Law

LAW

In the Bible, signifies sometimes the whole word of God, Psa 19:7-11 119:1-176 Isa 8:20 ; sometimes the Old Testament, Joh 10:34 15:25, and sometimes the five books of Moses, which formed the first of the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures, Luk 24:44 Mal 13:15 . The Pentateuch was probably “the law,” a copy of which every king was to transcribe for himself and study, and which was to be made known to young and old, in public and in private, Deu 6:7 17:18,19 31:9-19,26. In other places the Mosaic institutions as a whole are intend by “the law,” in distinction from the gospel, Joh 1:17 Mal 25:8 .When the word refers to the Law of Moses, careful attention to the context is sometimes requisite to judge whether the civil, the ceremonial, or the moral law is meant. The ceremonial or ritual laws, concerning the forms of worship, sacrifices, priests, purifications, etc., were designed to distinguish the Jewish nation from the heathen, and to foreshadow the gospel dispensation. They were annulled after Christ’s ascension, Gen 3:24 Zep 2:15 Heb 9:1-28 10:1-22. The civil laws, Mal 23:2 24:6, were for the government of the Jews as a nation, and included the Ten Commandments. The whole code was adapted with consummated wisdom to the condition of the Jews, and has greatly influenced all wise legislation in later years. Its pious, humane, and just spirit should characterize every code of human laws. The moral law, Deu 5:22 Mat 5:17,18 Luk 10:26,27, is more important than the others, from its bearings on human salvation. It was written by the Creator on the conscience of man, and sin has never fully erased it, 1Ch 1:19 2:12-15. It was more fully taught to the Hebrews, especially at Mount Sinai, in the Ten Commandments, and is summed up by Christ in loving God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves, Mat 22:37-40 . It was the offspring of love to man, 1Ch 7:10,12 ; required perfect obedience, Gal 3:10 Jam 2:10 ; and is of universal and perpetual obligation. Christ confirmed and enforced it, Mat 5:17-20, showing its demands of holiness in the heart, applying it to a variety of cases, and supplying new motives to obedience, by revealing heaven and hell more clearly, and the gracious guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some have argued from certain passages of Scripture that this law is no longer binding upon Christians; that they “are not under the law, but under grace,” 1Ch 6:14,15 7:4,6 Gal 3:13,25 5:18; and the perversion of these passages leads men to sin and perish because grace abounds. Rightly understood, they harmonize with the declarations of the Savior, Mat 5:17 . To the soul that is in Christ, the law is no longer the arbiter of doom; yet is still comes to him as the divinely appointed teacher of that will of God in which he now delights, Psa 119:97 Mat 5:48 11:30.The word “law” sometimes means an inward guiding and controlling power. The “law in the mind” and the “law in the members,” mean the holy impulses of a regenerated should and the perverse inclinations of the natural heart, 1Ch 7:21-23 . Compare also 1Ch 8:2 9:31 Jas 1:25 2:12.

Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary

Law

1. Introductory.-The subject of the Law formed one of the main problems, if not indeed the main problem, of the Apostolic Church, inasmuch as it involved the fundamental relation of primitive Christianity to Judaism on the one hand and heathenism on the other. Later Judaism, on its Pharisaic side, had carried legalism to extremes, and thus accentuated the separation between Israel and the Gentiles. The primitive Christian community, on the other hand, had been taught by its Founder to rank the freedom of Divine grace higher than human merit (cf. e.g. Mat 9:9-13 ||s and, generally, the attitude of Jesus to publicans and sinners), and to regard faith as of more importance than the distinction between Jew and Gentile (cf. Mat 8:5-13 ||s, Mat 15:21-28 ||). In the evangelical record, moreover, the early Church had preserved the recollection of its Lords outspoken utterances regarding the merely relative validity of the Jewish ceremonial Law (e.g. of the Sabbath, Mat 12:1-14 ||s; of cleanness, Mat 15:10-20 ||s)-or, at all events, of the interpretations recognized in the Synagogue (the traditions of the elders, Mat 15:2 ff. ||). Still, the same record showed that in principle the attitude of Jesus to the Law as a whole was an avowedly conservative one (Mat 5:17-20, Luk 16:17), even as He had lived His life within the confines of the Law (cf. Gal 4:4 : ); His supreme aim, indeed, was to bring out with full clearness and force the will of God made known in the Law. We thus see that, with regard to the Law, the evangelical tradition seemed capable of a double construction, or, at least, that it did not supply the means for deciding a question that soon became urgent. It is therefore easy to understand why the early Christian community in Jerusalem assumed at first a rigidly conservative attitude towards the Law, and regarded the faithful observance of it as praiseworthy (Act 21:20; cf. Act 2:46; Act 3:1; Act 10:9; Act 10:14; Act 22:12). St. Peter, e.g., required a special revelation before he would enter the house of the uncircumcised Cornelius and admit the first Gentile convert into the Church by baptism (Act 10:1-48)-a step which did not fail to arouse opposition on the part of those who were of the circumcision (cf. Act 11:1-18).

2. The view of St. James.-The principal representative of this zeal for the Law in the infant Church was St. James, the brother of the Lord, who, according to Acts, as also to the Pauline Epistles, occupied a leading position therein (Act 15:13-21; Act 21:18-26, Gal 2:9; cf. Gal 1:19). St. James, by reason of his righteous life, is said to have been esteemed scarcely less highly by non-Christians than by believers (Hegesippus, in Eus. HE [Note: E Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.).] ii. 23). His great concern was to smooth the way by which Israel might come to Jesus Christ, and to put no stumbling-block before his people. From this point of view his attitude to the question concerning the Gentile Christians discussed at the Apostolic Council becomes readily intelligible. Here he shows himself to be a genuine disciple of Jesus in recognizing, after the example of Peter, the supremacy of grace, and in refusing to put the yoke of the Law upon the Gentile Christians, whom rather he receives as brethren, while he acknowledges St. Paul as the Apostle of the Circumcision (Act 15:13-21; cf. Act 15:11, Gal 2:9). He thus came into direct conflict with the Pharisaic group of Jewish Christians-those who asserted that the salvation of the Gentiles depended upon their being circumcised and their acceptance of the Law (Act 15:1-5, Gal 2:1-5). It was probably only for the sake of brotherly intercourse between circumcised and uncircumcised Christians that James proposed the restrictions to Gentile Christian liberty which were laid down in the so-called Apostolic Decree (Act 15:20 f., Act 15:28f.). The reason given for the proposal (Act 15:21 : For Moses from generations of old hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath) probably means simply that the four prohibitions in question-which formed the kernel of the so-called Noachian commandments, and correspond to the laws for proselytes-had come to be so impressed upon the minds of the Jews that they could not countenance any disobedience to them if their intercourse with their Gentile brethren in the Church was to be unconstrained. In formulating the injunctions of the Apostolic Decree St. James was in reality only following the practice of the Synagogue with regard to proselytes of the narrower class (the God-fearing, [or ] ), just as that practice no doubt had already prepared the way in the Christian mission to the Gentiles; for the fact that St. Paul makes no mention of the Apostolic Decree in Gal 2:9 f. probably signifies that he had observed its provisions on his own initiative (so, in substance, A. Ritschl, B. Weiss, H. H. Wendt, etc.; cf., further, article Moses). But the question regarding the Gentiles was in no sense solved, as soon appeared in what occurred at Antioch (Gal 2:11-14). If, for the sake of Christian fellowship, St. Peter had in that city ignored the Jewish regulations about food, and had eaten in the company of Gentile Christians, this did not coincide with the views of those who came from James. These men took offence at St. Peters practice-just as the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem had resented his action at Caesarea (Acts 10; cf. Act 11:2 f.)-manifestly assuming that Jewish Christians, as the circumcised, were under an absolute obligation to the Mosaic Law, and that they ought not, even for the sake of Christian fellowship, to make any concession whatever to the liberty of the converted heathen. If concessions were to be made at all, they must come from the Gentile, not the Jewish, side. Whether this point of view is to be traced directly to St. James himself, or rather merely coincided with his position, is a much-debated question. It is probable, however, that in his view of the matter his concern for Israel bulked more largely than his regard for the Gentiles, and that accordingly he would have preferred to surrender the possibility of perfect Christian communion between Jewish and Gentile Christians rather than grant the former a dispensation from their regulations regarding food. Perhaps we may, with B. Weiss, see a suggestion of this point of view in what St. James says in Act 15:14 regarding the mission to the Gentiles, viz. that God had taken out of them a people for His name-i.e. a new people of God, in addition to the old.

To this type of Jewish Christianity corresponds generally the religious standpoint of the Epistle which is ascribed to St. James. The letter shows so little of a distinctively Christian character, that Spitta has in all seriousness hazarded the theory of its being in reality a Jewish work in which the name of Jesus has been inserted here and there. As a matter of fact, however, the writer shows clearly that he is a Christian, not merely in his reference to Jesus Christ in his address (Jam 1:1; cf. Jam 2:1), but also in his giving expression to specifically Christian ideas, as e.g. when he speaks of the regeneration of his readers by the word of truth (Jam 1:18) and of the saving word as implanted in their hearts (Jam 1:21). He betrays his Jewish Christian mode of thought, however, when, in enjoining his readers to be doers, and not merely hearers, of the word (Jam 1:22), he presently replaces word by law, although the perfect law of liberty means the law as given to, or as fulfilled in, human freedom. He thus shows that for him the central element in Christianity consists in fulfilment of the Law (cf. Jam 1:22-25 with Jam 2:12). It is true that St. Jamess conception of the substance of the Law likewise shows the influence of Jesus, as he ranks the law of love to ones neighbour above the others (Jam 2:8), and, generally, urges the pre-eminence of the commandments enjoining love and mercy (Jam 2:1-13; Jam 2:15 f., Jam 1:26 f., Jam 4:11, etc.), just as he specially denounces such sins as judging ones neighbour (cf. Mat 7:1) and swearing (cf. Mat 5:34-37), and condemns hatred as murder (Jam 4:2). His commendation of the practice of mercy and of keeping oneself unspotted from the world as the true worship of God (Jam 1:26) is also wholly in the spirit of Jesus (cf. e.g. Mat 9:13; Mat 12:7), while he is silent regarding all outward service and ceremony. It is quite unnecessary to follow modern criticism in regarding this spiritual and ethical conception of the Law as pointing to a post-apostolic date of composition, any more than the attack upon the doctrine of justification through faith alone (Jam 2:14-26) need be regarded as post-Pauline. St. Jamess view of the Law, in fact, coincides on the whole with the view urged by Jesus: in substance the new Law does not differ from that of the OT, and in Jam 2:9-12 he finds his examples in the latter (the Decalogue and Deu 1:17); while there is no difficulty in seeing why he never makes the slightest reference to the ceremonial Law-for readers such as his it was quite unnecessary to insist upon that side of the old religion, nor, for that matter, did Jesus Himself lay any emphasis upon it. Further, if the Epistle was addressed to Jewish Christians who had not as yet broken off relations with the Synagogue (cf. e.g. Jam 2:1 ff.), it may be confidently assumed that they were not neglectful of the ceremonial Law. What they required rather was to be reminded of the ethical aspect of the Law, and above all, to be warned against the common Jewish delusion that hearing and speaking the word could take the place of doing it. In Jam 2:14 the reference is not to the works of the Law, but solely to works in the ethical sense. Moreover, as the theologians of the Synagogue had already turned their minds to the passage Gen 15:6 (cf. A. Schlatter, Der Glaube im NT2, Calw and Stuttgart, 1896, pp. 29ff. 45ff.), the antithesis of faith and works, and the contrast between a justification by faith and a justification by works, may quite well have been formulated in an age prior to St. Paul.

