Lesson 9: “Living the Law”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
What is the Law of God? Why did God give the law to the nation of Israel? Is the law the thing which reveals God and His character, as Adventism says it is? Are the Ten Commandments really eternal?
This week’s Sabbath School lesson, the ninth one in this quarter’s series called “Exodus”, is entitled “Living the Law”. It teaches its Adventist readers to think of the law as God’s eternal revelation of His character and His expectations for His people for all time. Yet this lesson misses the central pillar of the law: the levitical priesthood that mediated atonement on behalf of the Israelites. If we miss the atonement and mediation that was the law’s framework, we actually misuse the law and miss its purpose. We can’t separate the commandments from the requirements of sacrifice and atonement mediated by the priests.
God Revealed By Law
The lesson introduces the week with the typical Adventist foundation on page 111:
“God’s law reveals Him, that is, His goodness, love, values, righteousness, and His restraints against evil. As the law is holy and just, so is God. While creating space for an abundant life, the law also helps protect us from dangers and calamities. Respect for God, for each other, and for life’s values were the basis of His legislative system.”
After establishing the idea that “God’s law” is the revelation of God and His character, it continues to separate the Ten Commandments from what the lesson calls “the code of the covenant”. In this way the author reinforces the teaching that the Ten are eternal, and the rest of the laws are given to explain how Israel was to put the principles of the Ten into practice.
This approach is necessary for Adventism because their worldview and theology depend upon the idea that the seventh-day Sabbath of the Ten Commandments is eternal. In fact, Monday’s lesson emphasizes Sabbath in a larger discussion of Israelite’s festivals:
The Sabbath was established at Creation (Gen. 2:2, 3; Exod. 20:8–11), was connected to Israel’s deliverance and redemption (Deut. 5:12–15), and, in a powerful way, points to worshiping God as our Creator, Redeemer, and Lord (Mark 2:27, 28).
The week’s studies continue by focussing on the laws of justice and vengeance. In Wednesday’s lesson the author tells us that in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was correcting the rabbit’s interpretive errors that had crept in over the years. The lesson refers to Matthew 5:38–48 and focusses on Jesus quoting Exodus 21:24 where the Law stated, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. Claiming that “human tradition…had perverted” the original law’s meaning, the lesson claim that “Jesus was restoring the original meanings of these laws”:
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ cited texts from the Old Testament, texts that people were surely familiar with. However, He was speaking against the current rabbinical interpretations, which over the centuries had moved away from the original purpose of these laws. That is, human tradition not only hid the purpose of God’s Word but in some cases (think of the Sabbath regulations and what they had done to the Sabbath commandment) had perverted their intent and meanings. By His words, Jesus was restoring the original meanings of these laws.…
Jesus Christ, who gave these social laws to Moses, knew the purpose of this law; therefore, He could apply it in an objective way, according to its original intention. The motive behind it was to bring justice and reconciliation, and to restore peace.
After more discussion of how we are to leave vengeance to God, Thursday’s lesson ends by reminding the reader to be perfect as our Father in heaven in perfect, admonishing that:
“true perfection is to love, to be forgiving, and to be merciful (Lue 6:36), even to those who do not deserve it. This principle, and the actions it leads to, is what it means to reflect God’s character.”
Instead of dealing with the true issue of the Old Testament laws of justice being literally changed by the Lord Jesus into calls for forgiveness of one’s enemies—not on the basis of “correcting” rabbinic distortions but on the basis of His own ministry of atonement and reconciliation, the lesson obscures that Jesus came to fulfill the law and its demands for justice. Instead, the lesson manipulates the reader to remain under the law’s authority without understanding that without sacrificial blood, the Ten Commandments have no power. They can only condemn; they cannot guide a person into a better life.
Friday’s lesson ends the week with a quotation by Ellen White from The Great Controversy reminding the readers that they have to be prepared to endure “the time of trouble” which will be “a fearful ordeal for God’s people,” and this quote is followed by a thought question:
The apostle Paul had a positive and uplifting attitude toward God’s law and its functions, yet he was against the misuse of the law. What does his statement mean that “you are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14, NIV)? What are ways that we can misuse the law?
The Law Can’t Be Separated from Blood
The entire week’s lesson leads the reader to an unbiblical paradigm. Saturday’s introduction reinforces Adventism’s central message that the law provided the direction for having an abundant life, respect for God, and protection from danger. To be sure, the law DID contain commands that protected Israel from the dark desires of depraved human hearts.
It did give guidance for justice in the case of crimes and moral failures. It did protect both criminals and victims from punishments and consequences that far exceeded the original misdeed. The law provided guidance for a just society, and it forbade the depraved tenets of pagan worship that included child sacrifice and temple prostitution. It also provided laws for dealing justly with the poor and the aliens around them. It forbade covenants with the pagan nations, yet it provided, through its sabbath laws, for provision for the poor and aliens who were permitted to harvest whatever grew from the Israelite’s fields every seventh year when the land was to receive its sabbath rest.
