -- he says in other words, that they know substantially the same "work" to be necessary to justification before God, which is required for this purpose by the Jewish law. Thus the apostle again shows his Jewish readers contrary to their preconceived opinion respecting Gentiles, that there is but one and the same rule of judgment for all men, viz., that which is prescribed on the authority of their own revelation.

 

But I now come to the main question: What warrant had the apostle thus to derive his argument from the Jewish revelation, and what reason had the Jews to admit its conclusiveness? The manner of the apostle shows that he had no suspicion that the validity of his reasoning would be questioned, nor indeed was it -- at least there was no question raised respecting its validity. But had the Jewish revelation -- either the Abrahamic covenant or the national law given by Moses -- in plain and express terms presented or authorized this view of the final judgment? This will not be pretended. What warrant then had the apostle for this argument from the Jewish revelation, for requiring or even expecting the Jews to receive it? Is it said that this knowledge of that revelation was now for the first time imparted to Paul by a new and special revelation to hire? Be it so. Then the force of his argument depended wholly on the fact that such new revelation was made to him, and on his own authority as an inspired teacher, and not at all, even in the slightest degree, on the Jewish revelation as made to the Jews. How preposterous! He reasons ex concessis, from what had not been conceded. He reasons from a fact as made known to those with whom he reasons, when it had only now been made known for the first time to himself! His argument therefore for aught that appears, was entirely groundless and illusory -- one which he had no warrant to make, and the Jews no warrant to receive. And yet he makes it, as if, when plainly presented to popular conviction and consideration, it would not and could not be questioned. What then shall we say -- what can be said -- to vindicate the apostle in this mode of reasoning? What, except that the revelation made to the Jews, especially that part of it which consisted of their national law -- their law given by Moses -- was a REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM of government, as already explained, a fact which, though speculatively and practically overlooked and disregarded by the Jewish nation, was still so well known to any one who would honestly reflect on their own history, that it need but to be stated to shut off denial, and actually to convince and silence every adversary. Who in view of the apostle's reasoning, can, notwithstanding all the perverseness, and error, and suppression of the truth on the part of the Jews, entertain a doubt that the Jewish theocracy was a symbolical system of government, divinely designed and adapted to unfold God's moral government over men through grace, in its nature, mode, progress of administration, its principles of adjudication, and also in its final issues on the judgment-day?

 

(Rom. ii. 20.) "An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law" (__ __ ____). In this verse the apostle, in my view, expressly asserts that characteristic of the law which I maintain. In v. 17 he says, "Behold thou art called a Jew" -- one having that revelation from God which we call the national law, given to Israel by Moses. I claim the word _____ is used by the apostle in verses 17, 18, 20, to denote this national law. The question now is, what is the meaning of the apostle's assertion that the proud and boasting Jew has ___ ________ ___ ______; ___ ___ ________ __ __ ____? The word ________ denotes an image -- a representation; in one connection it denotes semblance without that which is real (2 Tim. iii. 5), and in another a correct representation of what is real, as the verb in Gal. iv. 19. Now it cannot be supposed, that the pride and boasting of the Jew respected what he himself regarded as the mere semblance of knowledge and of the truth, and still less that the apostle meant to say that the Jew in the law which God had given him, possessed nothing but a mere semblance of what was not real. What then can be the meaning of the apostle, except that the Jew, in the national law which God had given him, possessed the correct representation of knowledge and of the truth on the great subject of God's moral government, of which the apostle was treating. This meaning not only accords with what, as we have seen, the apostle had before assumed as the characteristic of this law, but gives great point and force to his rebuke of the Jew for his vain boasting and formality in respect to true religion and morality. As if he said, You claim to be superior to all others because you are a Jew; to be their guide, instructor, teacher, because God has given you your national law, regarding this merely representative system as imparting all truth which need be known, demanding a mere ritual service as constituting on your own part and on the part of others, the substance of all virtue and true religion even that righteousness of law which commends you to God's everlasting favor and friendship. And what is the practical effect of all this pretension and pride? Just what is to be expected. You who teach another, teach not yourself. You who preach that a man should not steal, steal yourself. You who say a man should not commit adultery, yourself commit adultery. Thus by perversely overlooking the representative character of your national law and the moral system represented by it, you rest on what you consider a complete legal righteousness while breaking your own law, dishonoring God, and even causing his name to be blasphemed among the Gentiles (verses 23, 24). Thus the apostle, in this part of his argument, is led expressly to assert the representative, character of the national law given by Moses, that he may the more fully expose Jewish error by showing its origin in mistaken and false views of this law. In confirmation of this view of his course of thought, he pursues the same in the following part of the chapter, passing from the decalogue to circumcision -- telling the Jews, for the correction of their error, what circumcision is in its essential nature; what it is in substance instead of the shadow, i.e., what it represents, this being all that it is of any real moment, viz., the circumcision of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not from men but from God. The represented reality of which it is the sign or seal is "the righteousness of faith" (Rom. iv. 11). Thus the apostle as it were, constantly establishes the truth of his great doctrine of justification by faith in the sight of God on the final day, by appealing to acknowledged Jewish authority -- to the law given by Moses.