3. The view of St. Peter.-Besides St. James, the most outstanding representative of the Jewish Christian position in the primitive Church was St. Peter. But just as, according to Acts 10, he had been led by a Divine revelation to enter the house of an uncircumcised man, and to eat with the Gentiles (cf. Act 11:3), we may infer also, from his speech in the Apostolic Council, and especially from his behaviour in the Gentile Christian community at Antioch, that he had a much clearer view than St. James of the merely relative obligation of the Law even for Jewish Christians. In certain circumstances he thought himself justified, for the sake of brotherly intercourse with Gentile Christians, in disregarding the rigour of the Law, since, after all, salvation did not depend upon the Law, whose yoke, indeed, neither the fathers nor the Jews then living were able to bear, but Jew and Gentile alike could look for salvation only to the grace of Jesus Christ, and to faith in Him (cf. Act 15:7-11, Gal 2:12 a). Hence St. Paul takes for granted that the subsequent vacillation of St. Peter at Antioch (Gal 2:12 b) was nothing but dissimulation, as it was due, not to any change of conviction, but simply to fear of the Jews. In principle St. Peter recognized the religious freedom of the Jewish Christians, not merely as regards the more general intercourse with their Gentile brethren sanctioned by the Apostolic Decree, but also as regards the closer intimacy involved in eating with them (cf. the Agapae). In other words, he had, according to St. Paul, actually acknowledged that the Jewish Christians had the right to accommodate themselves to the freedom of the Gentiles. Only we must bear in mind that St. Peter was, in a much greater degree than St. Paul, a man of moods, and was therefore not always so consistent in his thinking.

It is remarkable that the two Epistles bearing the name of Peter do not refer to the Law. The Second Epistle obviously dates from a time when the question regarding the Law had given place to other controversies, and, at all events, it is concerned with a libertinism and a doctrine that lie beyond the purview of Jewish legalism. It is a striking fact that even the First Epistle, the authenticity of which is open to no decisive objection, does not so much as mention the Law, but speaks from a quite unstudied and non-legalistic point of view. As the writer implies that, e.g. the OT conception of the priesthood was first properly realized in the NT Church, and describes the latter as the true Temple of God (1Pe 2:5 ff.), it would seem that the OT legal system as a whole had for him only a typological value. This would certainly be strange if the Epistle was written, as B. Weiss and Khl suppose, to Jewish Christians, i.e. prior to the time of St. Paul, but is quite intelligible if it was addressed to Gentile Christian, Pauline communities, and written under the influence of Pauline Epistles, as Romans and Ephesians-a hypothesis to which, in view of the editorial collaboration of Silvanus, the follower of St. Paul, no exception can be taken.

4. The view of St. Paul.-In point of fact, the first to decide the question of the Law upon grounds of principle was the Apostle Paul himself, though others had already pointed the way. In conformity with what has been said of St. Peters views, it is perfectly credible that, as related in Acts, St. Peter was the first to baptize a heathen, and that he should make reference thereto in his address to the Apostolic Council (Act 15:7-9). Here, however, the most outstanding name is that of the martyr St. Stephen, who anticipated St. Peter in divining the essentially non-legalistic character of the gospel. St. Stephen, as a Hellenist, could of course more easily than St. Peter discern the merely relative validity of the Jewish legal system, and especially of the Temple ritual; and although his adversaries, in charging him with having in his preaching attacked the Holy Place and the Law, were undoubtedly doing him an injustice, yet the accusation was not altogether unfounded. His trenchant speech (Acts 7) not only attacks the Jews for their persistent rejection of the Prophets, but also pointedly criticizes their over-estimation of the Temple: the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands (Act 7:47-50). His general plea is that Divine revelation is independent of any particular holy place, and be honours Moses less as the Law-giver than as the prototype of Jesus, and as the one who foretold His coming (cf. Act 7:35 ff.). The very Law to which the Jews appealed they had not kept (Act 7:53).

It was no mere accident that in particular the personality and preaching of St. Stephen should have wrought powerfully on the young Pharisee Saul (7:58). Saul probably belonged to the Cilician synagogue, whose members had disputed with St. Stephen, and in any case the latters great vindicatory speech must have still further opened the eyes of the zealous Pharisee to the inherently non-legal nature of the gospel, and rekindled his persecuting zeal against the followers of Jesus (cf. 6:9f.).

Even before his conversion Saul must have been sensible of the great alternative which he sets forth in Gal 2:15-21 : either righteousness is through the Law, and Christ died for nought; or else the Crucified Jesus is truly the Christ, and righteousness is to be attained through faith alone. It need, therefore, occasion no surprise that in his conversion Saul had become convinced of the universality of Christianity, or that thereafter he maintained that the Law was not in a religious sense binding upon either Gentile or Jewish Christians (Gal 1:2).

According to Gal 1:15 f. St. Paul saw at once that he was called to be a missionary among the heathen, and he seems to have laboured as such for a time without any interference whatever-a circumstance which will hardly seem strange when we remember that certain Hellenists who had been driven out in consequence of the persecution connected with Stephen had preached the gospel in Antioch even to the Gentiles, and that the numerous converts whom they had won from heathendom were recognized as brethren by the community in Jerusalem (Act 11:20-24). Nor does the Apostle make the slightest reference to the question of the Law in his earliest Epistles, 1 and 2 Thessalonians. It was in reality the aggression of certain Christian Pharisees-Judaizers (Act 15:1; Act 15:5, Gal 2:4)-that forced him into a thorough-going discussion of the significance of the Law, and this is his special theme in his Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. In seeking to delineate here the Pauline doctrine of the Law, however, we must also draw upon the Epistles of the Imprisonment and the Pastorals.

(a) His use of the term Law.-In discussing the Pauline conception of the Law, we note that the Apostle uses the term in somewhat different senses. It may mean the whole Pentateuch-the Torah in the wider sense-as in Rom 3:21 (the Law and the Prophets), Gal 4:21, 1Co 14:34, and even the entire OT, which might be thus designated a parte potiori, as in Rom 3:19 (the Psalms also included under the term), 1Co 14:21 (Isa 28:11 f.). As a rule, however, is applied by St. Paul to the Law delivered by Moses, as recorded in the Mosaic Books from Exodus to Deuteronomy (cf. Rom 5:13-14 : = , Gal 3:17 : the Law given 430 years after the promise). Further, St. Paul sometimes uses the term with, sometimes without, the definite article, and the distinction must not be ignored. It is true that , even without the article, may mean the historically-given Law of Moses, the possession of which was the special prerogative of the Jews as distinguished from the Gentiles (Rom 2:12-14; Rom 3:20 f., Rom 5:13 f., 20). The omission of the article, however, generally points rather to law as a principle; thus what is so said of law would hold good of any other positive ordinance of God-if such existed at all (cf. Rom 2:13-15 : For not the hearers of law are just before God, but the doers of law shall be justified; for when Gentiles who have not law do by nature the things of the law, these having no law are law to themselves, etc., and Rom 5:13 : For prior to law sin was already in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law). In both of these passages it is obvious that and equally refer to the Mosaic Law, but it is no less obvious that they assert principles, not merely historical facts; cf. also Gal 5:18; Gal 5:23, 1Ti 1:8 f. (The law is good, if a man use it lawfully, knowing that law is not made for a righteous man). On the other hand, when St. Paul wishes to make a historical statement regarding the Law of Moses, he uses the phrase . The extent to which he can abstract from the concrete historical sense of , however, is seen in the fact that he occasionally uses , virtually as a purely formal concept, as equivalent to norma, rule: Rom 3:27 (the law of faith, i.e. the Divine ordinance which enjoins faith, not works; cf. Rom 1:5, Rom 9:31, Rom 10:3, Rom 16:26), Rom 7:23 (the law of sin), Rom 8:2 (the law of life = natural law), Gal 6:2; cf. 1Co 14:21 (the law of Christ).

As regards the proper signification of the term, however, the Law may be defined as the positive revelation of the Divine ordinance to the Israelites, who therein, as in the covenants, the promises, and the Temple service (Rom 9:4), had a sacred privilege unshared by other peoples (cf. Rom 2:12, Rom 3:19). The law of God, which in the heathen was but an inward and therefore vague surmise, was for the Jews formulated objectively and unmistakably in the written Law (Rom 2:17-20; cf. 2Co 3:7), and the Jews, even if they broke that Law (Rom 2:21 ff.), could yet boast of a moral advantage over the heathen (Gal 2:15).

The Law, however, is a revelation not only of the Divine requirements, but also of the Divine promises and threats attached thereto. The Law, in short, contains a judicial system, in that it determines the relation between man and God by mans obedience to, or transgression of, the Divine commandments. If man keeps the whole Law, he is rewarded with life (Gal 3:12 = Lev 18:5), and this is bestowed not of grace, but of debt (Rom 4:4 : ); while if he does not keep the Law in its entirety, he is accursed (Gal 3:10 = Deu 27:26), and passes into the power of death (Rom 6:23; Rom 7:10, 1Co 15:56).

The Law demands, not faith, but works (Gal 3:11 f.), and hence St. Paul speaks repeatedly of the works of the law ( , works prescribed by the law; cf. Rom 3:20, Gal 2:16). By works of the law, however, he means, not simply the externally legal actions in which the heart is not implicated, but no less the morally irreproachable fulfilment of the commandments, which claim the obedience of the soul as well as of the body, and forbid sinful desire as well as sinful action-just as, indeed, the requirement of the whole Law is summed up in the commandments of love (Rom 13:9 f., Gal 5:14). It is no doubt the case that for St. Paul outward rites and ceremonies are included in the characteristic ordinances of the Law (Gal 2:12; Gal 4:10; cf. Rom 9:4; Rom 14:5). The Law as a whole consists of particular commandments of a statutory nature ( , Eph 2:15; cf. Col 2:14).* [Note: Some scholars are of opinion that the word here refers to the treatises with which the ancient Rabbis had overlaid the Law, but this is hardly compatible with Col 2:14 : .] In Gal. it is especially the ceremonial or ritual ordinances of the Law that are referred to, as St. Paul is here dealing mainly with the question of circumcision (cf. Gal 2:12 ff; Gal 4:3-10; Gal 5:2 ff. also Col 2:13 f., Col 2:20-22). In Rom., on the other hand, he is treating rather of the moral requirements of the Law (cf. Rom 2:12-23; Rom 7:7 to Rom 8:8). Nevertheless, we must not ascribe the conscious differentiation between moral law and the ceremonial Law to the Apostle himself. For him the Law is an indivisible whole (Gal 3:10; Gal 5:3), though he certainly recognizes gradations of value in its commands (e.g. the commandment of love), and finds its kernel in the Decalogue (cf. Rom 13:9 f., 2Co 3:3-7 : the Law engraven in letters on tables of stone). All the Law is Divine. While it might seem as if in Gal. St. Paul designedly avoids speaking of the Law as the Law of God (cf. Gal 2:19; Gal 3:19-21), but rather sets it, as the mere rudiments of the world (Gal 4:3; Gal 4:9; cf. Col 2:8; Col 2:20), on a level with the heathen stage of religion, the absence of any such design is shown by the fact that even in the same Epistle he exhorts his readers to fulfil the Law by love (Gal 5:13 f.), and thus asserts its holiness, while elsewhere (e.g. Rom 7:12; Rom 7:14; Rom 7:16; Rom 7:22) he insists upon its Divine and spiritual character.

(b) His view of the function of the Law.-The most characteristic feature of St. Pauls doctrine of the Law, however, is found in his statements regarding its function. Here, in fact, he develops a view directly opposed not only to his own earlier Jewish conception, but also to the thoughts of the natural man, viz. that the Law is not meant to mediate life to man, but is rather a medium of death. In the abstract, of course, he still recognizes that the Law was designed to be a real channel of righteousness and life (Rom 7:10 : the commandment which was unto life, Rom 10:5, Gal 3:12 : he that doeth them shall live in them). In the actual circumstances of life, however, the matter has quite a different bearing, for no human being has ever fulfilled, or ever can fulfil, the condition of perfect obedience to the Law. The Law is thus quite incapable of bringing life to man; nor, indeed, was it given by the all-foreseeing God with any such design. On the contrary, it has primarily a purely negative aim and effect, viz. to intensify the moral and spiritual misery of the unsaved man, so that the greatness of the Divine grace may be the more clearly displayed; and it is only upon this background that the Law has any positive significance at all.