Israel’s law both protected and provided for Israelite safety and security—but it also prescribed true worship of Yahweh. Yet Adventism never teaches the law in connection with the commands for sacrifice. Instead it separates the Ten Commandments from what it calls the “ritual laws”.
The Bible never separates the law into segments. The law is a unit: the Ten Commandments are its central statement, the very “words of the covenant” (Exodus 34:27, 28). Tradition may classify the laws as “civil” and “moral” and “ceremonial”, but those are artificial distinctions. Never does the Bible separate them, and never does the Bible say we can abandon the ceremonial laws while we must keep the moral ones.
Instead, the Bible teaches that the law—all 613 individual commands including the Ten—are an indivisible unit. If a person breaks even one law—he breaks them all. If a woman wove linen and wool together to make a mixed cloth, that infraction would mean she was guilty of the whole law—including every moral command contained in the Ten. Even the New Testament confirms that understanding of the law:
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one [point], he has become guilty of all.—James 2:10 LSB
Ironically, the discussion question from Friday’s lesson ignores Adventism’s foundational misuse of the law. It asks how “we can misuse the law”, yet it teaches its members that they must keep all Ten of the Decalogue—especially that fourth commandment—and they miss that as long as they place themselves under the authority of the law, they are 100% guilty and are under a death sentence.
Furthermore, the authority of the commandments cannot be properly understood apart from the provision of blood atonement for any Israelite who sinned. The law condemned each person to death for even one infraction. Why, then, did not all Israel die?
The answer is that God provided substitutionary sacrifices mediated by the levitical priesthood. The animal sacrifices that Israel was commanded to offer at the designated altar of the Lord—first at the tabernacle and later at the temple—were the means of keeping Israel alive.
No Israelite was free from sin. Every person broke the law because every person is born spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1–3). Every Israelite was under the curse of death—and only the faithful offering of blood sacrifices by the lawfully appointed levitical priesthood could cover Israelite sins.
Even if an Israelite offered a sacrifice behind his tent, that wouldn’t “count”. He had to bring his lamb to the priest and allow him to figuratively place the penitent’s sin on the head of the lamb and then kill the lamb and offer it to the Lord. No Israelite could offer acceptable sacrifices apart from the involvement of a levitical priest. Only a priest from God’s appoint line could mediate His forgiveness and mercy. Each person needed the intercession of a mediator—and the mediator HAD to be a Levitical priest.
Why, you may ask, can’t Jesus’ sacrifice count for blood atonement in relationship to the law? After all, if blood is necessary, Jesus shed blood.
The question reveals the heart of Adventism’s slavery to the law. Hebrews 7 explains why the law cannot be combined with Jesus’ sacrifice. Look at Hebrews 7:11–19:
Now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the people received the Law), what further need [was there] for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be designated according to the order of Aaron? For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also. For the one concerning whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no one has officiated at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, a tribe with reference to which Moses spoke nothing concerning priests. And this is clearer still, if another priest arises according to the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become [such] not according to a law of physical requirement, but according to the power of an indestructible life. For it is witnessed [about Him], “YOU ARE A PRIEST FOREVER ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.” For, on the one hand, there is a setting aside of a former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness (for the Law made nothing perfect), and on the other hand there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.—Hebrew 7:11–19 LSB
This passage is clear: the priesthood has been changed! The Law given to Israel was built upon—founded on—the levitical priesthood. Without the levitical priesthood, the law becomes null and void—obsolete. It has no more power. It required and depended on the Levites.
God ordained that the tribe of Levi would serve as priests and temple workers, and no person from any other tribe could legitimately serve as a priest nor offer intermediary sacrifices. If they did, they were blaspheming God. In fact, it was the sin of Saul’s offering sacrifices himself that ultimately caused his removal from the office of king!
When our Lord Jesus came incarnate, born of the tribe of Judah—the kingly, not the priestly tribe—He fulfilled all the requirements of the law. Sinless and fully God, He took our human sin into Himself and died a human death, enduring God’s wrath on the cross that each of us deserved. Then, because His blood was sufficient to pay for all our sin, He rose from the grave on the third day and forever shattered our inherited curse of death! Now, when we believe and trust His finished atonement, we pass from death to life and are born again!
Now we are under a new law—the law of Christ. Because all morality originates in God Himself, the moral requirements of the Law of Christ will reflect many of those found in the Old Testament Law. But this law is new.
Jesus the New Lawgiver
In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7, our Lord Jesus delivered His own new law. Because He is God, He had given the original law to Moses for the nation of Israel. In fact, he had given Israel the warning that the were not to add to nor take away any detail from the commandments He gave them:
“You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh your God which I am commanding you.”—Deuteronomy 4:2 LSB
Yet the Lord Jesus came quoting the words of the Law—the Old Testament commands God gave Israel—and changed them. For example, Jesus directly changed commands from the Ten Commandments:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”—Matthew 5:27, 28 LSB
Many people say, as the lesson does, that Jesus was correcting rabbinic practices and teachings that had added to the law. Others say that He was merely expounding the true meaning of the law because as God He knew what it really meant.