 

I might greatly multiply these general forms of proof, that the apostle rested his great argument for the reading doctrine of this epistle on what he calls _ _____ national law of the Jews, or rather its requirement for justification, as representing God's rule of judgment under his higher system of moral government. (Vide Rom. iii. 2 and 7; iii. 21; iv. 6; vii. 1, sqq.; ix. 33; x. 11; xi. 25.) I deem it necessary here only to ask what force or even plausibility, can pertain to this argument, unless this national law was in truth designed by God, its author, to be a representative system, and ought therefore ever to have been regarded by the Jews as such; and therefore, When justly interpreted in Connection with the great and familiar facts of their own history, as being in its pre-eminent characteristic an exhibition of God's higher system of moral government through grace -- the Gospel -- the covenant made with Abraham. Thus, while there is no pretense that the Mosaic law, directly or expressly, taught any thing on the subject of man's justification before God, the apostle in this epistle to the Romans, compelled the Jews to see and know (what some of the later prophets substantially saw and knew from the same source) that their own national law, the theocracy of Israel, indirectly, but very clearly and impressively, taught the same great doctrine of justification before God -- the same Gospel which he preached.

 

I shall now, in accordance with what I have said in introducing the present argument, proceed to show in what manner Paul used the national law or theocracy of Israel, and particularly its recent origin, its temporary duration, its representative character, its design, and other striking peculiarities of it as a national system, to establish the truth and unfold the import of the Gospel which he so triumphantly defended and maintained.

 

The first of a particular class of passages to which I refer, is Rom. iii. 21: `But now the righteousness of God without law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.' This is one of the most striking and decisive passages in which the apostle places in the strongest light, the ground of justification of God's providing -- without law (_____ _____), without legal righteousness, in opposition to the ground of a legal justification. (Compare v.20 and context.) But he expressly asserts generally, that this righteousness of God without law, which is wholly of God's providing, is witnessed by the law (___ ___ _____ and the prophets; but the logical connection in v. 25, sqq. -- his language being taken from the Jewish ritual and applied to Christ -- shows that he considered, and meant his readers should believe, that that part of the Jewish revelation, or of the Mosaic law, which ordained liberty by a ransom, and by a mercy-seat or propitiatory sacrifice, revealed or taught in some mode -- witnessed -- the righteousness of God by faith as the ground of man's justification before God. But how could the apostle say, or Jews be authorized to believe, that this particular part of the Mosaic or national law revealed this doctrine of the righteousness of God by faith, unless they viewed, and were authorized to view, this national law as a representative system? Every one must see how exclusively the apostle derives his doctrine of justification by faith, without deeds of law, from the Mosaic law; not indeed a national justification which is all that as a national law it could give or directly teach, but a justification before God for men as moral beings; for it is by proving the latter, and surely not by proving the former, that he infers (v. 29) that he is not the "God of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles also." The apostle has derived the doctrine not merely from the law and the prophets, but from that part of revelation called the Mosaic law -- the civil or national law of Israel, even from the ritual or ceremonial part of it -- by which God instituted propitiatory offerings or sacrifices for national sin. In no other meaning could an honest Jew understand the passage, Rom. vii. 3, 4, 5, 6. It is undeniable that what he calls the law (_ _____), in vs. 4, 5, 6 is the Mosaic law, or national law, which God gave to Israel, for there was no other law which the apostle could have called the law, (_ _____), and have said that the Jews were freed from it, as the woman is freed from the law of her husband when he is dead, or that they had become dead to it by the body of Christ, or that the motions of sins by it did work in our members to bring forth sin unto death, or that the Jews were delivered from it as a dead law. What can be made of this language of the apostle, if he did not mean that the Mosaic law was a temporary institution which had now come to its end? How did he know this in respect to this law? In words, its author had not given it this character in the Old Testament. How then could the apostle know what he affirms of it to be true, unless he knew it to be anational law -- a theocracy -- and as such, a representative system now dead, or done away by the accomplishment of what it represented?

