GOD’S HOLY DAY

BY M. L. ANDREASEN

BY MANY of His contemporaries Christ was considered a radical; especially was this true of the Pharisees, who continually dogged His footsteps, ready to catch any phrase from His lips that might be construed against Him. They hated Him, and were willing to do anything to destroy His influence with the people, for “the people gladly received him: for they were all waiting for Him” (Luke 8:40). They had hopes that in the matter of the law they might find the occasion they sought. As the conspirators of old said of Daniel, “We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God” (Daniel 6:5), so these hoped that when Christ declared Himself on the law, he would furnish the occasion that would lay Him open to the charges they were anxious to place against Him.

Christ was never neutral or negative. His statements were unequivocal. They not only could be understood, but they could not be misunderstood. He was straightforward, clear cut, positive, dynamic. People always knew where He stood. He did not attempt to gain popular favor by flattery or lowering standards. Sin was sin to Him, and He called it by that name. It was these traits in Christ that the Pharisees would make it easier for them to find some accusation against Him that would count with the people.

The Jews in the time of Christ were great sticklers for the law. Especially were the Pharisees observant of the letter of the law and intolerant of such as did not or could not measure up to their requirements of observance. They had added many ordinances since God first gave the law, and it was a life study to know what was required. It was impossible for the common people to have this exact and comprehensive knowledge; hence they were unable to reach the standard set. The Pharisees held that the “people who knoweth not the law are cursed” (John 7:49).

Under these circumstances it was of great interest to the Jews, and especially to the Pharisees, to know Jesus’ attitude toward the law. As a teacher it was incumbent upon Him to make His position known and tell the people plainly where He stood. It was in this announcement that the Pharisees hoped to entrap Him, for they knew he was outspoken and would not leave them in doubt regarding His position.

Jesus did not disappoint them. In His first recorded sermon He dealt exhaustively with the law, and made His position known. Nine blessings he pronounced upon the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry and thirsty, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the reviled; then He said:

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:17-19.

Jesus knew what was in men’s hearts and what they were thinking. Answering their unspoken thoughts, He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets.” This was the very thing the Pharisees were thinking. Had they not seen Him do the unprecedented thing of driving out the buyers and sellers from the Temple? Had they not seen Him make a scourge of small cords, overthrow the tables, and scatter the money of the changers? Had He not spoken of the Temple as His Father’s house? (John 2:13-17). If He began His work this way, what might the end be? Evidently He was a radical that would bear watching. He seemed to have little respect for the Temple appointments. Was He attempting to destroy the law and the prophets? With great interest all had been awaiting His pronouncement on the law. And now they had it. He was not abolishing the law. He was standing by it. Not even a tittle or a jot should fail. He was not destroying it, as some had feared. He was fulfilling it.

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” The law here mentioned is, broadly speaking, the writings of Moses, but specifically the moral law, the Ten Commandments, from which the writings of Moses primarily derived their name. By “the prophets” are meant the writings of the prophets, in the Old Testament.

Jesus now selects two of the Ten Commandments that show clearly to which law He is referring, and also how He fulfills the law. The Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” He explains, has a deeper meaning than that of merely taking the life of a man. Whosoever hates his brother has taken the first step in transgression. In saying this, Christ corrects the conception which some had that the keeping of the commandments was merely an outward compliance that did not touch the inward state of the heart. He interprets the law as being spiritual, as having application to the mind and heart, rather than being a mere rule of outward conduct.

This He emphasizes again in His interpretation of the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Men may transgress this commandment in their minds as well as by an overt act.

From these interpretations we are on sure ground when we hold that the law here mentioned in a specific and definite way refers to the Ten Commandments. So far from Christ’s destroying this law, He magnifies it, shows its far-reaching character, and announces that he who transgresses it even in thought “shall be in danger of the hell fire” (Matthew 5:22, R. V.). Christ left no doubt in the mind of any regarding where He stood on the law. He took His stand squarely on the Ten Commandments, saying that “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Whoever should break one of the least of the commandments, and teach men so, should be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; whereas he who should do and teach them should be called great by heaven’s inhabitants.

It is incumbent upon every teacher of religion to declare himself on the law. Men have a right to know whether the religion he teaches has a background of law and order, or whether it is one of those irresponsible movements that demand privileges but shun responsibilities. Especially in these days, when lawlessness prevails, should the position of every religious movement on the question of the law be made clear. Christ defined His position at the outset of His career. Every religious teacher should do the same.

