A Written Discussion ... Upon the Sabbath

ELDER PETER VOGEL’S SIXTH NEGATIVE

6. “Ye are not under the law, but under grace,” wrote Paul to the Romans 6:14. I know not how language could be more explicit than this. The gospel is here called ‘grace,’ as in John 1:17, “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” The antithesis in either case is between the law and the gospel. To be ‘not under the law’ does not mean not to be under condemnation, as we have already seen, but freedom from the law. This sense the context requires. The exhortation is (v. 12) not to let sin encroach upon us. In verse 14 the consolation is given that even if we should inadvertently sin, it need not have a permanent or protracted sway over us; ‘for ye are not under the law’ which could not make ‘perfect as pertaining to the conscience’ (Hebrews 9:9), and where there was ‘a remembrance of sins every year’ (Hebrews 10:1-4), but we are under the gospel, a system of such ‘grace’ that God says: ‘Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear,’ and again, ‘I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31:34. WDUS 87.4

Here Paul anticipates an objection: “What then? shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?” If “under the law” meant “under condemnation,” this would be a strange question. It would presuppose condemnation so desirable as to be courted! But take it that the law with its death-penalties in this life is removed, and no question is more natural. Paul replies to this question that to sin (intentionally, hence habitually) would make us the slaves of sin (v. 16), and that this would ultimate in death hereafter (v. 23). I am asked, “Are the children of wrath’ under grace?” Since grace here means the gospel dispensation I answer, Yes; but the benefits of this grace are conditioned upon repentance and faithful obedience, hence not ‘very comforting to Universalists’ or to unrepentant children of wrath. WDUS 87.5

It appears further that Paul considered it quite possible to sin though the law be abolished. He evidently understood the abolition of the law to be consistent with the retention of the moral principles which underlay it. These he called ‘the law of God’ in ch. 8:7, because God is their author, and with reference to these do we read of ‘repentance towards God.’ Hence, also, ‘the Gentiles which have not the law,’ but had to some extent these principles—‘a law unto themselves’—could sin. Though ‘sin is not imputed where there is no law,’ it may be imputed (and in the case of the Gentiles was, Romans 2:12-15) without ‘the law.’ That sin may be ‘imputed on principles without the law’ Paul avers when he speaks of ‘as many as have sinned without (revealed) law.’ The same principle is involved in finding a man guilty of covetousness with such certainty as to be able to exclude him from the church (1 Corinthians 5:11), though no percentage is named. This is the fatal point which my brother evades. Nor do ‘principles without precepts’ make ‘revelation a nullity;’ there needs to be a ‘revelation’ of principles, since but few of them are so near the surface as to be apprehended without such aid. It is here where the O. T. Scriptures are largely ‘profitable.’ We have, moreover, under the gospel specific revelation or legislation covering cases which general principles could not reach. Liberty and license, however, are essentially different. It is liberty to be free from the multitudinous specific enactions of the legalistic dispensation of Moses and to be governed by general principles in all possible cases. But this liberty is not to be turned into license, and Paul warns us against doing so: ‘Brethren, ye have been called into liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by (the principle of) love serve one another.’ With an air of triumph my brother says, ‘If Eld. Vogel has any other means than the law to prove men guilty in the sight of God, let him produce the text, or cease his vain speculations.’ I would answer that the terrors of Sinai are weak to condemn sin compared with the matchless love of the cross. ‘What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.’ Romans 8:3. WDUS 87.6

7. The law spoken of in Romans 7,—which in my view is the entire law, but in my brother’s only the ten commandments—is the same law mentioned in ch. 6:14. There Paul said, ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace,’ and here he takes up this thought again, having turned aside to consider an objection. ‘Or’, he continues—and this or is suppressed in the common version—‘Or know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?’ Paul proceeds to prove what he before had only asserted, namely, the abolition of the law. He draws an illustration from the marital state (vv. 2, 3) where the wife is under obligations to her husband while he lives and cannot marry another without adultery till he is dead. So with the Jews—the ‘brethren who know the law’—they were once married to the law, but are now joined to Christ. If the law is not dead this is an adulterous union. But that their former relation to the law is destroyed, Paul surely asserts: ‘Wherefore, my brethren, ye are become dead to the law by the (coming or crucifixion of) the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another’ (v. 4). ‘Now we are delivered from the law’ (v. 6). To be ‘dead to the law,’ then, does not mean to be in a state of forgiveness or union with Christ, but that the Jews’ relation to the law, as given by Moses, was first destroyed ‘by the body of Christ’ that there might be saving union with him. WDUS 88.1