 

I might advert, in confirmation of the present view of the Mosaic law, to other passages in this epistle. I propose, however, to consider some of the prominent, and to me peculiarly forcible passages on the subject in some other epistles of the same apostle.

 

(Gal. iii. 16, to the end of the chapter.) -- "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made," &c. Without fully commenting on this passage, I deem it sufficient to say, that the apostle clearly teaches the following important truths: that the covenant made with Abraham was the Gospel (v. 8); that it contained the promises of all the real good which God, since the apostasy, has ever made or could make to man (Rom. viii. 28, 31, 32; 1 Cor. iii. 21, 23); that these promises (what the apostle so often and emphatically calls "the promise" and "the promises") were not made directly, but only indirectly or representatively, by the Mosaic law, and were made to none as binding to their actual fulfillment or the conferring of one real blessing, except to Christ and to those who as being Christ's by faith, were Abraham's seed (vs. 28, 29), so that God never promised, either in the Abrahamic covenant or in the Mosaic law, that he would not cast out of his favor, at any moment, the natural as distinguished from the spiritual seed of Abraham; and further, that the covenant made with Abraham was no other than the perfect moral government of God, established and administered over all men in every essential respect, being substantially what the apostle calls it, the Gospel; that this perfect moral government, this institution (_______), which was before confirmed of God in Christ, the Mosaic law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, must have left unchanged in its full force and absolute perfection, and that this law was not added as a part of the Abrahamic covenant, but was introduced because of transgressions, as a temporary appendage, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. Can it then be supposed that what the apostle calls "the law" was an essential part, or even any part, of God's moral government over men as moral beings? Did this law in any respect change this unchangeable and perfect system, either by taking any thing from it, or adding any thing to it? Did God, after having given Israel a perfect moral government through grace, change this government, by giving them, several hundred years afterwards a civil government? The chief, not to say the only direct reason for giving them this national government, was according to the apostle, because of transgression; that is, the object was to restrain idolatry as an overt crime with other overt crimes and abominations resulting from it, which in their prevalence and influence had become fatal to the moral reformation of this people. By this method idolatry was made a civil offense, even treason, against the national king of Israel. It thus became punishable, and was actually punished, as some other overt crimes were, simply as a civil offense, with temporal death as a civil penalty. Such a law, or any number of such laws, could no more add aught to, or take aught from, God's perfect moral government over men as moral beings, than could a similar law with a civil penalty enacted by this State against intemperance or theft, change God's moral government over us as moral beings. Whatever direct, useful effects to the State might then be aimed at or accomplished by the Mosaic law, or whatever indirect useful effects preparatory to bringing the idolatrous people to submit with the heart to the moral government of God, still God's perfect system of moral government through grace, confirmed before of God in Christ, in its perfect rule of action, in its rule of judgment, in all its particular moral precepts, in all its exceeding great and precious promises, and in its fearful penalty, remained unchangeable and unchanged in its glory.