If the Pharisees had hoped to find some cause of complaint against Christ in the matter of the law, they were disappointed. If they thought that He had come to destroy it — as seems evident from the form of Christ’s pronouncement — or to change or abrogate it, they had entirely miscalculated His purpose. Their evil intent was frustrated, and they themselves stood exposed. Christ believed in the law. As the Pharisees were careful of the smallest matters, so Christ omitted no jot or tittle. If they stood by the law and the prophets, so did He. But in the conception of the nature of the law Christ and the Pharisees were as widely separated as the east is from the west. To the Pharisees the law was a set of rules to direct the outward conduct of man, and by which they might judge others. To Christ the law was a spiritual counselor and friend, a guide, an aid to conscience, a mirror to the soul, a revealer of the will of God, a close ally of the Holy Spirit in convincing men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

Christ did not treat the law as a formal, cold, legal enactment. To Him it was the way of life, and not a series of prohibitions. He believed, as did Paul, that “the commandment . . .was ordained to life” (Romans 7:10). Of a full heart He could say, “I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my heart” (Psalms 40:8). He had inspired the Psalmist to say: “I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold;” “and Thy law is my delight;” “O how I love Thy law! it is my meditation all the day;” “Thy testimonies are wonderful;” “I will keep the commandments of my God” (Psalms 119:127, 174, 97, 129, 115). This conception was not mere sentiment with Christ, but a living reality.

If we accept Jesus’ interpretation of the law as the law of love, we can better understand Paul’s statement: “Love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). God Himself is love. His law is love. Christ says, “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love” (John 15:10). “Jesus answered and said unto him, if a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” “If ye love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:23, 15).

NEED OF A NEW VIEW

We need a new view of the law of God. It is not, as some call it, a yoke of bondage; it is not a hard taskmaster; it is not a bond of restraint. It is a glorious law of liberty, of love, of friendly guidance. It is God ordained, a transcript of His own character, the most precious thing in the sanctuary above, the foundation of the mercy seat and of the glorious plan of salvation. It is kept in the heart of Christ, free from any possible harm that might come to it (Psalms 40:8). It is the perfect embodiment of the will of God, the supreme rule of life. Why should any think lightly of it? It reflects the very heart and mind of the Almighty.

The law of love is the law of life. No man who does not love God can be saved. But “this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments” (1 John 5:3). No man can be saved who does not know God. But “he that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” ( 1 John 2:4). No man can be saved who continues in sin. And “sin is the transgression of the law” ( 1 John 3:4). If, therefore, we are to be saved, we must love God and keep His commandments. If we say we love God, we must prove that love in the way God demands. We must cease transgressing the law, for “sin is the transgression of the law.” At the conclusion of His work on earth Christ could say, “I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love” ( John 15:10). If we follow Him, we shall not go astray.

With Christ’s definition in mind that the law of God is the law of love, and that on this hang all the law and the prophets, we accept His statement of the law as a way of life. There is no other way. “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” ( 1 John 4:8). But to know God is life eternal ( John 17:3). If, therefore, we do not know God unless we love, and the knowledge of God is eternal life, and the only way that “we do know that we know Him [is], if we keep His commandments,” and this keeping of the commandments “is the love of God,” we are again shut up to the proposition that the law of God plays a prominent part in our relationship to God ( 1 John 2:3; 5:3). Only at the peril of our souls can we neglect it.

Such was the teaching of Jesus, and, being the teaching of Jesus, it is also the teaching of all who follow Him.

HAS THE SABBATH BEEN CHANGED? 7

AS CHRISTIANS we are vitally concerned with the teaching of Christ and the apostles. In the final analysis Christ is our example and guide in all Christian duties. Christ is the Saviour of all men, Jew and Gentile alike. There is no other name in heaven or in earth by which we are to be saved. Although Christ lived in Judea, His message is not a Judean message. His love and salvation are all-embracing. To follow Him is life; to reject Him is death. He came to this world that we might have an object lesson in applied Christianity. He came to be the way, the truth, and the life. If we follow Him, we will not go astray. There is no higher authority than Christ’s. His word is final on all matters of life and doctrine.

We have already discussed Christ’s attitude toward the law. He made it very plain that He had not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill and magnify it (Isaiah 42:21; Matthew 5:17-19). The Jews and the Pharisees tried repeatedly to catch Him in word or deed about the law, but were unable to do so. Early in His ministry He made His position clear. He taught that not one jot or tittle of the law should pass. He stood stiffly for the law, and made that known to all. “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” He challenged ( John 8:46). There was no answer. Christ believed in and kept the law. “I have kept My Father’s commandments,” Christ says, “and abide in His love” ( John 15:10). There can be no dispute concerning this. What about the attitude of His disciples?

The apostles took the same stand on the law as did Christ. That, of course, would be expected. Note how indignantly Paul repels the charge that faith makes void the law. “Do we then make void the law through faith?” he exclaims. “God forbid: yea, we establish the law” (Romans 3:31). There were no stronger words of protest that Paul could find than those he used: “God forbid.” The charge was so preposterous, so out of harmony with all that he taught and believed, that he burst out in vehement protest at the very thought.

The idea that either Christ or the apostles would attempt to annul the law of God is so strange and amazing that is seems impossible that men who speak thus are aware of the implication of their words. Abolish the law! Abolish the Ten Commandments!