This estimate of the Law, so obnoxious to the Judaistic mind, the Apostle made good by an appeal to experience as well as to Scripture and sacred history. His demonstration is given more especially in the Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans. In the latter he starts from experience, which shows that not only the heathen who live without the Law but even the people of the Law themselves are all held fast under the power of sin. The Jews glory in the Law with their lips, but, when their conscience is appealed to, they have to confess that their deeds are little better than those of the heathen (Rom 1:18; Rom 2:24). Next he shows from Scripture, from the Torah, which speaks to the Jews in particular, that they, equally with all mankind, are guilty before God (Rom 3:9-20; cf. Gal 2:16); moreover, the OT plainly declares that by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified (Rom 3:20, Gal 2:16 = Psa 143:2; the words by the works of the law were added by St. Paul himself, but are quite in accordance with the sense). Finally, on the lines of sacred history, he deduces the impossibility of justification by the works of the Law from the fact that God has now manifested a new species of righteousness apart from the Law, viz. the righteousness that is through faith in Jesus Christ, who has been set forth in His blood as a (Rom 3:21 f., Rom 3:25) i.e. an expiation, or a propitiation (Luther: Gnadenstuhl, throne of grace), and has rendered satisfaction to the Law (Gal 3:13; cf. Gal 4:5). This new mode of righteousness, moreover, was foreshown by the Law and the Prophets, as is argued in greater detail in Romans 4, where St. Paul discusses the grand precedent of Abraham; for Abraham, the father of Gods people, was justified not by works but by faith, and while as yet uncircumcised, in order that he should be the father of all who have faith (Rom 4:1-12). Besides the case of Abraham, St. Paul appeals specially to the prophetic utterance of Hab 2:4 (Rom 1:17, Gal 3:11 : The just shall live by faith). In Gal. likewise he attaches great importance to the pattern of Abraham. Here he represents the Law as a secondary institution in comparison with the Promise. In man the Promise presupposes faith only, and may be compared to a testament, which could not be invalidated by a positive decree such as the Law delivered 430 years Later (Gal 3:15-18). In the section of Rom. (9-11) which deals with the rejection of Israel, he returns again to the biblical arguments for the righteousness of faith, which excludes justification by the Law (Rom 10:3-17). But the decisive proof of his contention that the Law is incapable of justifying sinners lies for St. Paul in the Death of Christ proclaimed in the gospel (Gal 2:16-21; cf. Rom 3:24 f.). It is his absolute conviction that, if righteousness could be secured by the Law, then Christ died for nought (Rom 3:21; cf. Rom 10:3 ff.). Nor is the synthesis of the two kinds of righteousness a possible conception. The Law is no more based upon faith (Gal 3:12) than the grace of Jesus Christ (Rom 5:15) is based upon works (Rom 11:6 : if by grace, then no more of works; otherwise, grace is no more grace).

How does it come about, then, that the abstractly possible righteousness by the works of the Law (Rom 2:13) is impossible in the sphere of actuality? Or, otherwise, why is man incapable of fulfilling the Law? The answer is given in the Apostles idea of the carnal constitution of man, which is antagonistic to the spiritual character of the Law (7:14). Man, by reason of his carnal nature, is sold into the servitude of sin, for the mind of the flesh is hostile to God, and cannot become subject to His (spiritual) Law. No doubt the Law of God includes commandments which, because of their external character, may quite well be obeyed by the flesh (Gal 3:3; cf. Gal 4:10), but its most distinctive requirement, the law of love, is repugnant to the flesh. For with St. Paul the term flesh () is by no means restricted to the sensuous corporeal aspect of human nature-as if the principle of sin were rooted in mans physical constitution (cf. Gal 5:12 ff.); on the contrary, the flesh penetrates even to his inmost soul, so that we may speak also of a mind of the flesh (Col 2:18). The works of the flesh, accordingly, embrace not only sins of sensuality, but also sins of the selfish will (Gal 5:19-21), and hence, in a passage immediately preceding this, St. Paul contrasts brotherly love with the misuse of liberty as an occasion to the flesh (Gal 5:13 f.). Even in the regenerate man, the Christian, the flesh maintains its power so persistently (Gal 5:16-24) that he cannot conquer sin by the Law, but can triumph over it only by the Spirit of God (Rom 7:14-25; Rom 8:1-13).

If, however, the Law does not bring salvation to man, and was not designed to do so, what is its real function? The most comprehensive answer to this question is given in Rom 3:20 b: through the law comes the knowledge of sin. the answer is defined more concretely in a number of kindred statements (cf. Rom 4:15, Rom 5:13 f.,Rom 5:20, Rom 7:5; Rom 7:7 ff., 1Co 15:56, Gal 3:19). The Law not only serves to make sin known as sin, and to condemn the sins of men, but it resolves ill-doing into aggravated sin, giving it the character of trespass against the commandments of God: where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15), and therefore sin is not imputed (Rom 5:13). But the actual operation of the Law in thus resolving sin into positive transgression and guilt must, according to the teleology of the Apostle, have been the Divine purpose of the Law (Gal 3:19 : , in order to bring forth the conscious transgressions as such; cf. Rom 5:20 : that the Fall might he increased; Rom 7:13 : that sin might be shown to be sin).

Thus the Law produces a qualitative intensification of sin: sin becomes guilt. The evil done by those who have not the Law is relatively blameless. But the Law, which invests sin with the character of guilt, evokes wrath, i.e. in God (Rom 4:15). Sin, however, is not only qualitatively intensified, but also quantitatively increased, by the Law. For, according to Rom 7:5-13, the Law tends to rouse the slumbering power of sin, which then breaks out in all kinds of appetites and passions. Just as an innocent youth, who has, say, listened to some explanation of sexual matters, may thus be wrought upon by sinful inclinations hitherto unfelt, so-the Apostles idea would seem to have been something of this kind-the as yet relatively blameless man is brought under the influence of evil desires by the Laws very prohibition of such desires. This in no sense, however, proves that the Law is sinful, but simply shows the awful power of the sin that dwells in the flesh; for mans conscience, his better self, agrees with the Law, and cannot but attest its holiness (cf. Rom 7:5; Rom 7:7-13; Rom 7:16; Rom 7:22). Here the Apostle is probably not thinking of an outward multiplication of sins; he rather assumes, indeed, that generally the Jews live on a higher moral level than the heathen (Gal 2:15; cf. Php 3:6), and his idea is in all likelihood that of an inward development-in the shape of sins of thought.

The Law, in thus aggravating the power of sin both qualitatively and quantitatively, brings man into a state of deeper misery than he ever experienced while still without the Law; it works in him the apprehension of Gods wrath and curse (Rom 4:15, Gal 3:10), and of death (Rom 7:10; Rom 7:24, 2Co 3:6-9, 1Co 15:56), and yet at the same time the most profound yearning for salvation.

It is true that death, as a result of Adams sin, reigned over mankind even before the Law (Rom 5:14, 1Co 15:21 f.). Even so, however, the individual could live in relative unconcern (Rom 5:13; Rom 7:9); the Law written in his heart asserted itself but feebly. Accordingly, when God determined to institute salvation for the race of man, and chose a people as its depositary, He began by giving to Abraham, the father of that people, simply the Promise, the condition of which was faith alone; subsequently, however, He added the Law, not indeed with the design of laying down a new condition co-ordinate with, or as a substitute for, faith, but rather, as it were, for the purpose of keeping His people in ward and custody, the Law acting as a stimulus to the power and guilt of sin in such wise as to exclude every hope except that of justification by faith in Christ as the medium of salvation (Gal 3:6; Gal 3:25, Rom 4:13 ff.). Had Christ appeared without the previous intervention of the Law, the misery of man would not have been so great; but also the glory of Divine grace would have been less transcendent (Rom 5:20 f.). In the historical outworking of redemption, therefore, the Law had merely a pedagogic function; it was our moral guardian () until Christ came, so that we might be justified through faith, and through faith alone (Gal 3:23-25).

(c) The abolition of the Law.-If the function of the Law was, as we have just seen, merely pedagogic, it must also have been but temporary. Now that faith [or its object, Jesus Christ] is come, we are no longer under a tutor (Gal 3:25; cf. Gal 4:1-7); Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom 10:4). In Eph 2:15 St. Paul asserts that Christ has actually abolished the law of commandments contained in ordinances; and, objectively, the Law, as a statutory system, was abrogated when Christ made satisfaction to it by His Death, or, as the Apostle puts it, bore its curse (Gal 4:4; Gal 3:13; cf. Col 2:14). But this is not to be understood in the sense that from the time of Christs Death every man, every Jew, is absolved from the Law; subjectively, the individual is freed from its dominion only when he becomes a Christian, and is united to Christ by faith and baptism, so as personally to appropriate His Death and Resurrection. Just as Christ Himself was released from the Laws domain only through His Death on the Cross, in order that, as the Risen One, He might thereafter live a new life in immediate union with God, so His followers are loosed from the Law only through their communion with their Crucified and Glorified Lord (Rom 7:1-6, Gal 2:19 f.). This is to be taken, first of all, in a legal sense: the law hath dominion over a man as long as he lives. Just as, when a husband dies, a wife is loosed from the law which bound her to him, and may marry another, so, when Christ died, His community became exempt from the Law, and was free to yield itself to another, viz. the risen Christ (Rom 7:1-4). Once the curse of the Law, which is death, has been carried out upon the transgressors of the Law, the Law can demand no more; we are then redeemed not only from its penalty, but also from its obligation (Gal 3:13; Gal 4:4 f.). It is true that many interpreters refer this exemption from obligation not to Christs passive but to His active obedience to the Law-an interpretation that may be right in so far as His active obedience was the precondition of the propitiatory significance of His passive obedience. But, taken all in all, the Apostles view is that we have been made free from the Law by Christs Death (cf. also Gal 2:19 f., Col 2:14; Col 2:20, Eph 2:15).

St. Paul, however, goes far beyond this purely juridical conception. He also represents our deliverance from the Law as a transaction ethically conditioned. From the mystical union with the Crucified and Risen Lord comes a power which transforms and re-creates our nature, and thus enables us of ourselves to fulfil the requirements of the Law (Rom 8:2 ff., Gal 5:18; cf. Gal 5:23). The Apostle traces this power to the Spirit of God and of Christ: if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law (Gal 5:18); against such as bring forth the fruits of the Spirit the Law is not valid (Gal 5:23); the Law is not imposed upon a righteous man (1Ti 1:9). Thus freedom from the Law is in no sense a merely legal freedom; it is an ethical freedom which is quite different from mere arbitrary choice, and implies that we fulfil the demands of the Law not through compulsion or fear, but in zeal and love (cf. Rom 8:14 f., 2Co 3:17 f.). Hence the Christian is not free in the sense of being his own master; on the contrary, he is subject to the Lord Jesus and God (Rom 14:7-9), but serves Him from the dictates of the inmost heart, having yielded himself with consuming gratitude and love to the Saviour who died for him (2Co 5:14 f.).

(d) The Law abolished yet continuing in force.-St. Paul thus teaches that the Law is abolished, and that nevertheless it abides. It is abolished by Christ in the sense that it has no longer any validity for the Christian as a statutory system; justification is effected through faith alone, and without the works of the Law (Rom 3:28, Gal 2:16). This holds both for Jews and for Gentiles (Rom 1:16 f., Rom 3:21 f.); here there is no difference between them. The place of the Law is now taken by Christ (Rom 10:4). Everything turns upon our union with Him, and works are not to the purpose; in other words, all depends upon faith, which is simply the acceptance of the gospel, or of Christ, and the invocation of His name (Rom 10:5-17). In particular, the ordinances which had hitherto obstructed religious intercourse between different peoples, as Israelites and Goyim, had all been done away in Christ (Eph 2:11-22; cf. Gal 3:28, Col 3:11). In Him circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision nothing (Gal 5:6; Gal 6:15, 1Co 7:19). Hence St. Paul, a Jew, can become as a Gentile to the Gentiles (1Co 9:21), just as St. Peter and other Jewish Christians had done in Antioch (Gal 2:12-14). In the religious sense, i.e. as regards salvation, the Jewish Christians too were now free from the Law.

