Question:
What is meant by the expression “the law”?
Answer:
The law under discussion in the fifteenth chapter of Acts includes the whole Mosaic code, which the Lord did not impose on the Gentiles. Every moral element in that law remained. But every moral aspect of the law is included in the Ten Commandments. When Christ came, the ritual law expired by limitation. The prolific vine which had twined around the trunk of the moral law dropped off, but the tree stood— the Ten Commandments remained— impaired in no part of its life. There will be no trouble to our inquirer whatever or to any other who earnestly desires to know the truth if he will keep in mind that God’s government is one, eternal, unchangeable; necessarily so from His own perfect, holy, just, loving character. His law is as His government, and that law is summarized in the great Ten Words spoken from Mount Sinai.
To win the transgressors back to that law, teach them His character, and hold them to Himself, God devised the ceremonial law by which His children could from the very beginning express their faith in Him. In the patriarchal age, it was very simple. In the Mosaic age, it was complex, but every act performed had its lesson respecting sin and salvation, and sin is, ever has been, and ever will be, the transgression of the moral law—the Ten Commandments. Sometimes this ceremonial law has been so intertwined in its moral aspects with the moral law that they have seemed almost the same to the surface reader. It is like a strong-growing green vine on an oak. When the vine is cut, it falls and dies, but the oak stands just the same. The life of each is different. So it is with the two laws.
We have a ceremonial law in this dispensation, God’s simple regulations regarding baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. The four things imposed on the Gentiles in Acts 15 (see Act 15:28, 29) were things of moral bearing, things which those Gentile converts did not consider were part of the moral law because generations of practice had blinded their minds. The apostles imposed them because they did have a moral basis.