Consider the commandments. Can a Christian look at them and say that they are, or ought to be, abolished? Is the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” abolished? or the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery?” or, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me?” God forbid! Such teaching is from beneath and not from above. Let all Christians forever banish any such idea from the mind. God did not proclaim the law from heaven and announce severe penalties for its transgression, merely to abolish it later. God did not lay down rules for man’s conduct, then send His Son to die because men transgressed those rules, and immediately afterward annul the very law that demanded the death of Christ. If the law were to be annulled, it should have been annulled before Christ died. This would have saved Him the agony and terror of the cross. To keep the law in force just long enough to exact the penalty of death, and then annul it, is making the cross of none effect and Christ’s death a miscarriage of justice.

It is truly amazing that religious teachers can believe in the abolition of the law. What do they mean by it? Surely not that men are now at liberty to disregard the commandments of God, that men may steal, kill, and commit adultery with impunity.

I believe I know what some of them mean. They hold that the day of the Sabbath has been changed from Saturday to Sunday. This, of course, means changing the law. It seems inconsistent to abolish one of the Ten Commandments and only one; and so they abolish all, and re-enact such as they think should remain, which in this case means all but the fourth. this they rewrite as they think it should read. They do not even believe that all of the fourth commandment is annulled. They contend that only part of the commandment is annulled which deals with a specific day. they hold that the Sabbath has not been abolished, but that the seventh day has.

This position brings the controversy out into the open. It is a question between the seventh and the first day of the week. The claim is that the Sabbath has been transferred from the seventh to the first day; that Christ did this in virtue of His being Lord of the Sabbath, or that the disciples made the change.

THE APOSTLES AND THE SABBATH

Let us consider the possibility of the apostles’ changing the Sabbath from one day to another.

A law publicly announced cannot be secretly annulled. If a change in the law is desired, the change should be made by an authority as great as the one who first enacted it, and the nature of the change should be made plain.

God Himself led the way in the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath. He Himself proclaimed it in flaming fire from the mount. He Himself wrote it in enduring stone. Multitudes of God’s people were witnesses and heard the proclamation, and myriads of angels were there.

None of these conditions was present at the time when the first day of the week was supposed to have been instituted. Sunday came in unannounced, unheralded, unnoticed, in every way an anticlimax to the original institution and inauguration of the Sabbath of the Lord. If God had anything to do with the first day of the week, we must draw the conclusion that He wanted the change made in the most secret and inconspicuous way possible; for on the first Sunday nobody knew that any change had been made, not even the disciples, who some say are supposed to have made it! They were in as complete ignorance as the rest, having locked themselves in a room for fear of the Jews ( John 20: 19).

We can see no consistency in God’s announcing a law from heaven in the presence of millions of beings from this world and the worlds beyond, a law that is to judge the living and the dead, announcing it with all the glory and majesty at His command, so that the very earth quakes and the mountains tremble, and then abolishing that same law in the most inconspicuous manner, letting men find out years later what He had done. One would almost come to the conclusion that God was ashamed of what He had done. At least we are clear that the disciples had nothing to do with it. They did not even know that Christ had risen.

DID GOD OR CHRIST CHANGE THE SABBATH

God had done everything He could to magnify the seventh-day Sabbath. He honored it by keeping it Himself. He rested upon it; He blessed it; He sanctified it; He proclaimed it in glory from the mount. He did none of these things for the first day of the week.

In view of the fact that God has proclaimed to the world and to angels that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord;” in view of the fact that God has announced Himself as “the Lord, I change not;” in view of the further fact that He claims to be the “Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning;” in view of the still further fact that He has solemnly promised that He will not “alter the thing that is gone out of” His “lips” (Exodus 20:8-11; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17; Psalms 89:34), would it not be embarrassing for God to announce that despite all these statements and promises, He has done the very thing He said He would not do: that He has changed the day after faithfully promising that He would not alter the thing that is gone out of His lips; that the seventh day which He blessed and pronounced holy is no longer blessed and holy; that it is no longer to be known as “my holy day,” the “holy of the Lord, honorable” (Isaiah 58:13); that He has removed the blessing and sanctification with which He once invested the Sabbath, and has demoted it to a common working day; and that while men had formerly been punished for profaning the Sabbath, they could now work all they wanted to on the seventh day, and be guiltless? After such an announcement how could God ever claim to be the One who changeth not, the “Father of lights, with whom is no variableness” or “shadow of turning?”

If there was any justification for God’s coming down on Mount Sinai to announce to men the Ten Commandments, there is the same justification for God’s coming down the second time should He wish to change His law. God with His own voice spoke the law and commanded men to keep it. God actually wrote the Ten Commandments on two tables of stone and gave them to men, that they might know exactly what He said. Men have a right to expect God to stand by His word. In all fairness, If God wants to change the rules of life, He should ask for the return of the two tables of stone; He should clearly and definitely state the new commandments that men were henceforth to observe; and, if a change of the Sabbath day were in contemplation, He should give the reasons for such a change as He originally gave reasons for keeping the seventh-day Sabbath. He should, for His own sake, make some explanation why He once asked men to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” and now asks them to forget it. In justice to himself He should make this clear, that men might not err. The only pronouncement that men have so far is God’s words from Sinai. Men have a right to expect God to stand by this pronouncement until He openly repudiates the old and announces the new conditions of life. Men’s sense of fairness demands this; God’s demands much more.

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