On the other hand, however, the Apostle also affirms the permanence of the Law. The imperative of the Law remains valid not only because it still retains its juridical authority over non-believers, but also because it furnishes the ethical standard of the Christian life generally, and of the religious life of Jewish Christians in a special degree. Thus the idea of a tertius usus legis, of which the Reformers spoke, corresponds exactly to the Pauline view. Not only does St. Paul regard the all-embracing requirement of the Law-the commandment of love-as a permanent expression of the Divine will (Rom 13:8-10, Gal 5:14), but he also borrows moral precepts and rules of discipline from the Mosaic legislation (see article Commandment). He is confident, no doubt, that the Spirit supplies not only moral power but also moral insight (Gal 5:16; cf. Rom 12:2); but the Spirit does not operate only in the individual soul, but operates also, and mainly, through prophecy and through the written Law, which indeed is spiritual (Rom 7:14), and must therefore be spiritually understood (cf. e.g. 1Co 9:8-10).

Here we undoubtedly light upon a difficulty in the Pauline view. On the one hand, the Apostle incisively challenges the Judaistic claim to impose the ordinances of the Law upon the Gentiles, while, on the other, he upholds the authority of the Law under the term Scripture. The latter contention might readily lead to a new kind of legalism, and has frequently in some measure done so. St. Paul himself, however, rejected this inference, and even suggested a rule for the spiritual application of the Law, viz. in his doctrine of the Law as having a topological or allegorical significance for Christianity; cf. Col 2:16 f., where he says that the ordinances relating to foods, feast-days, etc., are only prefiguring shadows of the reality, which is Christ, just as the circumcision of the flesh has found its true fulfilment in Christian baptism (Col 2:11 f.).

In connexion with this problem we must also consider the peculiar relation of the Jewish Christians to the Law. According both to Acts and to the Pauline Epistles, the Apostle maintained that the Law had a peculiar binding force upon Christians belonging to the race of Israel. As regards Acts, we need refer only to Act 21:21-26; Act 16:3; Act 18:18. When St. James spoke to St. Paul of the rumour that he taught the Diaspora to forsake Moses, St. Paul promptly gave the required practical evidence for the falsity of the report, and for his own allegiance to the Law (Act 21:21 ff.). He even circumcised Timothy, a semi-Gentile (Act 16:3). According to his own Epistles, again, he was to the Jews as a Jew (1Co 9:19), and he counsels the Jewish members of the Church in Corinth not to undo their circumcision (1Co 7:18), since every man should remain in the condition in which he was called (1Co 7:20). In Gal 5:3 he solemnly declares that every one who receives circumcision is under obligation to keep the whole Law-an assertion designed to traverse the foolish idea which the Judaizers had tried to insinuate into the minds of the Galatians, viz. that circumcision was a matter of no great importance. This declaration, no doubt, was made from the stand-point of those who believed that justification was to be obtained by the works of the Law. At all events, where higher issues are at stake, the Apostle assumes that he is absolved from the strict letter of the Law, as, e.g., for the sake of brotherly intercourse with the Gentile Christians (cf. 1Co 9:21 with Gal 2:12-14). There is another fact that points in the same direction. In Romans 11 St. Paul asserts that the Chosen People are to occupy a permanently distinct position in the Divine process of history. But the persistence of the distinctively religious character of Israel would seem to involve their permanent retention of circumcision and the Law.* [Note: on this point generally, A. Harnack, Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte, Leipzig, 1911, p. 21ff.] How such segregation is to be effected and maintained in mixed communities without violating full religious fellowship is a problem with which missions to the Jews are still greatly concerned; cf., e.g., the relation between the Sabbath and Sunday. But it is implied in the whole tenor of Pauline teaching that in such conflicts the principle of freedom shall in the last resort prevail. For, as has already been said, all the commandments are comprehended in the law of love, and rites and ceremonies, such as circumcision, purifications, and observance of the Sabbath, are but shadows of the reality that we have in Christ. In relation to God circumcision is in itself of no value. Hence, when St. Paul asserts that it is the doers of the Law who will be declared righteous in the Day of Judgment (Rom 2:13), he is thinking, as the context shows, not of an external obedience, a performance of the law in the flesh, but of a circumcision of the heart and of a moral righteousness (cf. Rom 2:14 f., Rom 2:25-29).

(e) Survey.-When we survey the Pauline doctrine of the Law as a whole, we see that it is quite wrong to attribute to the Apostle any form of antinomianism. Of the operation and purpose of the Law he doubtless uses language which could not but have a decidedly antinomian sound to the ears of a Jewish Christian. When he speaks of the Law as a power that stimulates sin and brings about death, and of the ministration mediated by Moses as a ministration of condemnation (2Co 3:6-11), one involuntarily asks how such utterances can be reconciled with the praise of, and the delight in, the Law which we find, e.g., in the Psalms (cf. Psa 19:8 ff., Psa 40:9; Psalms 119 passim). And how does his description of the period between Moses and Christ as a time during which there was no faith and the people groaned under the yoke of the Law (Gal 3:19-25) harmonize with the OT?

As regards the latter question, the Apostle does not of course mean to deny that faith was a power among Gods people after Moses as well as before him. He is quite assured that, besides the Mosaic legislation, Israel had also the adoption, the covenants, the Temple service, and the promises (Rom 9:4), that it was the people of hope (Eph 2:12), and that in a sense Christ was with it (1Co 10:4; 1Co 10:9), just as in the wilderness wanderings the people received prototypes of the Christian sacraments (Rom 9:2-4), and in their sacrificial worship prototypes of the sacrifice of Christ (Rom 5:7; cf. Eph 5:2). As a matter of fact, St. Paul saw in the OT dispensation in general, as recorded in the Scriptures, a typical prefiguration of the NT dispensation (cf. 1Co 10:6; 1Co 10:11, Rom 15:4, Col 2:17). And, although he speaks of the NT salvation in its universal application as having been a Divine mystery until its manifestation in Jesus Christ (Rom 16:25 f., Eph 1:9; Eph 3:5-9, Col 1:26), yet he regards it as having been foreshown in the prophetic writings (Rom 1:2; Rom 3:21; Rom 16:26). Hence the people of the Law cannot have been wholly without faith, and thus what St. Paul means in Gal 3:23 is simply that Christian faith as the one exclusive principle of righteousness was not revealed until Christ came.

In the OT, doubtless, the supreme principle was the Law. Yet the Law did not operate in a vacuum; devout Israelites always saw it against the background of grace. Every expression of delight in the Law presupposes faith in the gracious and merciful God who passes over transgression. Moreover, the Law was not as yet recognized in all its depth and rigour; in reality, the people lived in a spiritual environment of mingled Law and grace. Such a state of matters, however, could not be permanently borne. The two elements necessarily tended to disengage and separate themselves from each other. In Pharisaic Judaism the principle of the Law moved ever further apart from the principle of grace, and the Law itself came to be regarded more and more as a legal contract by which performance and recompense were rigidly adjusted to each other. The religious untenability of such a position could remain unrecognized only so long as the Law was understood in a purely external sense. But as soon as it came to be interpreted in that profound inner sense which Jesus indicated, it necessarily became obvious that legalism could only lead to despair, and that there could be no other principle of salvation than grace. The Judaizers, the opponents of St. Paul who started from Pharisaism, were legalists in their way of thought, conceiving of grace-and faith-as in a proper sense merely supplementary to an imperfect fulfilment of the Law; in other words, they regarded Christianity as only a perfected Judaism. St. Paul, on the other hand, although his starting-point too was Pharisaic legalism, combined therewith that inward interpretation of the Law which Jesus had instituted, and saw that the question at issue was not that of a synthesis of Law and faith, but simply that of a choice between the two, i.e. between Judaism as a religion of Law and Christianity as the religion of grace. If we are to estimate aright his utterances regarding the function of the Law, we must always bear in mind that they have a polemical setting, and that he is speaking of the Mosaic legislation and the Old Covenant not in their historical conditions, but in their character as principles. This explains the apparent bias of his statements regarding the Law.

Taken as a whole, however, St. Pauls doctrine of the Law does not issue from a belief that the miserable state of mankind is due to the Law in itself, and that accordingly God had abolished the Law, and set grace in its stead. The Apostles view is rather that human wretchedness arises from the sinful flesh, and from the Law only in so far as it is made impotent by the flesh (Rom 8:3), and so intensifies the misery of sin. Thus the work of Christ was to dissolve the immemorial connexion between these two powers-law and sin-on the one side, and man on the other. But what the work of Christ is in the last resort designed to secure is that the ideal demand of the Law shall be fulfilled (Rom 8:4). The essential purport of the Pauline doctrine has been aptly expressed by Augustine in the words: The Law is given that Grace may be sought; Grace is given that the Law may be fulfilled.

5. The Law in the Epistle to the Hebrews.-Paulinism was fully vindicated by the historical development that took place on the soil of Judaism. Not only did the Jews of the Diaspora harden their hearts more and more against the Pauline Christian mission, but those resident in Palestine, notwithstanding the conservative attitude of the mother Church towards the Law, became ever the more hostile to Christianity. In the sixth decade of the 1st cent. the antagonism developed into open persecution, and James the Just fell a victim to it. The Christians in Jerusalem, and in Palestine generally, were thus brought to a point where they had to choose between their affection for their fathers, religion and their confession of Jesus; in particular, their connexion with the fellowship of the synagogue and their participation in the Temple service were involved, and these at last could be retained only at the price of their cursing the name of Jesus. Such is obviously the situation presupposed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the opinion of the present writer, this Epistle can have been addressed only to Jewish Christians in Palestine who were tempted by their passionate attachment to their old religion to apostatize from Christ. The author of the Epistle will therefore exhibit the pre-eminence of the NT revelation and the NT priesthood. The essential core of the Epistle is its portrayal of Jesus as the Melchizedek high priest. Inasmuch as such a high priest has been installed, the old legal priesthood-the Aaronic-is eo ipso brought to an end. But, if the priesthood is changed, the change must necessarily also affect the Law (Heb 7:12). The ancient commandment is annulled because of its weak and unprofitable character-for the law made nothing perfect ( , Heb 7:19). Hebrews no doubt looks at the Mosaic Law mainly under the aspect of the priestly and sacrificial legislation, but its view comes to embrace the Old Covenant as a whole (8), in the place of which, as foretold by Jeremiah, God has instituted a New Covenant, writing His law upon the minds and hearts of men, entering into immediate fellowship with them, and forgiving their sins (Heb 8:7-13, Heb 10:16). The weakness of the Old Covenant really lay in the external nature of its institutions. Its oblations were carnal, and could not purge the conscience, and thus required to be continually repeated, just as, again, the priests themselves were mortal, and in turn gave place to others. Likewise the sanctuary was merely of this world, merely a copy of the true sanctuary in heaven, just as the benefits of the Old Covenant were of an earthly nature-a shadow of heavenly benefits to come (8-10). The leading idea of Hebrews, accordingly, is not so much that the Law is a tutor until Christ comes (see above, 4 (b)) as that it is an imperfect and now obsolete institution which Christians may therefore tranquilly leave behind.

Compared with St. Pauls doctrine of the Law, that of Hebrews is more restrained in so far as it attaches greater importance to the connexion between the Old Covenant and the New, i.e. that it more strongly emphasizes the typological character of the Law, and that it regards the OT faith as being more akin to that of the NT; or, to put it otherwise, it insists more upon the aspect of hope even in the NT faith (Heb 11:1 to Heb 12:3). Again, however, the view of Hebrews is more radical than that of St. Paul in so far as it is of a more spiritual stamp (cf. e.g., the expression in Heb 9:10 : only carnal ordinances, )-a feature connected with the fact that the author has in view mainly the ritual law. As a whole, the Epistle stands upon a basis of Paulinism, but it also bears the impress of the Alexandrian spiritualistic philosophy. The attitude of the author to the Jewish Christian problem in the narrower sense-as, e.g., the retention of circumcision and the Sabbath-cannot be directly inferred from the Epistle, but, if we may argue from his general standpoint, he must have regarded all such matters simply as adiaphora. The Epistle as a whole may be described as an appeal to the Jewish Christians to abandon Judaism without misgiving, since Christians have here no abiding city (Jerusalem), but seek the city which is to come (Heb 13:14). The subsequent destruction of the Temple was the best illustration of that appeal.