In verse 5, Paul calls the state of the Jew under the law being ‘in the flesh,’ because the law was chiefly a fleshly or political institution, and says that the passions which were by the law made men commit sins punishable by death. For two reasons then-(1) because it was thought best to free those under it from the law, and (2) because the passions by the law brought forth sin punishable by death-he proceeds to consider an objection naturally raised, namely, whether the law, as the Jew had it, is ‘sin’ or sinful (v. 7), and concludes that it is ‘Holy, just and good.’ ‘Holy, just and good’ is therefore the negative of ‘sin’ or sinful, and as such may be predicated of the entire law-of that which is purely positive and ceremonial as well as of that which has a moral basis. If, therefore, Eld. W.’s argument from this predicate in favor of the decalogue is worth anything, it equally proves the binding force of every ceremonial precept! Will he abide by his logic? So also the predicate ‘spiritual’ of v. 14 stands apart from ‘carnal’ only when ‘carnal’ is used in the sense of ‘sold under sin,’ but not as used in Hebrews 9:10, 7:16; for God never enjoined a ‘sinful’ ordinance. ‘Spiritual,’ in the sense of Romans 7:14 is, therefore, not equivalent to ‘moral,’ as Eld. W. erroneously concludes, but is affirmable of even ceremonial law. Moreover, the ‘carnal’ (sarkos) of Hebrews 9:10, 7:16 is predicable of the law mentioned in Romans 7, for it is called, in v. 5, sarks, ‘flesh’ or ‘carnal;’ and this is further proof that the law is mostly political. WDUS 88.2

I ought, perhaps, to say here that Romans 7:7-25 describes an actual experience, but not a constant Christian experience. No Christian can say of his life as a habit, that ‘that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do Nor does it refer to Paul’s conversion. The scene is laid in Judaism, when the law was in full force, and describes the conflict of the moment when Paul committed his first sin. ‘I was alive (sinless) without the law once’, namely, before I came to the years of responsibility; ‘but when the command came [when it came to my understanding, when I became responsible] sin revived [sprang up to life] and I died.’ This locates the event. The conflict is, for the sake of vividness, described in the use of the ‘historical present,’ of which we have brief examples in John 3:4; 4:7. Hence all comfort drawn from the use of the present tense here is hollow. WDUS 88.3

My brother’s talk about the fact that the ten commandments are the will of God, was not ‘conveniently’ evaded. All law which God has ever given was an expression of His’ will, but that does not prove its permanency, since it may have been His will that it should be changed. As for Christ’s coming to do his Father’s will, it simply means that he came to obey instructions; and part of this will was that he should abolish the law. WDUS 89.1

With reference to my use of Webster’s definition of statute I stand corrected. I indeed knew better, yet’ for the moment I was strangely misled by the term ‘positive,’ having my mind pre-occupied with its theological sense. WDUS 89.2

As to Paul’s meaning by ‘as it is written,’ (Romans 3:10) that he had proved both Jews and Gentiles sinners by the Old Testament, Eld. W. is clearly wrong. (1) All of the passages quoted, when examined in their O. T. connections, are written only of the Jews. (2) If we regard the last member of v. 9 as a parenthesis, connecting the ‘as it is written,’ with ‘No, in no-wise,’ we obtain a sense in harmony with the Old Testament, also with Paul in v. 19, and in my favor. WDUS 89.3

Hebrews 9:15, does indeed speak of Christ’s atoning for some of the sins committed under the former dispensation (I say ‘some,’ because others were then and there sufficiently atoned for, v. 14), but this does not argue against the abolition of the law. For example, a few years ago some parties in Reading, Pa., produced a will made by a lady and claimed that it was worthless because not in accordance with the law, and so claimed exemption from dividing property as it directed. The will, however, was in accordance with a law then abolished, but in force when the will was made. A course of litigation showed that the abolished law was in force as to that will. Thus pardon and abolition go together. WDUS 89.4

I know not why my brother should put into my mouth the words, the law is ‘only political,’ and the Jews ‘but a political body.’ He wrongs me in this, for I distinctly said, ‘politico-ecclesiastic,’—‘mainly political’, etc, That there is a religious element in the law, I never denied, but that it is of the high order found in the New Testament is quite another question. Not only Jacob before the law had such poor religious ideas as to think, when he had wandered a few miles away from home, that he was out of the jurisdiction of God, but even the inspired Jonah thought to escape Him by a journey across the Mediterranean. No wonder that the law for such an age and people was mainly political and had even its moral precepts given as though they were positive. WDUS 89.5