 

In the 23d verse and onward, the apostle unfolds a further but an indirect design of the Mosaic law, with the reason of its continuance until the way of justification by faith should be more fully revealed. This design was, that as a schoolmaster, a conductor of children, it might bring the Jewish nation to Christ, to be justified not by the law but by faith. He then asserts that after faith is come, after this full revelation is made, the Jews are no longer under a schoolmaster. Thus the Mosaic law -- the law which was four hundred and thirty years after the covenant made with Abraham -- wholly ceased on the full introduction of the Gospel. Nor was this law, as many have supposed, the ceremonial or ritual part of the law. It was the whole law given by Moses, after the lapse of the four hundred and thirty years specified by the apostle. It was the Mosaic law, the entire national law of the Jews, or the Jewish theocracy. It was this as distinguished from that everlasting covenant which God made with Abraham, or from that system of moral government which God administers through Christ, under an economy of grace over all men. It was that covenant which God made with the fathers, when he took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they kept not the better covenant which was established on better promises. It was that covenant which, instead of being faultless and so superseding the better covenant, was in no substantial respect according to, but essentially diverse from that better covenant, and which God by his prophet promised not to make, but to finish or complete with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, in writing his laws in their hearts, and remembering their sins and iniquities no more. But the Mosaic law contained no promise, and revealed no purpose of renewing or sanctifying grace, nor contained the least provision or ground for the forgiveness of the sin of the heart. In respect to sin in this high sense, whatever provisions it made for the sanctifying of the flesh or the pardon of civil offenses, it left the perfect law of God's moral government over men as the true and only criterion of such sin, and as both a rule of action and also of judgment in its full force and application, without one ray of hope of deliverance for the transgressor from its fearful and endless penalty. It had revealed God's abundant mercy for the penitent transgressor of its rule of action as a national or civil system, while it revealed nothing of God in his high relation of the moral governor of men, except as a representative system. However momentous, clear, abundant, convincing, were its instructions to every unperverted mind in its representative character, it was as a national system, utterly barren of all instruction in respect to the higher relations between man and his Maker. It could not give eternal life in this respect it was weak and profitless; it could not make him who performed its services perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; it was preeminently, not to say only, a system of positive institutions (_______); it was imposed only until the time of reformation, it therefore waxed old, decayed, and vanished away.

 

Eph. ii. 15, next claims consideration. "Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments in ordinances." Here the question to be answered is, what is the law of commandments in ordinances (___ _____ ___ _______ __ _______)? As a somewhat general answer to this inquiry, I should say that the apostle means "the revealed law of requirements in positive precepts." I have already said enough to show what I mean by positive precepts, especially as they are in a peculiar respect arbitrary, circumstantial, and changeable. Nor do I suppose there is any room for the question according to New Testament usage, whether such is the meaning of the word _______ in the present case. To this so far as I know, respectable commentators assent. But another question arises on which they are not so well agreed, viz., what are the requirements or commandments of the Mosaic law, or of the Jewish theocracy or national government of Israel, which are positive in distinction from moral? I answer, each and all so far forth as they were national or civil requirements, or sustained this relation. Even what our Saviour calls the first and great commandment of the law, and the second which he says is like unto it, and also that requirement of repentance or faith which was the rule of judgment, were as truly civil or National requirements as any other. I do not say that they were nothing more. I simply affirm that they were requirements of the national law of Israel -- principles sustaining civil relations, depending solely as such on the relation of God as their national king. If it here be said that these rules of action and many others, e. g., those of the decalogue, were in their very nature moral requirements -- I admit and maintain most strenuously that they were moral requirements in their very nature, as their nature was related to men as moral beings. At the same time I also maintain that they were civil or national requirements, given by God as the national king of Israel, and this in their very nature as they related to that people as subjects of his civil government. They were civil requirements in their very nature in respect to that people, when given by God as their national king, though they are not and never have been such in respect to any other people -- as much civil requirements in one relation of their nature, as they were moral requirements in another relation of their nature. But as civil or national requirements, given by God to the people of Israel, they were positive requirements, arbitrary, circumstantial, changeable, as changeable circumstances may change. Thus the whole Mosaic law or Jewish theocracy or national law of Israel, was, as such, a revealed system of requirements, consisting of _______. It was ___ _____ ___ _______ __ _______, a revealed system, which in its requirements consisted wholly of positive precepts. This view of the apostle's meaning appears to be decisively established by the logical connection. In the preceding verses (13, 14), the apostle tells the Gentile converts at Ephesus, that "now in Christ Jesus ye who were once far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ; for he is our peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;" and proceeds thus (v. 15), `having abolished in (by means of) his flesh the law of commandments, consisting of positive requirements.' Now can there be a doubt that the Mosaic law, as the national law of the Jews, was that which separated them from all other nations? What else made the people of Israel so peculiarly and exclusively as they were, the people of God? Were not the moral law of God as a perfect rule of action, and the covenant with Abraham, the Gospel as the rule of final judgment, common alike to both Jews and Gentiles? Was there nothing in the Mosaic law but its ordinances respecting rites and ceremonies, by which it distinguished and separated Jews and Gentiles? What then were the municipal requirements of this system, every one of which, as resting on every Israelite, required of him what it did not require of any other human being -- a spirit of loyalty to the true God as a national ruler -- and was enforced on him as it was not on any other human being and never has been, through a civil process by sanctions of temporal good and evil? Plainly it was the Mosaic law -- this law of the Jewish theocracy as a national or civil law which was the middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles, which absolutely shut off the latter from all its immunities, its peculiar obligations, its worship of God as the tutelary deity of Israel in the temple at Jerusalem, its promises of national prosperity by his miraculous providence, its reflected light as revealing God's higher system of law and grace for men, as moral and immortal beings -- this law, this national law given to Israel as a single nation, so necessary to introduce into even one small spot of earth the knowledge of the true God, and gradually to unveil his glories as the God of grace and salvation to a lost world, was that wall of partition rising as it were to heaven between Jews and Gentiles -- this national law of commandments, consisting as such simply of positive, i.e., of arbitrary and circumstantial, requirements, Christ by his atoning sacrifice has abolished, that he might make in himself of twain one new man, and reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross.