6. The Law in the Johannine writings.-Echoes of the controversy about the Law may no doubt still be heard in the Johannine writings, but the question is no longer a living one. Paulinism had by this time fought to an end the decisive battle with Judaism, and the great catastrophe of a.d. 70 had exercised a liberating influence on Jewish Christianity. It is true that, of the Johannine writings, Revelation may have been written in the decade preceding the Fall of Jerusalem, but, though in the Epistles to the Seven Churches (2, 3) the influence of the Apostolic Decree is probably still traceable (cf. Rev 2:20 ff. with Rev 2:4; Rev 2:14 and Act 15:28), yet the idea of the Law plays no part in the book. The Apocalypse no doubt attaches special importance to the commandments of God, repeatedly enjoining their observance (Rev 12:17, Rev 14:12, Rev 22:14), and, similarly, great stress is laid upon the works of believers, since in the Judgment men are to be recompensed according to their works (Rev 2:23, Rev 20:12 f., Rev 22:12; cf. Rev 14:13), while in five (Revised Version ; Authorized Version all) of the seven letters the direct address opens with the words, I know thy works (Rev 2:2; Rev 2:19, Rev 3:1; Rev 3:8; Rev 3:15). The works referred to, however, are in no sense the works of the Law, but rather ordinary Christian actions, or Christian virtues; cf. the details of the letters and the lists of vices in Rev 21:8; Rev 21:27, Rev 22:15. Nor, again, are the commandments of God to be identified with the commandments of Moses. On the contrary, the peculiar way in which they are linked with the testimony, or the faith of Jesus, seems to indicate that the expression does not differ essentially in meaning from the phrase the word of God occurring in a like connexion, and that it finds its explanation in 1 John, in which faith in the name of Jesus and brotherly love are represented as the two chief commandments of God (cf. Rev 1:9; Rev 12:17; Rev 14:2 with 1Jn 3:23; 1Jn 4:15 f.,1Jn 5:1-5).

That the general religious attitude of Revelation is Jewish Christian may probably be inferred from such passages as Rev 11:2; Rev 20:9; Rev 21:12; Rev 7:1-8. But this does not imply that the work has a particularistic or an anti-Pauline standpoint; the truth is, rather, that the hook presupposes throughout the universality of salvation (cf. Rev 5:9, Rev 7:9, [Rev 21:24-26]), just as, conversely, it says that the unbelieving Jews are not Jews but a synagogue of Satan (Rev 2:9, Rev 3:9). And when (in Rev 2:24) the Lord assures believers that He will cast upon them no other burden than abstinence from things sacrificed to idols and from fornication (cf. Rev 2:14 f, Rev 2:20), we are reminded, as indicated above, of the ordinances of the Apostolic Decree for the Gentile Christians. The word law (), however, does not occur in the book.

In the First Epistle of John-as in the Second and Third as well-we find no special reference to the Law. In the First Epistle an error is assailed which lies quite outside the question as to the validity of the Mosaic Law, viz. an ethical indifferentism which, side by side with a Docetic Christology, had apparently assumed a Gnostic complexion. When John, after a warning against being led astray, declares with emphasis that he (only) that doeth righteousness is righteous, and that he that doeth sin is of the devil (1Jn 3:7 f.), he probably has in view some misapplication of the Pauline teaching on righteousness. There is nothing in the Epistle which points directly to antinomian tendencies, but something of that nature seems to be hinted at in the closing admonition against the idols (1Jn 5:21), which would appear to point to the evils mentioned in Rev 2:14 f, Rev 2:20. On the positive side, the exhortations of the Epistle are directed towards the true faith and towards walking in brotherly love; to walk in the light consists in brotherly love (cf. 1Jn 2:9; 1Jn 2:11, 1Jn 3:11 ff., 1Jn 3:4-5). St. Johns well-known definition of sin as transgression of the law, lawlessness ( [1Jn 3:4]), might seem to be of special interest for our present subject, but he does not further develop the thought, which is apparently only of a subsidiary character, to be compared with the references to the requirements of the Law with which on occasion St. Paul supports his admonitions (cf. Gal 5:14, Rom 13:8-10).

Finally, the Gospel of St. John shows its remoteness from the ecclesiastical conflict regarding the Law by the subordinate place which the idea of the occupies in it. This probably finds expression in the significant verse of the Prologue (Joh 1:17) in which St. John compares the Old and the New Dispensation: the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The antithesis of law and grace is genuinely Pauline; that of law and truth reminds us above all of the Epistle to the Hebrews: the Law was only an imperfect revelation of the nature of God, which has at length been declared by the only begotten Son (Joh 1:18), full of grace and truth (Joh 1:14). Moreover, the references to the Law in the body of the Gospel are not so much meant, as in Mt., to interpret its requirements; here, in fact, the Law, or the Scripture, is adduced rather for purposes of argument (cf. Joh 5:39; Joh 5:45-47 with Joh 7:19-24, Joh 10:34 f. [your law = Scripture, Psa 82:6]; cf. Joh 12:34 [the law = Psa 110:4, Isa 9:7, Dan 7:14]). It is true that the law of the Sabbath is referred to in a special way, inasmuch as Jesus was on two occasions charged with violating the day, and vindicated His action (Joh 5:9-13; Joh 5:16-18, Joh 7:22-24; cf. Joh 9:14 ff.) by appealing to the example of God His Father, who worketh even until now (Joh 5:17), and to the practice of circumcising on the Sabbath (Joh 7:22). A passage like Joh 7:19 ff., however, and still more decidedly Joh 10:34 (in your law), seems to indicate a certain detachment from the stand-point of the Law generally. And the superiority of the Christian point of view, as contrasted with the Law, or with the legal worship, finds expression above all in the great utterance of Jesus regarding the true worship (Joh 4:21; Joh 4:24): the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. God is spirit; and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The ethic of St. Johns Gospel is most impressively brought to a focus in the new commandment of brotherly love (Joh 13:34, Joh 15:12-13; Joh 15:17). While the discourses of Jesus in the first part of the Gospel, in which He addresses the people (the world), demand faith in His name, those in the second part (Joh 15:13-17), where He speaks to the disciples (those who have that faith, believers), all converge in the commandment of mutual love; here, accordingly, we have the same two-fold requirement which we found so simply expressed in the First Epistle of John (1Jn 3:23). In the Gospel, no doubt, Jesus speaks not only of His commandment, but also of His commandments; by these, however, He must have meant, not the commandments of the OT, but in all likelihood simply the special aspects of the law of love.

1 John tends to set faith and love side by side (cf. Rev 14:12 : faith and the commandments of God), and the Fourth Gospel shows the same collocation. In this point, accordingly, St. John differs from St. Paul, who indicated the subordination of love to faith in the phrase faith working through love (Gal 5:6). In point of fact, however, St. John too has recognized the dependence of love upon faith, since, as just indicated, the first part of his Gospel is occupied with the preaching of faith (Rev 14:1-12), while in the second part (Rev 14:13 ff.) brotherly love is regarded as being based upon the true foundation of discipleship, i.e. upon faith. Through faith comes life in the name of Jesus Christ (Joh 20:31; cf. 1Jn 5:13). No room is left, therefore, for legal merit or self-righteousness. Thus St. John homologates the Pauline conception of the gospel, but expresses his view in a manner much more simple, and therefore less precise.

7. The Law in the sub-apostolic writings.-In the post-apostolic writings of the 1st cent. the Law, as signifying the Mosaic legislation, plays no part at all. In the so-called First Epistle of Clement the term occurs but once (i. 3), and there in the plural form: Ye walked in the laws of God-an utterance which, both according to the context and in view of the persons addressed (Gentile Christians in Corinth), can have no reference to the OT Law in the specific sense. It was in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers of the 2nd cent.-as, e.g., the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas-that Christianity came to be regarded as the new Law. Barnabas says that God abolished the Jewish sacrifices in order that the new Law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is without the yoke of compulsion, should involve no sacrificial gift, as that is but the work of man (ii. 6)-an idea that partly recalls St. Jamess phrase, the perfect law of liberty (Jam 1:25; cf. Jam 2:12). Hermas, again, speaks of Christ as the one who gave to the people (of God) the Law that He received from His Father, but also as the one who is Himself the Law; the Law is the Son of God, who was preached to the ends of the earth (Sim. viii. 3, 2)-i.e. the gospel has taken the place of the ancient Law, or, otherwise expressed, Christ in His example and His commandments has been constituted the sole moral authority of Christians. What distinguishes this sub-apostolic view from that of St. Paul, however, is that the idea of the new Law not only verbally but also materially implies a moralism that was quite foreign to the Apostolic Age, inasmuch as the idea of Law has coloured the conception of the gospel.

When the strain between Law and gospel had at length been relieved, legalism gradually once more found its way indirectly into the Church. We can already trace the process in the Ancient Catholic Church, and still more distinctly in the Mediaeval Church. At the Reformation, however, the primitive-Christian, Pauline solution of the problem of the Law was vindicated once more, and legalism and antinomianism were alike surmounted. The theology of the Reformation, in its interpretation of grace and faith, showed, with St. Paul as its guide, not only that, but also how, the Christian is constrained to do good works, and thus fulfil the Law of God (Augsburg Confession [1530], xx. 36. Apol. [1531] iii. 15).

Literature.-The text-books of NT Theology by B. Weiss (Eng. translation of 3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1882-83), H. J. Holtzmann (2Tubingen, 1911), A. Schlatter (Calw, 1909-10), P. Feine (Leipzig, 1910), H. Weinel (Tbingen, 1911); C. v. Weizscker, Das apostolische Zeitalter der christlichen Kirche2, Freiburg, 1892 (passim); E. Grafe, Die paulinische Lehre vom Gesetz nach den vier Hauptbriefen, do. 1893; Lyder Brun, Pauluss laere om loven, Christiania, 1894; A. Zahn, Das Gesetz Gottes nach der Lehre und der Erfahrung des Apostel Paulus2, Halle, 1892; P. Feine, Das gesetzesfreie Evangelium des Paulus, Leipzig, 1899; G. B. Stevens, Theology of the NT, 1899, p. 17; A. E. Garvie, Studies of Paul and his Gospel, 1911, p. 192; E. P. Gould, Biblical Theology of the NT, 1900, p. 27. See also the accounts of Paulinism by E. Renan (Eng. translation , London, 1869), F. W. Farrar (do. 1879), O. Pfleiderer (Leipzig, 1873, Eng. translation , London, 1877), A. Sabatier (3Paris, 1896, Eng. translation 6, London, 1906), and treatises on the subject of Jesus and St. Paul.

Olaf Moe.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

LAW

A rule of action; a precept or command coming from a superior authority, which an inferior is bound to obey. The manner in which God governs rational creatures is by a law, as the rule of their obedience to him, and which is what we call God’s moral government of the world. He gave a law to angels, which some of them kept, and have been confirmed in a state of obedience to it; but which others broke, and thereby plunged themselves into destruction and misery. He gave, also, a law to Adam, and which was in the form of a covenant, and in which Adam stood as a covenant head to all his posterity, Rom 5:1-21 : Gen 2:1-25 : But our first parents soon violated that law, and fell from a state of innocence to a state of sin and misery, Hos 6:7. Gen 3:1-24 :

See FALL. Positive laws, are precepts which are not founded upon any reasons known to those to whom they are given. Thus in the state of innocence God gave the law of the Sabbath; or abstinence from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, &c. Law of nature is the will of God relating to human actions, grounded in the moral differences of things, and, because discoverable by natural light, obligatory upon all mankind, Rom 1:20; Rom 2:14-15. This law is coeval with the human race, binding all over the globe, and at all times; yet, through the corruption of reason, it is insufficient to lead us to happiness, and utterly unable to acquaint us how sin is to be forgiven, without the assistance of revelation. Ceremonial law is that which prescribed the rites of worship used under the Old Testament.

