The Everlasting Covenant
The Need and the Remedy
The great sin of the children of Israel was unbelief—trust in self rather than in God. This is common to all mankind. What is needed is something to destroy this vain self-confidence, so that faith may come in. The law entered in a way calculated to do this, and to emphasize the fact that only by faith, and not by works of man, does righteousness come. In the very giving of the law is shown man’s dependence on God alone for righteousness and salvation, since men could not so much as touch the mountain where the law was spoken, without perishing. How, then, can it be supposed that God ever designed that any man should, for a single moment, imagine that he was to get righteousness by the law? At Sinai Christ the crucified One was preached in tones intended to reach all people, even as they shook the whole earth. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” 2 Not a long time afterward, however, but at the same time. Moses was the minister of the law as the instrument of death, because of the hardness of the people’s hearts; but the law of grace and truth in Christ was at the same time superabounding. EVCO 291.2