 

(Col. ii. 14.) "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances (__________ ____ ________) that war against us, which was contrary to us, and taken it out of the way, nailing it to his cross." So far as the mere words of this passage are concerned, I deem it quite unnecessary, after what I have said on Eph. ii. 15, to show that the apostle here asserts that the Mosaic law -- the hand-writing graven on the tables of stone included -- is blotted out, taken away (__ ___ _____), from between Jews and Gentiles. The interpretation of this text now given is confirmed especially by the following context. To spoil (_________), is to take spoil as from a conquered enemy, or divest thoroughly. To make a show openly (____________), is to expose to just reproach. The question now is, who are the ___ _____, ___ ___ ________, the rulers and authorities? Plainly those who, by defending the Jewish institutions -- the Mosaic law -- of which the apostle is speaking, had chiefly hindered the progress of Christianity. Christ, by hip, death, resurrection, and ascension, effectually baffled the designs and overthrew the power of the Jewish rulers and priests, and publicly exposed these enemies of true religion to the reproach they merited, in the triumphs of the Gospel. In view of these facts -- the blotting out of the hand-writing in ordinances, and the full and complete victory of Christ over its powerful and malignant defenders -- the apostle derives his practical inference (v. 16), "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect to a festival, or of a new moon, or of Sabbaths." Can we then suppose the apostle to exclude from what he calls the ___________ ____ ________ the hand-writing on the two tables of stone -- i. e., the decalogue or ten commandments -- the handwriting so emphatically called, being written by the very finger of God? Especially, can wo suppose this when he has so explicitly asserted that these commandments are done away (2 Cor. iii. 11, 13) -- a fact which had been wholly impossible had they not been positive requirements -- and when also he calls the whole Mosaic law (Eph. ii. 15) the law of commandments (__ _______), in positive requirements? What can be more obvious than that the apostle thought of the same subject in these three cases the Mosaic law, conceived of it as a national system of positive requirements, and as such done away in the coming and work of Christ? But it may be asked why, in this 16th verse, did he not say, Let no man judge you in respect to any part of this abolished law, instead of forbidding such judgments in respect to mere ritual service, as meats, drinks, &c.? I answer, because in respect to keeping the ten commandments there were none among the Judaizers to cast the first stone, or to complain of such delinquencies on the part of those to whom the apostle wrote. These Judaizers counted nothing delinquency in respect to the Mosaic law, except failure in ritual services. No other proscription of uncharitable judgment by the apostle, therefore, was called for, or could be even pertinent to the case. But it may be further said, that the apostle extends his prohibition beyond mere ritual services, as meats, drinks, festivals, and new moons, by the specification of Sabbaths, which shows that he had respect to the fourth commandment of the decalogue. But to this it may be replied, that there were other Sabbaths besides that of the fourth commandment, which were as truly merely ritual, festival days, as were the new moons and the others specified by the apostle; and we may suppose that these were the only Sabbaths in respect to which the Colossians were, for their non-observance, liable to censure from the Judaizers -- so the apostle neither spoke of nor meant any other. The connection shows a much higher probability of this than that the apostle here includes under this term, that Sabbath which was not Jewish in its origin, but instituted when the work of creation was finished. Indeed, when the fact of such an institution is once admitted in respect to a Sabbath, it is incredible that Paul should refer to it in this passage, and place it on the same level with these merely Jewish ritual observances which were to perish with the using. Besides, let it be supposed that the apostle did refer to the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, so as actually to include, under the word sabbaths, the particular Sabbath in some respect, and that he says in respect to, this precept what implies its abolition, and that Christians are not therefore to be judged or censured in respect to the non-observance of this Sabbath. What did, or could he mean? This is shown at once by the preceding context. For he was speaking only, as we have seen, of the dogmas -- the _______ -- the positive precepts of the Mosaic law, or of the law of the Jews. In saying then what he is now supposed to say, he must be understood to mean, at most, that the Sabbath of the fourth commandment considered as a positive precept of the civil law of the Jews, was abolished with its other _______, and that therefore no man was to be censured or judged for not considering it as still in force in this character. He might have said the same thing of every other particular command of the decalogue (a fact involved in what he said generally concerning this civil law in v. 14, as also in 2 Cor. iii. 11, and Eph. ii. 15), had the same occasion occurred, or the same reason existed, in respect to any other particular command, which led him to say it in respect to this particular command. The time had come, when what was peculiarly Jewish in this command, e. g., the observance of the seventh day of the week, was no longer binding. This, at least in respect to the seventh day, was shown by the practice of the apostles and other Christians. The Judaizers at Colosse, therefore, would of course falsely insist that this was a plain and inexcusable violation of the Mosaic law, and Paul would of course be led to expose the error on the ground he had taken in v. 14, viz., that this law "was blotted out and taken away." This would be merely putting an end to the civil obligation to observe the Sabbath -- a day of holy rest -- which could no more lessen the moral obligation to observe it, than the same thing could lessen the moral obligation to obey the fifth or any other command of the decalogue, the moral obligation of no one of which can depend, nor ever did depend in the slightest degree on the Jewish civil law. On the question whether the fourth commandment is what is properly and truly called a moral precept, I shall only say, that in my view it can be shown as decisively to be such, by showing what is properly called its universal tendency, utility, and necessity to man's highest well-being, or to be the dictate of true virtuous benevolence, in the universal circumstances and condition of men, as can be any other moral precept by the only mode of showing it to be such.