These rites were typical of Christ, and were obligatory only till Christ had finished his work, and began to erect his Gospel church, Heb 7:9; Heb 7:11. Heb 10:1. Eph 2:16. Col 2:14. Gal 5:2-3. Judicial law was that which directed the policy of the Jewish nation, as under the peculiar dominion of God as their Supreme magistrate, and never, except in things relative to moral equity, was binding on any but the Hebrew nation. Moral law is that declaration of God’s will which directs and binds all men, in every age and place, to their whole duty to him. It was most solemnly proclaimed by God himself at Sinai, to confirm the original law of nature, and correct men’s mistakes concerning the demands of it. It is denominated perfect, Psa 19:7. perpetual, Mat 5:17-18. holy, Rom 7:12. good, Rom 7:12. spiritual, Rom 7:1-25. exceeding broad, Psa 119:96. Some deny that it is a rule of conduct to believers under the Gospel dispensation; but it is easy to see the futility of such an idea; for as a transcript of the mind of God, it must be the criterion of moral good and evil. It is also given for that very purpose, that we may see our duty, and abstain from every thing derogatory to the divine glory. It affords us grand ideas of the holiness and purity of God: without attention to it, we can have no knowledge of sin.

Christ himself came not to destroy, but to fulfil it; and though we cannot do as he did, yet we are commanded to follow his example. Love to God is the end of the moral law, as well as the end of the Gospel. By the law, also, we are led to see the nature of holiness, and our own depravity, and learn to be humbled under a sense of our imperfection. We are not under it, however, as a covenant of works, Gal 3:13. or as a source of terror, Rom 8:1. although we must abide by it, together with the whole preceptive word of God, as the rule of our conduct, Rom 3:31 Laws, directive, are laws without any punishment annexed to them. Laws, penal, such as have some penalty to enforce them. All the laws of God are and cannot but be penal, because every breach of his law is sin, and meritorious of punishment. Law of honour is a system of rules constructed by people of fashion, and calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one another, and for no other purpose. Consequently nothing is adverted to by the law of honour but what tends to incommode this intercourse. Hence this law only prescribes and regulates the duties betwixt equals, omitting such as relate to the Supreme Being, as well as those which we owe to our inferiors. In fact, this law of honour, in most instances, is favourable to the licentious indulgence of the natural passions.

Thus it allows of fornication, adultery, drunkenness, prodigality, duelling, and of revenge in the extreme, and lays no stress upon the virtues opposite to these. Laws, remedial, a fancied law, which some believe in, who hold that God, in mercy to mankind, has abolished that rigorous constitution or law that they were under originally, and instead of it has introduced a more mild constitution, and put us under a new law, which requires no more than imperfect sincere obedience, in compliance with our poor, infirm, impotent circumstances since the fall. I call this a fancied law, because it exists no where except in the imagination of those who hold it.

See NEONOMIANS, and JUSTIFICATION. Laws of nations, are those rules which by a tacit consent are agreed upon among all communities, at least among those who are reckoned the polite and humanized part of mankind. Gill’s Body of Div. vol. 1: p. 454, oct. 425, vol. 3: ditto; Paley’s Mor. Phil. vol. 1: p. 2; Cumberland’s Law of Nature; Grove’s Mor. Phil. vol. 2: p. 117. Booth’s Death of Legal Hope; Inglish and Burder’s Pieces on the Moral Law; Watts’s Works, vol. 1: ser. 49. 8vo. edition, and vol. 2: p. 443. &c. Scott’s Essays.

Fuente: Theological Dictionary

law

(Latin: legere, to gather; eligere, to choose; or ligure, to bind)

Law is defined as “a certain norm or measure of acts according to which any one is induced to act or is restrained from acting. “It is an ordination of reason for the common good promulgated by him invested with the care of the community” (Saint Thomas, I-II, V. 90, a. 4.). Ordination in regard to law means imposition of order, which consists:

in disposing things to a due end;

through proportionate means.

This disposition or imposition, is the principle of all order. The nature of the means used is determined by the end sought, e.g., the placement of a saw is determined by the section or part to be sawed. Law may be considered in a twofold sense:

essentially, in the one regulating and commanding;

participatively, in the one regulated.

The supreme law is the eternal law, which is the fount of all other laws and precepts. The eternal law is manifested to us through the evolution of reason (natural or moral law), or through a certain sensible sign or positive act of the legislator (positive law). Positive law is either imposed on us immediately by the authority of God (Divine positive law, e.g., Revelation), or it is imposed mediately on us by the authority of man (human positive law). Human law regards either the end of religious society (ecclesiastical law), or the end of civil society (civil law). Law is moral, penal, or mixed, in so far as it obliges under a fault alone, or under a penalty alone, or under fault and penalty at the same time.

Law must be designed:

for the common good, which is realized through a just political community, one that is productive and conservative of happiness and special kinds of happiness;

to produce and conserve happiness and particular kinds of happiness, i.e., whatever leads directly to happiness, as virtues, or indirectly, as riches, honors, etc., by reference to the political community to which the enactment of law is directed.

Law is imposed on others as a rule and standard. That law may oblige effectively it must be known to those who are subject to its requirements; such application is effected through promulgation. Promulgation of a law, however, is not the same thing as “due knowledge of the law.” A promulgated law always obliges, but it is not required that it be always known, since a person invincibly ignorant of the law is immune from guilt because his ignorance is an impediment, excusing him accidentally (in actu secundo) from the law’s obligation. If a person, however, through invincible ignorance performs an act pronounced illicit by law, his act will be illicit in spite of his ignorance. Hence, law which is unknown is not thereby entirely stripped of its effectiveness.

According to the nature of law and human acts which are related to it, law has four distinct acts, viz., to command, to forbid, to permit, to punish. Human acts are threefold:

good acts which are commanded;

bad acts which are forbidden;

indifferent acts which are permitted.

To punish is added because through fear of punishment lawe command obedience. Law is affirmative or negative, i.e., preceptive or prohibitive. Negative law obliges always and at all times, in every place, and under all circumstances, e.g., “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Affirmative law obliges always, but only at the time it should be fulfilled, e.g., “Keep holy the Sabbath Day.” A negative law may be merely prohibitive or repealing or nullifying, e.g., when it not only prohibits an act but also invalidates that act. A repealing law sometimes pronounces an act to be null and void, or merely rescinds an act. Law ought to be possible, integral, useful, just, permanent or stable, reasonable, respectful of personal rights, civic, and religious. A law is said to be abrogated when it is completely taken away; it is derogated when only part of the law has been taken away. Law also must have sanction; no law is definitely established unless reward be given to those who observe its requirements, and punishment inflicted on those who violate it. Sanction may be natural or positive; complete or incomplete.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Law

I. CONCEPT OF LAW

A. By law in the widest sense is understood that exact guide, rule, or authoritative standard by which a being is moved to action or held back from it. In this sense we speak of law even in reference to creatures that are incapable of thinking or willing and to inanimate matter. The Book of Proverbs (ch. viii) says of Eternal Wisdom that it was present when God prepared the heavens and when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths, when He encompassed the sea with its bounds and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits. Job (xxviii, 25 sqq.) lauds the wisdom of God Who made a weight for the winds and weighed the water by measure, Who gave a law for the rain and a way for the sounding storms.

Daily experience teaches that all things are driven by their own nature to assume a determinate, constant attitude. Investigators of the natural sciences hold it to be an established truth that all nature is ruled by universal and constant laws and that the object of the natural sciences is to search out these laws and to make plain their reciprocal relations in all directions. All bodies are subject, for example, to the law of inertia, i.e. they persist in the condition of rest or motion in which they may be until an external cause changes this condition. Kepler discovered the laws according to which the planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun, Newton the law of gravitation by which all bodies attract in direct proportion to their mass and inversely as to the square of the distance between them. The laws which govern light, heat, and electricity are known today. Chemistry, biology, and physiology have also their laws. The scientific formulae in which scholars express these laws are only laws in so far as they state what processes actually take place in the objects under consideration, for law implies a practical rule according to which things act. These scientific formulae exert of themselves no influence on things; they simply state the condition in which these things are. The laws of nature are nothing but the forces and tendencies to a determinate, constant method of activity implanted by the Creator in the nature of things, or the unvarying, homogeneous activity itself which is the effect of that tendency. The word law is used in this latter sense when it is asserted that a natural law has been changed or suspended by a miracle. For the miracle does not change the nature of things or their constant tendency; the Divine power simply prevents the things from producing their natural effect, or uses them as means to attaining an effect surpassing their natural powers. The natural tendency to a determinate manner of activity on the part of creatures that have neither the power to think nor to will can be called law for a twofold reason: first, because it forms the decisive reason and the controlling guide for the activities of such creatures, and consequently as regards irrational creatures fulfills the task which devolves upon law in the strict sense as regards rational beings; and further, because it is the expression and the effect of a rational lawgiving will. Law is a principle of regulation and must, like every regulation, be traced back to a thinking and willing being. This thinking and willing being is the Creator and Regulator of all things, God Himself. It may be said that the natural forces and tendencies placed in the nature of creatures, are themselves the law, the permanent expression of the will of the Eternal Observer Who influences creatures and guides them to their appointed ends, not by merely external influences but by their innate inclinations and impulses.

B. In a stricter and more exact sense law is spoken of only in reference to free beings endowed with reason. But even in this sense the expression law is used sometimes with a wider, sometimes with a more restricted meaning. By law are at times understood all authoritative standards of the action of free, rational beings. In this sense the rules of the arts, poetry, grammar, and even the demands of fashion or etiquette are called laws. This is, however, an inexact and exaggerated mode of expression. In the proper and strict sense laws are the moral norms of action, binding in conscience, set up for a public, self-governing community. This is probably the original meaning of the word law, whence it was gradually transformed to the other kinds of laws (natural laws, laws of art). Law can in this sense be defined with St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica I-II:90:4) as: A regulation in accordance with reason promulgated by the head of a community for the sake of the common welfare.

Law is first a regulation, i.e. a practical principle, which aims at ordering the actions of the members of the community. To obtain in any community a unified and systematized co-operation of all there must be an authority that has the right to issue binding rules as to the manner in which the members of the community are to act. The law is such a binding rule and draws its constraining or obligatory force from the will of the superior. Both because the superior wills and so far as he wills, is law binding. Not every regulation of the superior, however, is binding, but only those in accordance with reason. Law is the criterion of reasonable action and must, therefore, itself be reasonable. A law not in accordance with reason is a contradiction. That the Divine laws must of necessity be reasonable and just is self-evident, for the will of God is essentially holy and just and can only command what is in harmony with the Divine wisdom, justice, and holiness. Human laws, however, must be subordinate to the Divine law, or at least, must not contradict it, for human authority is only a participation in the supreme Divine power of government, and it is impossible that God could give human beings the right to issue laws that are unreasonable and in contravention of His will. Further, law must be advantageous to the common welfare. This is a universally acknowledged principle. That the Divine laws are advantageous to the common welfare needs no proof. The glory of the Creator is, truly, the final goal of the Divine laws, but God desires to attain this glory by the happiness of mankind. Human laws must also be useful to the common welfare. For laws are imposed upon the community as such, in order to guide it to its goal: this goal, however, is the common welfare. Further, laws are to regulate the members of the community. This can only come about by all striving to attain a common goal. But this goal can be no other than the common welfare. Consequently all laws must in some way serve the common welfare. A law plainly useless or a fortiori injurious to the community is no true law. It could have in view only the benefit of private individuals and would consequently subordinate the common welfare to the welfare of individuals, the higher to the lower.

