Objection:
Most Christians declare that the Ten Commandments were abolished at the cross. You try to embarrass us by asking us if we believe it is all right then, in the Christian Era, to steal or kill or do any other of the heinous deeds prohibited by the Ten Commandments. Well, we don’t. We believe that God has great moral principles that have governed the universe from all eternity and will continue to govern it to all eternity. The Ten Commandments were simply a partial reflection of these principles. The principles remain, but the Ten Commandments are gone, and, therefore, so is the Sabbath.
Answer:
How does the objector know that God has had these “great moral principles” from eternity? Does she have access to heavenly information that we do not have? No! Christianity is a revealed religion. It does not rest on the philosophical speculations of wise men, but a revelation from God, and that revelation is contained in a written record called the Bible. What we may deduce from viewing God’s creation or from communing with ourselves must ever be corrected by what we read in the Good Book. That is, historically, the Protestant position.
No, the objector has no authoritative source of information that we do not possess. That is why she fails to give us any information as to what these “moral principles” are. She carefully leaves them undefined and undescribed. She is wholly warranted in affirming that God has had “moral principles” in force through all eternity. Reason and common sense assure us that a universe governed by a holy God must undoubtedly be controlled by” moral principles,” or, more precisely, moral laws, for Christian theology always speaks of the universe as being divinely governed by moral laws. But neither reason nor common sense can define with certainty just what is comprehended in those laws. We repeat, only by studying the revealed will of God in the Bible can we know for certain what those laws are.
We do know from the Bible that when God first called out a people for His own name, He delivered to them in His own handwriting Ten Commandments, or laws, which were to be the moral basis of their government. We would ask the objector whether she believes that any of these ten commands were part of the eternal moral laws. We can imagine her quickly agreeing that at least nine were the commands against false gods, making idols, blasphemy, killing, adultery, stealing, lying, covetousness, and the command to honor our parents. Thus by the admission of the objector herself, when God saw fit to reveal to men His eternal moral laws, He gave to them the Ten Commandments, nine-tenths of which consisted of eternal moral laws.
God’s speaking from Sinai made those eternal moral laws audible to men. And His writing them out naturally made them visually evident. Thus men might both hear and see and therefore know for sure those eternal moral laws that should govern their lives. To say that the Ten Commandments was simply a “reflection” of eternal moral laws, as though it were a shadowy image and not the enduring reality, is to confuse simple truth with subtle words. We might as appropriately say that God’s voice that spoke the Ten Commandments, and His hand that wrote it, were merely a shadowy reflection of Himself. The commands of the Ten Commandments were as truly a projection of the eternal moral laws into the realm of men as the divine hand and voice were a projection of God into our mortal realm. Thus it would be as irrational to speak of destroying the Ten Commandments while preserving the eternal moral laws as it would be to talk of destroying the divine voice and hand while preserving God.
Therefore, when someone declares that the Ten Commandments were abolished at Calvary, they are, in strict logic, really asserting that God’s eternal moral laws, or at least nine of them, were then removed. In other words, after God had supernaturally revealed nine of His eternal moral laws to men and had urged them repeatedly through the prophets to be obedient, He suddenly abolished these nine eternal moral laws at Calvary. That is what the objector really declares. Yet, she feels that it is grossly unfair for us to conclude that the logic of her declaration permits her to lie and steal and kill, and so on.
We do not believe that those who declare that the Ten Commandments have been abolished think they may now kill and steal. We simply affirm that the premises from which they reason logically lead to that conclusion and that the defenses they erect against that conclusion will not stand up. We seek to show not that their moral standards are bad, but simply that their logic is, and most evidently so, because of the lousy premise on which it rests and the flawed conclusion to which it leads.
And how do the advocates of this abolition doctrine seek to avoid this obvious conclusion? By a variety of arguments, some of which have already been considered. For example, one argument is that we are fulfilling the law in the Christian Era if we have love for God and man and that such love will not permit us to bow down to idols, lie, steal, et cetera. But does love, which has ever existed, make unnecessary the eternal moral laws that have ever existed as the objector admits? No, love simply gives us spiritual discernment to see and a heart tender to obey these moral laws.
Furthermore, the prime importance of love to God and man is revealed in the Old Testament. Yet, there was a need for the Ten Commandments in Old Testament times. Why not also in our times?
The objector’s primary reasons for claiming that the abolition of the Ten Commandments permits her to break the fourth commandment, but does not enable her to break the other nine, are these:
- The fourth commandment alone, of the ten, was ceremonial, and with all the other ceremonies, expired at Calvary. Therefore we are not required to keep it.
- Because they are moral, the other nine commandments were re-enacted by the apostles and thus are binding on us.
Though these two contentions are parts of the objection before us and must be answered before a complete reply is provided, they also carry us into new discussion areas. So, we will examine them separately in upcoming posts.
