The Christadelphian, February 1937, John Carter

“The Law and Eternal Life”

Some Notes and Questions

THE question of the relation of the law of Moses to Eternal Life, is one of the elements of those “strivings about the law” which seems to occur generation after generation. In various places it is being discussed; and, since past studies have involved some consideration of the subject, we append some questions in the hope they will help a little to clear up a much misunderstood subject.

1. When it is said that the Law could give life, what is meant by “the Law”? Does it refer to the ten commandments, or the whole law, including the ritual? If the ten commandments only are meant, where is there any promise of eternal life when they were given? Paul calls that which “was written and engraven on stones” a “ministration of death,” “the letter which killeth,” which had indeed a glory, but only a passing one (2 Cor. 3.). He calls “the new covenant” “the spirit” “which gives life.”

But if the whole ritual law is included, then the sacrifices commanded witnessed to its inadequacy to give life. These sacrifices covered a wide range, and were not all connected with personal sins, as e.g., the Passover, the maternal offering after child-birth, offerings for physical cleansing, etc. Mary offered the sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, when the days of her purification were fulfilled; the child Jesus was circumcised; he kept the Passover. Why should a sinless man have these ceremonial observances to keep? Did they not point to something other than the law as the means of finding favour with God?

2. How was eternal life available before the law? Was it not offered to man before—to Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the fathers? To ask is to answer. But what were the conditions? Clearly life was not by the law which had not then been given.

3. Is not faith in God’s promises the condition of becoming well-pleasing to God? Without it we cannot please Him (Heb. 11.). Had not Christ faith? Is he not “my righteous one” who “shall live by faith”? (Hab. 2:4). The prophet is contrasting God’s “Head” with the “Head” of the nations, who in the latter days leads the nations, but comes to his end. Paul quotes the passage as a “touchstone” in Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; and Heb. 10:38. If “the righteous one” lives by faith, how can it be said that works of law are sufficient?

4. Is it not the covenant with Abraham that contains the promise of everlasting life? “All the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.” Upon what conditions? Was it by works of law or by faith? It was by faith, as Paul is careful to shew in Rom. 4. “What saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.” And he is “the father of all who believe, ” for the promise was not “through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.” Law has to do with works; promises with faith; and if life could be by law, were there not two methods whereby life might be attained? But Paul says the law does not annul the promises or make them of none effect (Gal. 3:17; Rom. 4:14, 15). The promises still stood as the way to life all the time the law was in existence. “For if the inheritance be by law, it is not by promise” (Gal. 3:18). But God’s method is historically illustrated in Abraham’s case; God gave it to Abraham by promise. And the record of his faith was written for all who came after (Rom. 4:23).

5. Was it not the teaching of the Judaizers that life could be obtained by the law? And was not Paul’s effort put forth to rebut such teaching as contrary to the gospel? If the law could give life, the Judaizers were right; and it is evident that law and promise are both methods of attaining to life. The law is then against the promises, being a competitive method; but Paul asks “Is the law against the promises?” and answers “God forbid: for if there had been a law which could have given life, then righteousness would have been by the law” (Gal. 3:21). But this is contrary to the facts of Scripture which has included all under sin, and all must partake of the one method of faith (verse 22).

6. Paul says the law witnesses to “the righteousness of God manifested apart from law” (Rom. 3:21). If the law witnesses to a method of becoming righteous “apart from law,” then the law itself teaches a method not by law. How can it at the same time teach a method by law?

7. Paul says Deut. 30. witnesses to God’s method in Christ (Rom. 10:6–11). Is not Deuteronomy part of the law? Here then is the law teaching life in Christ.

8. Paul says that those who go about to establish their own righteousness by the law are ignorant of God’s righteousness (Rom. 10:3). Can any then say, with understanding of God’s righteousness, that righteousness is also offered by law? Paul also says that one who believes, understands that God’s method in Christ settles the question for ever: it excludes the other. To everyone who believes, Christ is the end (of the idea) that law gives righteousness (verse 4).

9. Paul again says that Israel sought for a law of righteousness, and did not find it; nay, more, they, as the result of the wrong search, did not find the law of righteousness, because they stumbled at Christ (Rom. 9:31–33).

10. If life is by law, then Christ will have attained to life by law? It may be said that it is recognised that no one else attains to life by law, but that Christ did! Here is a sinless man—how did he attain to life? Why did he die? It might be answered, “for us.” But this is only part of the answer and by itself tends to obscure the truth. To die for us, was it not necessary that he should be in the position where he could die? How came he there? Was it not by being born of a death-stricken race? And is not the race death-stricken because of sin at the fountain head? Did he not by birth find himself related to a dispensation of death? Did not he, though a sinless man, die without any violation of righteousness? Then we see him mortal physiologically, but sinless biographically; and because of the first, death claimed him.

Did he not need “saving from death”? Paul says so (Heb. 5:7). How then was he saved? Let Paul answer. He says, “God brought from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Heb. 13:20). If Jesus was raised through the blood of the Abrahamic covenant, then it was not by the Mosaic? He attained to life through the promises, by faith, and obedience. That obedience was to the law of God under which he was born—a law which required that he should die, for Paul says he was obedient unto death even on the cross. But if the law of God required his death, and that a sacrificial one, is it not obvious that the law could not be at the same time the source of his life? Can it be said that the law could give life for obedience when it called for the death of an obedient man as a ritual declaration that God was right in bringing death upon all because of sin?