Law therefore is distinguished from a command or precept by this essential application to the common welfare. Every law is a form of command but not every command is a law. Every binding rule which a superior or master gives to his subordinates is a command; the command, however, is only a law when it is imposed upon the community for the attainment of the common welfare. In addition, the command can be given for an individual person or case. But law is a permanent, authoritative standard for the community, and it remains in force until it is annulled or set aside. Another condition of law is that it should proceed from the representative of the highest public authority, be this a single person, several persons, or finally the totality of all the members of the community, as in a democracy. For law is, as already said, a binding rule which regulates the community for the attainment of the common welfare. This regulation pertains either to the whole community itself or to those persons in the highest position upon whom devolves the guidance of the whole community. No order or unity would be possible if private individuals had the liberty to impose binding rules on others in regard to the common welfare. This right must be reserved to the supreme head of the community. The fact that law is an emanation of the highest authority, or is issued by the presiding officer of the community by virtue of his authority, is what distinguishes it from mere counsels, requests, or admonitions, which presuppose no power of jurisdiction and can, moreover, be addressed by private persons to others and even to superiors. Laws, finally, must be promulgated, i.e. made known to all. Law in the strict sense is imposed upon rational, free beings as a controlling guide for their actions; but it can be such only when it has been proclaimed to those subject to it. From this arises the general axiom: Lex non promulgata non obligat–a law which has not been promulgated is not binding. But it is not absolutely necessary to promulgation that the law be made known to every individual; it suffices if the law be proclaimed to the community as such, so that it can come to the notice of all members of the community. Besides, all laws do not require the same kind of promulgation. At present, laws are considered sufficiently promulgated when they are published in official journals (State or imperial gazettes, law records, etc.)

In addition to the moral law as treated above, it is customary to speak of moral laws in a wider sense. Thus it is said it is a moral law that no one is willingly deceived, that no one lies without a reason, that every one strives to learn the truth. But it is only in an unreal and figurative sense that these laws are called moral. They are in reality only the natural laws of the human will. For although the will is free, it remains subject to certain inborn tendencies and laws, within which bounds alone it acts freely, and these laws are called moral only because they bear on the activities of a free will. Therefore they are not expressed by an imperative “must”. They merely state that by reason of inborn tendencies, men are accustomed to act in a given way, and that such laws are observed even by those who have no knowledge of them.

To understand still better the significance of moral law in the strict sense, henceforth the sole sense intended in this article, two conditions of such law should be considered. It exists first in the intellect and will of the lawgiver. Before the lawgiver issues the law he must apprehend it in his mind as a practical principle, and at the same time perceive that it is a reasonable standard of action for his subjects and one advantageous to the common welfare. He must then have the will to make the observance of this principle obligatory on those under him. Finally, he must make known or intimate to those under him this principle or authoritative standard as the expression of his will. Strictly construed, legislation in the active sense consists in this last act, the command of the superior to the inferiors. This command is an act of the reason, but it necessarily presupposes the aforesaid act of the will and receives from the latter its entire obligatory force. The law, however, does not attain this obligatory force until the moment it is made known or proclaimed to the community. And this brings us to the point that the law can be considered objectively, as it exists apart from the lawgiver. At this stage law exists either in the mind of the subjects or in any permanent token which preserves the memory of it, e.g. as found in a collection of laws. Such outward tokens, however, are not absolutely necessary to law. God has written the natural moral law, at least in its most general outlines, in the hearts of all men, and it is obligatory without any external token. Further, an external, permanent token is not absolutely necessary for human laws. It suffices if the law is made known to the subjects, and such knowledge can be attained by oral tradition.

II. OBLIGATION IMPOSED BY LAW

Law (in the strict sense) and command are preeminently distinguished from other authoritative standards of action, inasmuch as they imply obligation. Law is a bond imposed upon the subjects by which their will is bound or in some way brought under compulsion in regard to the performance or the omission of definite actions. Aristotle, therefore, said long ago that law has a compelling force. And St. Paul (Romans 13:1 sqq.) teaches that we are bound to obey the ordinances of the authorities not only through fear but also for conscience’ sake. In what then does this obligation which law imposes upon us consist? Modern ethical systems which seek to construct a morality independent of God and religion, are here confronted by an inexplicable riddle. The utmost pains have been taken to construct a true obligation without regard to God. According to Kant our reason itself is the final source of obligation, it obliges us of itself, it is nomothetic and autonomous, and the absolute form in which it commands us is the categorical imperative. We are obliged to fulfil the law only on account of itself or because it is the law of our reason; to do something because another has commanded us is not moral, even should this other be God. This view is entirely untenable. We do not owe obedience to the laws of Church and State because we bind ourselves thereto, but because their superior authority obliges us. The child owes obedience to its parents not because it engages so to do but because the authority of the parents obliges it. Whoever asserts that man can bind only himself, strikes at the root of all authority and asserts the principle of anarchism. Authority is the right to issue to others binding, obligatory regulations. Whoever maintains that none can put more than himself under obligation denies, thereby, all authority. What is said of human authority is equally valid of the Divine authority. We owe adoration, obedience, and love to God, not because we engage so to do, but because God obliges us by His commands. The assertion that to do something because God has commanded us is heteronomy (subjection to the law of another) and therefore not moral, implies in principle the destruction of all religion, which in its essence rests upon the subjection of the creature to his Creator.

The adherents of the Kantian autonomy can also be asked whether man binds himself of necessity or voluntarily? If voluntarily, then he can at any moment annul this obligation; consequently, in a practical sense, no obligation exists. If of necessity, the question arises whence comes this necessity to bind oneself unconditionally? To this question Kant has no answer to give. He refers us to an undemonstrable and incomprehensible necessity. He says: “All human reason is incapable of explaining how pure reason may be practical (imposing obligation)….Thus, it is true, we do not comprehend the practical, unconditioned necessity of the moral imperative, but we do, however, comprehend its incomprehensibility, which is all that can, in fairness, be demanded from a philosophy that seeks to reach the principles which mark the limit of human reason” [“Grundleg. zur Metaphys. der Sitten”, ed. Hartenstein, IV (1838), 91-93]. Kant, who without hesitation sets aside all Christian mysteries, in this way imposes upon us in philosophy a mystery of his own invention. Kant’s views contain a germ of truth, which, however, they distort until it can no longer be recognized. In order that a human law may be obligatory upon us we must have in ourselves from the beginning the conviction that we are to do good and avoid evil, that we are to obey rightful authority, etc. But the further question now arises, whence do we receive this conviction? From God, our Creator. Just as our whole being is an image of God, so also is our reason with its powers and inborn tendencies an image of the Divine Reason, and our cognitions which we involuntarily form in consequence of natural tendency are a participation in the Divine wisdom,–are, it may be said, a streaming in of the Divine light into the created reason. This is, indeed, not to be so understood as though we had innate ideas, but rather that the ability and inclination are inborn in us by virtue of which we spontaneously form universal concepts and principles, both in the theoretical and practical order, and easily discern that in these practical principles the will of the Supreme Director of all things manifests itself.

The Kantian philosophy has now but few adherents; most champions of independent ethics seek to explain the origin of duty by experience and development. Typical of writers on ethics of this school are the opinions of Herbert Spencer. This philosopher of evolution believed that he had discovered already in animals, principally in dogs, evidences of conscience, especially the beginnings of the consciousness of duty, the idea of obligation. This consciousness of duty is further developed in men by the accumulation of experiences and inheritance. Duty presents itself to us as a restraint of our actions. There are, however, several varieties of such restraints. The inner restraint is developed by induction, inasmuch as we discern by repeated experience that certain actions have useful, others injurious results. In this way we are attracted to the one, and frightened away from the other. Added to this is the external restraint, the fear of evil results or punishments which threaten us from without and are threefold in form. In the earliest stages of development man has to abstain from actions through fear of the anger of uncivilized associates (social sanction). At a higher stage man must avoid many actions, because such would be punished by a powerful and bold associate who has succeeded in making himself chief (state sanction). Finally, we have in addition the fear of the spirits of the dead, especially of the dead chiefs, who, it was believed, lingered near and still inflicted punishment upon many actions displeasing to them (religious sanction). The external restraint, i.e. the fear of punishment, created in mankind, as yet little developed, the concept of compulsion, of obligation in relation to certain actions. This concept originally arose only in regard to actions which were quickly followed by external punishments. Gradually, by association of ideas, it was also connected with other actions until then performed or avoided purely on account of their natural consequences. Through evolution, however, he goes on to say, the idea of compulsion, owing only to confusion or false generalization, tends to disappear and eventually is found only in rare cases. Spencer claimed to have found, even today, here and there men who regularly do good and avoid evil without any idea of compulsion. Most modern writers on ethics, who do not hold to a positive Christian point of view, adopt these Spencerian ideas, e.g. Laas, von Gizycki, Paulsen, Leslie, Fouillée, and many others. Spencer and his followers are nevertheless wrong, for their explanation of duty rests on entirely untenable premises. It presupposes that the animal has already a conscience, that man does not differ essentially from the animal, that he has gradually developed from a form of animal, that he possesses no essentially higher spiritual powers, etc. Moreover, their explanation of duty is meaningless. No one will assert of a man that he acts from duty if he abstains from certain actions through fear of police penalties, or the anger of his fellow-men. Besides, what is the meaning of an obligation that is only an accidental product of evolution, destined to disappear with the progress of the latter, and for disregarding which we are responsible to no superior?

In contrast with these modern and untenable hypotheses the Christian theistic conception of the world explained long since the origin and nature of duty in a fully satisfactory manner. From eternity there was present to the Spirit of God the plan of the government of the world which He had resolved to create. This plan of government is the eternal law (lex aeterna) according to which God guides all things towards their final goal: the glorifying of God and the eternal happiness of mankind. But the Creator does not move creatures, as men do, simply by external force, by pressure, or impact, and the like, but by tendencies and impulses which He has implanted in creatures and, what is more, in each one according to its individual nature. He guides irrational creatures by blind impulses, inclinations, or instincts. He cannot, however, guide in this way rational, free men, but only (as is suited to man’s nature) by moral laws which in the act of creation He implanted in the human heart. As soon as man attains to the use of reason he forms, as already indicated, on account of innate predispositions and tendencies, the most general moral principles, e.g. that man is to do good and avoid evil, that man is to commit no injustice, etc. He also easily understands that these commands do not depend on his own volition but express the will of a higher power, which regulates and guides all things. By these commands (the natural moral law) man shares in a rational manner in the eternal law; they are the temporal expression of the eternal, Divine law. The natural moral law is also the foundation and root of the obligation of all positive laws. We recognize that we cannot violate the natural moral law, and the positive laws that are rooted in it, without acting in opposition to the will of God, rebelling against our Creator and highest Master, offending Him, turning away from our final end, and incurring the Divine judgment. Thus man feels himself to be always and everywhere bound, without losing his freedom in a physical sense, to the order appointed him by God. He can do evil but he ought not. If of his own will he violates God’s law he brings guilt upon himself and deserves punishment in the eyes of the all-wise, all-holy, and absolutely just God. Obligation is this necessity, arising from this knowledge, for the human will to do good and avoid evil.

III. CLASSIFICATION OF LAWS

A. The actual, direct effect of law is obligation. According to the varieties of duty imposed, law is classified as: commanding, prohibitive, permissive, and penal. Commanding laws (leges affirmativae) make the performance of an action, of something positive, obligatory; prohibitive laws (leges negativae), on the other hand, make obligatory an omission. The principle holds good for prohibitive laws, at least if they are absolute, like the commands of the natural, moral law, (“Thou shalt not bear false witness”, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, etc.) that they are always and for ever obligatory (leges negativae obligant semper et pro semper–negative laws bind always and forever), i.e. it is never permissible to perform the forbidden action. Commanding laws, however, as the law that debts must be paid, always impose an obligation, it is true, but not for ever (leges affirmativae obligant semper, sed non pro semper–affirmative laws are binding always but not forever), that is, they continue always to be laws but they do not oblige one at every moment to the performance of the action commanded, but only at a certain time and under certain conditions. All laws which inflict penalties for violation of the law are called penal, whether they themselves directly define the manner and amount of penalty, or make it the duty of the judge to inflict according to his judgment a just punishment. Laws purely penal (leges mere poenales) are those which do not make an action absolutely obligatory, but simply impose penalty in case one is convicted of transgression. Thus they leave it, in a certain sense, to the choice of the subject whether he will abstain from the penal action, or whether, if the violation is proved against him, he will submit to the penalty. The objection cannot be raised that purely penal laws are not actual laws because they create no bounden duty, for they oblige the violator of the law to bear the punishment if the authorities apprehend and convict him. Whether a law is a purely penal law or not is not so easy to decide in an individual case. The decision depends on the will of the lawgiver and also upon the general opinion and custom of a community.

