In Defense of the Faith

Christ to Judge Christians-Their Law Giver From Mr. Canright’s renunciation of Adventism we quote two lines as follows:

“Jesus gave commandments to His disciples....We are to keep His commandments.”—Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, p. 361. DOF 61.3

Now it is true that Christ did give commandments to his disciples, but the inference here is that they were given to supplant or supersede the Ten Commandments. But such a deduction cannot be substantiated. Every command given by Christ while among men was in perfect harmony with the precepts of the moral law given from Sinai. He came to magnify the law and make it honorable. Mr. Canright further says: DOF 61.4

“As Christ, ... the head of the church....is to judge the world (John 5:22) at His judgment seat (Romans 14:10), how reasonable that He should give the laws to that church.”—Ibid., p. 365. DOF 62.1

This is all very well, but we inquire, Will not Christ also judge the Jew? Or is it the plan that the Father and the Son shall divide the work, one judging the Jews and the other the Gentiles? Will the Jews have to face one standard, the Ten Commandments, and the Gentiles another, the so-called new law of Christ? If so, will we then afterward go to the same heaven? How is this? Does God have two standards of citizenship for His kingdom? Must the Jew attain to one standard of morality and I to another? Can I get through easier than he? Will these two different standards be maintained in heaven, the Jewish community living according to one rule and the Christians another? Or will the Jew perhaps have to undergo training in heaven and familiarize himself with a new moral standard-one that looks just like the old one he used to know, but which has the Sabbath dropped out and the Sunday of the pagan world and papal church substituted? DOF 62.2

Surely these things are absurdities. God has one moral standard for all time and all men. Changing ages, priest hoods, and dispensations have not affected one jot or tittle ‘of the great moral’ code handed down from heaven. And, dear reader, when you and I appear before the judgment seat of Christ alongside our Jewish brethren of past ages, we will all stand on the same footing, and one standard the Ten Commandment law of God will be applied to our lives, and the same judge will judge us all. “Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also.” Romans 3:29. DOF 62.3