 

I shall here briefly notice some remarks of McKnight in his notes on v. 14. He says, "that though these precepts (the decalogue) are all founded in the nature and reason of things, they are with sufficient propriety called _______, an appellation which denotes precepts founded in the mere will of the lawgiver, because the penalty of death, with which they were sanctioned, depended on the will of God." It is plain that McKnight did not distinctly apprehend the very distinction, which he so justly states, between what have been called moral and positive precepts. For if these precepts of the decalogue "are founded in the nature and reason of things," and if this is the only nature or character of these precepts, then they are not "founded in the mere will of the lawgiver;" for such precepts, as we have seen, are circumstantial and changeable as circumstances change, while the former are immutable in all circumstances. Now, are these precepts moral only, or positive only, or are they in different relations? Both -- plainly both. They are in their nature moral, contemplated in their relation to men as moral beings, and they are positive in their nature, contemplated in their relation to the people of Israel as subjects of God's civil government, or as citizens under a theocracy. In their former relative nature (for we have nothing to do with absolute nature, as strictly distinguished from relative) they are moral; in their latter relative nature they are positive. As such, they derive all their authority from the will of the lawgiver in the peculiar circumstances in which they were given, and when these circumstances changed, they have been blotted out taken out of the way, so removing an otherwise insurmountable obstacle to the union of Jews and Gentiles in one body in Christ. Notwithstanding the error of McKnight in respect to the true distinction between the two characteristics of the precepts of the decalogue, a distinction in respect to which the minds of many other interpreters and theologians have been as confused as his, he was still compelled to adopt the true meaning of the apostle's language. He says: "It is evident that the law of Moses, in all its parts, is abolished and taken away. Consequently, that Christians are under no obligation to obey even the moral precepts of that law, on account of their having been delivered to the Jews by Moses." Is it not strange that others should not see this as well as Dr. McKnight? For what is more undeniable than that these moral precepts were binding on all men as moral beings, with the full authority of God as their moral governor before the giving of the Mosaic law -- an authority which could not be increased by a merely civil law given to Israel, nor diminished by the abolition of that law. We come next to --