If in the gospel dispensation the Gentiles were made ‘no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God,’ it is because of the two is made ‘one new man,’ Ephesians 2:15; and the covenant made with Judah and Israel, of which the Gentiles partake, is a ‘new covenant,’ Hebrews 8:8. Of similar import is Romans 11. Paul says that he is laboring to convert the Gentiles (v. 13) that he might stir up emulation among the unbelieving Jews (v. 14) to their salvation. And that the unbelieving Jews are fit to be saved he teaches by two illustrations-a lump of dough and an olive tree; and the converted Jews are the ‘first-fruit’ and ‘the root.’ If a part of the dough has been offered to the Lord (Numbers 15:18-20) the rest may also be used, and if the root of a tree is not poisonous, the branches cannot be obnoxious for use. But the converted Jews were ‘the first-fruit’ of the ‘new covenant,’ and to this the Gentiles stood related as a wild olive tree only in the sense that it was promised to be made with the Jews and then the Gentiles were to be ‘graffed in’ (Acts 3:26.) WDUS 89.6

To show that I am not alone in holding the law to be largely political, I wish to quote from Jews themselves, who certainly would make the most favorable showing of their side the case will admit. ‘The Hebrew commonwealth was neither a plain religious institution, nor an administration purely civil, but partook of both at once. As in your forms of government the church and the state are distinct, so, on the contrary, in ours they formed but one thing.... In this government, Jehovah was not only the object of religious worship as the only true God; he was, besides, the first civil magistrate, and head of the body politic.... The worship of Jehovah only, and an inviolable attachment to it, were the first condition and basis of his alliance with his people: ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.’ To worship strange gods was, therefore, a breach of this alliance,^* a rebellion against the sovereign; in a word, the highest act of treason.’—Jews’ Letters to Voltaire, pp. 192-3. Thus we see that even the Jews look upon the ten commandments as largely a political document. And in substantial accord with this are our best commentators and most learned theologians. WDUS 89.7

That the ‘first’ or ‘old’ covenant has been abolished is so undeniably plain that Eld. W. is constrained to admit it. But he tries to save his cause by calling the preliminary conference of Exodus 19 the covenant, instead of the ten commandments! The word covenant, in its Bible use, is indeed of such width that this may be called a covenant, yet, it is so clearly a preliminary interview to see whether a covenant would be kept, if made (v. 5) with a statement of some of the benefits to be enjoyed in the event it is lived up to, that I am surprised to see my brother calling it the ‘old’ covenant. WDUS 90.1

But grant, for the argument, that Eld. W. is right, and that the ten commandments are the condition of the ‘old’ covenant, what then? Clearly, with the abolition of a covenant its conditions cease. Thus the very issue Bro. W. would avoid, is unavoidable. The case of Josiah (2 Kings 23:3) is no parallel to this; it was only a vow to keep a covenant already made, but long neglected; for, properly speaking, man alone can make no covenant with God. If it be urged that the ten commandments were in force before the ‘covenant’ of Exodus 19, I answer, yes, but not as given on Sinai. It is only as then given that I maintain their abrogation. WDUS 90.2

Let us now examine Exodus 24:8. ‘And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said. Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord made with you concerning all these words.’ I would place a comma after ‘you,’ and render the last clause ‘on all these words,’ construing on in amenity with ‘blood,’ or sprinkled understood. The same word, al, is rendered on in the fore part of this verse and also in v. 6, which is its primary meaning. ‘Concerning’ is only a remote meaning, not to be thought of when the primary one will make sense. This furnishes us the fact that Moses ‘sprinkled both the book and all the people’ (Hebrews 9:19), from which Paul reasons. And so long as I have Paul with me, I am fearless. The covenant, then, of Exodus 24:3-8 is that of ‘all these words’—the ten commandments together with their amplification in the three following chapters—and they are the ‘old’ covenant which was done away. I must repeat my conviction that Deuteronomy 5 is in full accord with this. Indeed, I am utterly unable to see how it can possibly be otherwise construed. The parenthesis of v. 5—‘I stood between the Lord and you’—cannot refer to Exodus 19, but must to Exodus 20:19 and 24:3-8, for the ‘standing between’ is in connection with being ‘afraid by reason of the fire.’ WDUS 90.3

That the ten commandments as given in covenant at Sinai were ‘the condition of the promise to Abraham,’ I cannot admit. ‘The law,’ as such, was ‘four hundred and thirty years after’ the days of Abraham [Galatians 3:17] and ‘was given by Moses’ [John 1:17]. That Abraham had and obeyed ‘commandments.’ ‘statutes,’ and ‘laws,’ and was on that account favored, I believe on the testimony of Genesis 26:5; but that these were in every respect the same as the law from Sinai, I beg to be excused from believing. To construe the poetic expressions of 1 Chronicles 16:15-17, so prosaically severe as to contradict both Paul and John, as quoted above, is too absurd for refutation. There were, however, some common elements in the laws which Abraham kept and that one which was ‘four hundred and thirty years after,’ and this is the basis of David’s poetic outburst. In all this I say nothing of the fact that Abraham never saw the Sabbath. WDUS 90.4