These explanations are not supportable from the context. God specifically gave the words of the Ten Commandments to Israel as He intended them to receive them. The Israelites were depraved humans who had not lived under the restrictions of the law and, according to Romans 5:12–14, may not even have understood the particular sins of adultery, because sin “in not imputed” when there is no law.
God gave Israel the law that would define marital infidelity in a practical way. Yet when the Lord Jesus came, He was bringing in the Kingdom of God. His atonement would open the way for God’s new creation—those who would be literally spiritually born again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
The new creation would be aware of sin at a deeper level than merely outward behavior. As born again children of God, they would be able to respond to their Lord before they came close to acting on lust. They could submit to the Lord the thoughts and feelings that were hidden from everyone and know that He would give them His strength and faith to turn away from the internal temptations. Jesus gave a new law that revealed the reality of sin: the depraved heart of natural man. No natural human is able to avoid lust; only those who are born again and have new hearts are able to live by faith and trust instead of by their own sinful hearts.
Jesus, the One who gave the Law to Israel, was literally doing what He had told Israel they must not do: He was changing and adding to the law! He was making it a different law completely—based on the new reality His fulfillment of the law and His finished atonement would accomplish.
Jesus IS the new lawgiver—and He is also our new priest. He is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, a priest who existed BEFORE there was a law, and before there was a nation of Israel. Jesus’ priesthood is not tethered to the law but is the foundation of an entirely New law!
In the law of Christ, there is no mention of keeping the seventh day holy. Instead, Hebrews 3 and 4 explain that now, in the new covenant, God has appointed a new day called TODAY. Today if anyone hears his voice, he is to believe and enter the sabbath-like rest of peace with God. Today we can be reconciled to God.
Our Lord Jesus fulfilled the shadows of Sabbath (Colossians 2:16, 17), and when we trust Him, we enter our true Sabbath rest accomplished by His blood of the eternal covenant.
Jesus Reveals God
Finally, it is not the law but the Lord Jesus who reveals God and His character. The law was never given to reveal God’s character but to reveal human sin:
Now the Law came in so that the transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.—Romans 5:20, 21 LSB
What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! Rather, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law. For I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.” But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, worked out in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the Law sin [is] dead.—Romans 7:7, 8 LSB
It was the Lord Jesus who revealed God to us. He was the exact imprint of His nature and glory!
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. … For in Him all the fullness [of God] was pleased to dwell, And through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross–through Him–whether things on earth or things in heaven.—Colossians 1:15, 19, 20 LSB
The Law revealed human sin to humans; the Lord Jesus revealed God in His fulness to mankind! Every shadow of the commandments was fulfilled in the person of the Lord Jesus and His finished atonement, in His death for our sin, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day!
Adventism has the Law and the Lord Jesus upside-down and backwards. The Law was God’s provision to reveal sin and to reveal His demand and provision for atonement. It was His provision to protect Israel from paganism and to teach them to submit to Him and to trust Him. They were to worship and honor Him the way He said to worship.
When Jesus came, He fulfilled all the shadows of the law and with His resurrection opened a new, living way to the Father: His blood. He revealed the Father’s mercy, grace, justice, and wrath toward sin.
He took your sin in Himself and endured God’s wrath instead of you. If you haven’t trusted Him and His finished work, you need to do so. We no longer answer to the law. Our goal is not to live the law. Rather, God’s will is for us to admit our helpless sin and trust the Lord Jesus and His finished work.
Let go of the law; let go of the Sabbath, and come to Jesus. He will not trick you nor leave you without direction. He Himself will indwell you when you trust Him, and He will teach you to submit to Him and to apply His word to your life.
Trust Him now; you will be given new life, and you will be forever free from the bondage of the law and its curse. Come to Jesus—and live! †
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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The Jews thought they were keeping the law, especially the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees. When Jesus said, “ But I say “, He was not violating Deuteronomy 4:2, rather He was giving a fuller understanding of the laws true meaning. In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7, Jesus is NOT delivering His own new law. In Matthew 6:14 Jesus taught his disciples “ that if you do not forgive others, your Heavenly Father will not forgive you “. Of course this was before He went to the cross. Since then , it is His blood alone that is the basis for our forgiveness. Paul, in Ephesians 4:31 reverses that order completely : “ Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you “. It is a huge mistake when interpreting scripture to stop at the Old Testament and the gospels as if that’s the final say on the matter. It is said of the first Christian fellowship that “ all the believers devoted themselves to the APOSTLES TEACHING “ Acts 2:42. As New Covenant believers we should do the same.