 

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

 

After all that the apostle had written on the subject in his epistles, especially in those to the Romans and Galatians, most of the Jews still adhered to the Mosaic law with perverse obstinacy, while such were the plausible reasonings of the Judaizing teachers, as not only to prevent many of their countrymen from receiving Christianity, but to weaken the faith of those who had received it, and even to bring them near to apostasy. The apostle therefore found it necessary to write this epistle to the Hebrews, for the purpose of showing that the Gospel in all its substantial elements, was founded on God's former revelations to the fathers of the Jewish nation, and especially on the Mosaic law. To this law the Jews of his time cherished an unalterable attachment, and a consequent inveterate hostility to the Gospel. In the first sentence he unfolds comprehensively his design in writing the epistle. The only possible mode of reasoning, from which there was any hope of convincing these gainsaying Jews, was by an argument ex concessis -- by proofs derived from their own Scriptures, especially from the Mosaic law. This mode of reasoning the apostle adopted, insomuch that this epistle may be emphatically esteemed an argument ex concessis to the Hebrews, founded in the acknowledged testimonies of God's revelations to their fathers, and, more than all in the Mosaic law, as an evanescent representative system of civil government.

 

Fully to support this view of the epistle, a full exposition of the whole of it would be necessary, while to justify in the strongest manner the remark concerning the Mosaic law, would require a similar exposition of the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th chapters. Such an exposition of these chapters, which is what my present object more directly requires, would be quite superfluous. Nothing can be plainer, from the perusal of these chapters, than that they were written as an argument ex concessis with the Jews; in other words, to show them that according to the facts and principles which they believed and admitted respecting the Mosaic law, this law was a system of national government, a theocracy, and, as such, a system representing God's higher system of moral government.

 

(Chap. vii. 11, 12.) Is not the necessity of a priest, of an order so entirely different from that of Aaron, a declaration of the utter inefficacy of the priesthood of the latter, and of the design of God to change it? And if the very priesthood under which or on account of which the law was given (v. 11), is changed, is there not also a necessity of a change in the law?

 

(Chap. viii 18, 19.) The priesthood then being wholly changed, there is of course an entire abolition of the prior commandment, i.e., of the Mosaic law, by which it was instituted, because of its utter insufficiency and failure to procure acceptance with God; for the _ _____, the Mosaic law, made no man by its priesthood, acceptable to God, but, &c.

 

(Chap. vii. 28.) Hence it is plain that Christ, as a priest made by the word of the oath, supersedes the high priests which the law maketh, and of course the law that maketh them. (Chaps. viii. ix. x.) I need not say how utterly insignificant and useless, according to the apostle, were the atonements and sacrifices under the law, nor how effectual and glorious was the great sacrifice for sin, even the sacrifice of the Son of God himself, now set down at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, as the abiding High Priest in "the holy places" the Lamb in the midst of the throne;" nor the difference, or rather the contrast, which the apostle draws between the sacrifices under the Mosaic dispensation and the sacrifice of Christ, and how manifestly these things are alleged by the apostle to show that the Mosaic law, its priesthood, its offerings and sacrifices for sin, had come to an end. I shall only call attention to some declarations of the apostle which are explicit to my purpose.

 

(Chap. viii. 5.) The priests under the law, in their services, furnish a representation and shadow of heavenly things.

 

(Chap. viii. 6, to the end.) The superiority of Christ's ministry is here estimated by his being the mediator of a covenant established on promises of eternal blessings, compared with a covenant which promised only temporal blessings. We have next the fatal weakness and deficiency of the Mosaic law, and the fact of its being entirely superseded by completing, perfecting a new covenant in respect to the house of Israel, &c. (v. 8). This new covenant is entirely different from the Mosaic law, even as different as are temporal and earthly things from spiritual and heavenly things (vs. 9-12). And from calling the latter new, the apostle infers that he hath made the first old, and infers that "that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away."