11. Again, if it is said his death is only “for us” what shall we make of Paul’s other statement that “Christ entered into the holiest by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). Why should “his own blood” be necessary for his own entry into life, if he attained to life by law? Did he not benefit by his own death? Surely so, since he entered “by his own blood.”

12. Paul also says, “He obtained eternal redemption.” Then did he not need redemption? From what? Not from sins, for he had committed none. He needed “saving out of death” (Heb. 5:7). Where does the law provide for a sinless man being saved out of death? Clearly it was not by law that Jesus attained to life.

13. Further, Paul says: “It was necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified” with animal sacrifices; “but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these” (Heb. 9:23). Was not Jesus himself part of the heavenly things? And was not the “better sacrifice” his own? Does not this statement also show that he was “purified” by his own sacrifice? But if his sacrifice was necessary, how can it be said that “works of law” could give life? Was not one here who had kept all things written in the law? Yet had he not to “offer himself” in working out his own redemption?

14. Did the law rest on the Aaronic priesthood—or the priesthood on the law? The idea that the law could give life assumes that the law sanctioned the priesthood. But this is not so, Paul being witness. He says, “If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchizidec and not be called after the order of Aaron” (Heb. 7:11–12).

Then the Levitical priesthood could not give “perfection”? And if the people received the law under it, is it not evident that the law also could not give perfection? It could rise no higher than the sanctioning authority: the law could not rise higher than the priesthood.

Paul continues: “The priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change of law.” If the priesthood fails, the law fails; if the priesthood changes, the law must also change. This knitting together of priesthood and law (with the latter subservient to the former) shows the law could no more give life than the Levitical priesthood could enter the holiest. This subservience of the law to the priesthood, so clearly stated by Paul, seems to be generally overlooked. The law could not have operated at all, independently of the priesthood.

15. Paul says there is a disannulling of the commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, and thereupon there is a bringing in of a better hope: and he adds parenthetically “for the law made nothing perfect” (Heb. 7:18, 19, R.V.).

16. The tabernacle was divided into two parts—the holy place, and the holiest of all. In the first the Levitical priesthood served daily: into the second the high priest went alone once a year, and on that occasion the duties of the priests in the holy place were suspended. Paul explains this structural feature with its associated priestly arrangements, as typical of two priesthoods and two covenants and two legal systems. The “holy place” was “a figure for the time then present”—a type of the Levitical priesthood and law. Could it bring men to God? Was not the veil hanging there dividing off the holiest a constant reminder of the insufficency of that system? And when the high priest entered he was entirely divested of his insignia of office as priest of Israel, to show that entry would not be made into the holiest by means of the Mosaic arrangements. To say the law could bring men to life annuls the type as Paul explains it (Heb. 9:1–12).

17. “Wherefore then serveth the law?” Paul asks it, and answers it. The promises were there already; why add the law? He answers, “because of transgressions till the Seed should come” (Gal. 3:19); “it was our tutor slave (pedagogue) unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (3:24)—it was a servile minister, like the slave who took the boy to school. Another object is thus defined: “The law entered that the offence might abound” (Rom. 5:20), to make more evident the need for grace in Christ.

18. Was not Abraham’s domestic life an allegory? Paul says so, and explains that Sarah the free-woman represents the new covenant, the Jerusalem of the future, with children of promise. Hagar, a bondslave, represents the Mosaic covenant, her slave son the children of the law and of Jerusalem under the law (Gal. 4.). Does not this also teach that the law is a slave-system, but the promises concern sonship. The law concerned the past: the promises concern the future.

19. Corresponding to this allegory, when Paul would draw the Hebrews from trust in the law, he contrasts Sinai with Zion (Heb. 12:18–23). Sinai was the mountain of the law, a place of terror, of thunder, of a voice they could not bear, of a death-prohibition. It did not bring them to God—they were fenced away. Zion is the place of the meeting of angels in festal assembly, and of those whose names are enrolled in heaven, of justified men and women. Sinai versus Zion is Law versus Faith; the Law destroys, terrifies, does not give life.

20. The only law that we can presumably say had a possibility of life was the Edenic. But only Adam has lived under such conditions, and “none has sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.” Death reigns over all (Rom. 5:12); and where death already reigns you cannot introduce a law which offers life for obedience, and death as a penalty for disobedience. The conditions do not exist.

The Mosaic was also “penal”; but its penalties were related to men already dying, and its penalties were connected with regulations which were part of a Theocracy. Treason is punishable with death under man’s law; how much more so under God’s? The Mosaic Law was a national code, with blessings and penalties adjusted to such a relationship.

21. In the parable of the Samaritan, Jesus taught life through One who was despised as a Samaritan. (See The Christadelphian, 1935, p. 543.)

22. To the rich ruler Jesus said, “Follow me.” He looked to the law for salvation, and the Saviour was there. He turned away from the One whom God had sent. Those who affirm life by law likewise in effect make null life in Christ.

23. “By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal. 2:16).

J.C.