 

But without dwelling thus on what can need no explanation, except what a correct translation of some passages would furnish, I will only refer to the ninth chapter, from the seventh verse to the end, and the tenth, from the first to the thirtieth verse, requesting attention to the apostle's assertions of the utter inefficacy of the provisions of the Mosaic law, except to procure forgiveness of national sins -- of its representative character, not to say its double sense (ix. 8, 9, 23, 24; x. 1), and of the entire abrogation of the Mosaic system of law when the Messiah should come (ix. 10).

 

Thus it appears that Paul, in this epistle to the Hebrews, by an argument ex concessis, and, as I may say, by this only, professes at least to establish Christianity on the basis of God's former revelations -- especially on that revelation called the Mosaic law. In the exhibition of this argument he neither assumes the authority of an apostle, nor rests his interpretation and explanation of the Mosaic law on his inspiration or any revelation of its import peculiar to himself; nor resorts to any novel interpretations, either figurative, typical, or literal. What have these things to do with an argument ex concessis? Had the apostle relied at all on either of these things, his argument would not have been what he pretended it to be, nor have proved what he pretended to prove by it. It would have had no weight, nor be fitted to have any, with either the believing or unbelieving Jews to whom he wrote. The reply would have been as unanswerable as it would have been obvious: We have never understood nor known any among us, learned or unlearned in the law, who have interpreted and understood it as you do. This great argument in this great epistle of the great apostle, unless the commonly received and universally admitted interpretation of the Mosaic law by the Jewish people was that now assumed and reasoned upon by the apostle, would have been an argument founded on facts and principles assumed by him to be conceded, which were not conceded. But what right or warrant has any man, especially an apostle, thus to reason on fictitious or false premises? And now if the facts and principles of the apostle's argument were conceded universally by the Jews, then they knew or believed that the Mosaic law was what Paul assumed it to be. This view of this law must have been not only that of the learned of that age, and the popular view as derived from the expounders and teachers of the law but with the highest probability that of the ancient prophets, which was perpetuated through successive generations to the time of the apostle. Nor is the least evidence to the contrary furnished by the interpretation of this law on the part of modern Jews, with their hostility to the divine origin of Christianity. What then is this view of the Mosaic law so well established by Jewish usage, and assumed by the apostle in the argument of his Epistle to the Hebrews? It is, that the Mosaic law was a national system of government, which, whatever other peculiarity it involved, was a representative system exhibiting God's higher system of moral government over men under a gracious economy. In the language of the apostle, it was a representation and shadow of the heavenly things (_________ ___ ____); it had a shadow of good things to come (_____ ___ _________ ______); in one essential respect it was a parable (which signifies an information either by speech or action), in which one thing is put for another (ix. 8, 9), of the time then present, &c. Nor is this all. It was a representations shadow (not the very image or substance) of the good things to come -- a parable for the time which interposed between the tabernacle service (v. 8) and the time of reformation (v. 10), during which the gifts and sacrifices could in no degree expiate moral offenses, or relieve a guilty conscience, or deliver from final condemnation; but being at most __________ ______ (ix. 10), ordinances, or institutions for the righteousness of the flesh -- grounds of acceptance before a civil tribunal (ix. 9-13), imposed UNTIL the time of reformation. It was an institution, a _______, so incomplete, so inadequate, in respect to God's great ulterior design, that on this account he said by his prophet, "I will complete a new covenant," &c., thus making the first old; and that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. On the whole then, whoever was the author of this Epistle to the Hebrews, he has, on the acknowledged divine authority of the Jewish revelation, and especially of the Mosaic law itself, silenced every Jewish objection to the divine origin of Christianity; and thus compelled every Jew either to abandon the divine authority of Moses in the law, or to admit the divine authority of Christ in the Gospel. In addition to this, if Paul or any other inspired writer was the author of this epistle, then is it clothed alike in its argument and its conclusion with the authority of God; and the theocracy of Israel was a system of national government, late in its origin and temporary in duration, and as such designed to represent God's higher system of moral government over all men as moral and immortal beings. The Mosaic law was a theocracy.

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