B. In treating of promulgation a distinction has to be made between natural moral law and positive law. The first is proclaimed to all men by the natural light of reason; positive laws are made known by special outward signs (word of mouth or writing). The natural moral law is a law inseparable from the nature of man; positive law, on the contrary, is not. In regard to the origin or source of law, a distinction is made between Divine and human laws according as they are issued directly by God Himself or by men in virtue of the power granted them by God. If man in issuing a law is simply the herald or messenger of God, the law is not human but Divine. Thus the laws which Moses received from God on Mount Sinai and proclaimed to the people of Israel were not human but Divine laws. A distinction is further made between the laws of Church and State according as they are issued by the authorities of the State or of the Church. Laws are divided as to origin into prescriptive and statute law. Prescriptive, or customary, law includes those laws which do not come into existence by direct decree of the lawgiving power, but by long continued custom of the community. Yet every custom does not give rise to a law or right. In order to become law a custom must be universal or must, at least, be followed freely and with the intention of raising it to law by a considerable part of the population. It must further be a custom of long standing. Finally, it must be useful to the common welfare, because this is an essential requisite of every law. Custom receives its binding, obligatory force from the tacit or legal approval of the lawgiver, for every true law binds those upon whom it is imposed. Only he can impose a binding obligation on a community on whom the supervision of it or the power of jurisdiction over it devolves. If the legislative power belongs to a people itself it can impose obligation upon itself as a whole, if it has not this power the obligation can only be formed with the consent of the lawgiver (see CUSTOM).

A classification of law, as limited to law administered in the courts, and familiar to Roman jurisprudence, is that of law in the strict sense and equity (jus strictum et jus aequum et bonum). Equity is often taken as synonymous with natural justice. In this sense we say that equity forbids that anyone be judged unheard. Frequently, however, we speak of equity only in reference to positive laws. A human lawgiver is never able to foresee all the individual cases to which his law will be applied. Consequently, a law though just in general, may, taken literally, lead in some unforeseen cases to results which agree neither with the intent of the lawgiver nor with natural justice, but rather contravene them. In such cases the law must be expounded not according to its wording but according to the intent of the lawgiver and the general principles of natural justice. A reasonable lawgiver could not desire this law to be followed literally in cases where this would entail a violation of the principles of natural justice. Law in the strict sense (jus strictum) is, therefore, positive law in its literal interpretation; equity, on the contrary, consists of the principles of natural justice so far as they are used to explain or correct a positive human law if this is not in harmony with the former. For this reason Aristotle (Ethica Nicomachea, V, x) calls equity the correction (epanorthoma) of statute or written law.

———————————–

ST. THOMAS, Summa Theologica, I-II:90 sqq.; SUAREZ, De legibus et legislatore Deo, I; LAYMANN, Theologia moralis, I, tract. iv; BOUQUILLON, Theologia fundamentalis, no. 52 sqq.; TAPARELLI, Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale, I, s. 93 sqq.

V. CATHREIN Transcribed by John F. Wagner Jr. In Gratitude to Msgr. J. Emmett Murphy

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IXCopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Law

is usually defined as a rule of action; it is more properly a precept or command coming from a superior authority, which an inferior is bound to obey. Such laws emanate from the king or legislative body of a nation. Such enactments of “the powers that be” are recognized in Scripture as resting upon the ultimate authority of the divine Lawgiver (Rom 13:1). We propose in this article to discuss only the various distinctions or applications of the term, in an ethical sense, reserving for a separate place the consideration of the Mosaic law, in its various aspects, ceremonial, moral, and civil.

I. Classification of Laws as to their interior Nature.

1. “Penal Laws” are such as have some penalty to enforce them. All the laws of God are and cannot but be penal, because every breach of his law is sin, and meritorious of punishment.

2. “Directing Laws” are prescriptions or maxims without any punishment annexed to them.

3. “Positive Laws” are precepts which are not founded upon any reasons known to those to whom they are given. Thus, in the state of innocence, God gave the law of the Sabbath; of abstinence from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, etc. In childhood most of the parental commands are necessarily of this nature, owing to the incapacity of the child to understand the grounds of their inculcation.

II. Certain Special Uses of the Term.

1. “Law of Honor” is a system of rules constructed by people of fashion, and calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one another, and for no other purpose. Consequently nothing is adverted to by the law of honor but what tends to incommode this intercourse. Hence this law only prescribes and regulates the duties betwixt equals, omitting such as relate to the Supreme Being, as well as those which we owe to our inferiors, and in most instances is favorable to the licentious indulgence of the natural passions. Thus it allows of fornication, adultery, drunkenness, prodigality, duelling, and of revenge in the extreme, and lays no stress upon the virtues opposite to these.

2. “Laws of Nations” are those rules which, by a tacit consent, are agreed upon among all communities, at least among those who are reckoned the polite and humanized part of mankind.

3. “Laws of Natures.” “The word law is sometimes also employed in order to express not only the moral connection between free agents of an inferior, and others of a superior power, but also in order to express the nexus causalis, the connection between cause and effect in inanimate nature. However, the expression law of nature, lex naturae, is improper and figurative. The term law implies, in its strict sense, spontaneity, or the power of deciding between right and wrong, and of choosing between good and evil, as well on the part of the lawgiver as on the part of those who have to regulate their conduct according to his dictates” (Kitto, s.v.). Moreover, the powers of nature, which these laws are conceived as representing, are nothing in reality but the power of God exerted in these directions. Hence these laws may at any time be suspended by God when the higher interests of his spiritual kingdom require. Viewed in this light, miracles not only become possible, but even probable for the furtherance of the divine economy of salvation. (See Bushell, Nature and the Supernatural.) SEE MIRACLE.

III. Forms of the Divine Law. The manner in which God governs rational creatures is by a law, as the rule of their obedience to him, and this is what we call God’s moral government of the world. At their very creation he placed all intelligences under such a system. Thus he gave a law to angels, which some of them have kept, and have been confirmed in a state of obedience to it; but which others broke, and thereby plunged themselves into destruction and misery. In like manner he also gave a law to Adam, which was in the form of a covenant, and in which Adam stood as a covenant head to all his posterity (Romans 5). But our first parents soon violated that law, and fell from a state of innocence to a state of sin and misery (Hos 6:7). SEE FALL.

1. The “Law of Nature” is the will of God relating to human actions, grounded in the moral difference of things, and, because discoverable by natural light, obligatory upon all mankind (Rom 1:20; Rom 2:14-15). This law is coeval with the human race, binding all over the globe, and at all times; yet, through the corruption of reason, it is insufficient to lead us to happiness, and utterly unable to acquaint us how sin is to be forgiven, without the assistance of revelation. This law is that generally designated by the term conscience, which is in strictness a capacity of being affected by the moral relations of actions; in other words, merely a sense of right and wrong. It is the judgment which intellectually determines the moral quality of an act, and this always by a comparison with some assumed standard. With those who have a revelation, this, of course, is the test; with others, education, tradition, or caprice. Hence the importance of a trained conscience, not only for the purpose of cultivating its susceptibility to a high degree of sensitiveness and authority, but also in order to correct the judgment and furnish it a just basis of decision. A perverted or misled conscience is scarcely less disastrous than a hard or blind one. History is full of the miseries and mischiefs occasioned by a misguided moral sense.

2. “Ceremonial Law” is that which prescribes the rites of worship under the Old Testament. These rites were typical of Christ, and were obligatory only till Christ had finished his work, and began to erect his Gospel Church (Heb 7:9; Heb 7:11; Heb 10:1; Eph 2:16; Col 2:14; Gal 5:2-3).

3. “Judaicia Law” was that which directed the policy of the Jewish nation, under the peculiar dominion of God as their supreme magistrate, and never, except in things relating to moral equity, was binding on any but the Hebrew nation.

4. “Moral Law” is that declaration of God’s will which directs and binds all men, in every age and place, to their whole duty to him. It was most solemnly proclaimed by God himself at Sinai, to confirm the original law of nature, and correct men’s mistakes concerning the demands of it. It is denominated perfect (Psa 19:7), perpetual (Mat 5:17-18), holy (Rom 7:12), good (Rom 7:12), spiritual (Rom 7:14), exceeding broad (Psa 119:96). Some deny that it is a rule of conduct to believers under the Gospel dispensation; but it is easy to see the futility of such an idea; for, as a transcript of the mind of God, it must be the criterion of moral good and evil. It is also given for that very purpose, that we may see our duty, and abstain from everything derogatory to the divine glory. It affords us grand ideas of the holiness and purity of God; without attention to it, we can have no knowledge of sin. Christ himself came, not to destroy, but to fulfill it; and though we cannot do as he did, yet we are commanded to follow his example. Love to God is the end of the moral law as well as the end of the Gospel. By the law, also, we are led to see the nature of holiness and our own depravity, and learn to be humbled under a sense of our imperfection. We are not under it, however, as a covenant of works (Gal 3:13), or as a source of terror (Rom 8:1), although we must abide by it, together with the whole perceptive word of God, as the rule of our conduct (Rom 3:31; Romans 7). SEE LAW OF MOSES.

IV. Scriptural Uses of the Law. The word “law” (, torah’, ) is properly used, in Scripture as elsewhere, to express a definite commandment laid down by any recognized authority. The commandment may be general or (as in Lev 6:9; Lev 6:14, etc., “the law of the burnt- offering,” etc.) particular in its bearing, the authority either human or divine. It is extended to prescriptions respecting sanitary or purificatory arrangements (“the law of her that has been in childbed,” or of those that have had the leprosy, Lev 14:2), or even to an architectural design (“the law of the house,” Eze 43:12): so in Rom 6:2, “the law of the husband” is his authority over his wife. But when the word is used with the article, and without any words of limitation, it refers to the expressed will of God, and, in nine cases out of ten, to the Mosaic law, or to the Pentateuch, of which it forms the chief portion.

The Hebrew word (derived from the root , yarah’, “to point out,” and so “to direct and lead”) lays more stress on its moral authority, as teaching the truth, and guiding in the right way; the Greek (from , to assign or appoint,”) on its constraining power, as imposed and enforced by a recognized authority. But in either case it is a commandment proceeding from without, and distinguished from the free action of its subjects, although not necessarily opposed thereto.

The sense of the word, however, extends its scope, and assumes a more abstract character in the writings of the apostle Paul , when used by him with the article, still refers in general to the law of Moses; but when used without the article, so as to embrace any manifestation of ” law,” it includes all powers which act on the will of man by compulsion, or by the pressure of external motives, whether their commands be or be not expressed in definite forms. This is seen in the constant opposition of (“works done under the constraint of law”) to faith, or works of faith,” that is, works done freely by the internal influence of faith. A still more remarkable use of the word is found in Rom 7:23, where the power of evil over the will, arising from the corruption of man, is spoken of as a “law of sin,” that is, an unnatural tyranny proceeing from an evil power without. The same apostle even uses the term “law” to denote the Christian dispensation in contrast with that of Moses (Jam 1:25; Jam 2:12; Jam 4:11; comp. Rom 10:4; Heb 7:12; Heb 10:1); also for the laws or precepts established by the Gospel (Rom 13:8; Rom 13:10; Gal 6:2; Gal 5:23).

The occasional use of the word “law” (as in Rom 3:27, “law of faith;” in Rom 7:23, “law of my mind” [ ]; in Rom 8:2, “law of the spirit of life;” and in Jam 1:25; Jam 2:12, “a perfect law, the law of liberty”) to denote an internal principle of action does not really militate against the general rule. For in each case it will be seen that such principle is spoken of in contrast with some formal law, and the word “law” is consequently applied to it “improperly,” in order to mark this opposition, the qualifying words which follow guarding against any danger of misapprehension of its real character.

It should also be noticed that the title “the law” is occasionally used loosely to refer to the whole of the Old Testament (as in Joh 10:34, referring to Psa 82:6; in Joh 15:25, referring to Psa 35:19; and in 1Co 14:21, referring to Isa 28:11-12). This usage is probably due, not only to desire of brevity and to the natural prominence of the Pentateuch, but also to the predominance in the older covenant (when considered separately from the new, for which it was the preparation) of an external and legal character. Smith, s.v.

It should be noted, however, that very often stands, even when without the article, for the Mosaic law, the term in that sense being so well known as not to be liable to be misunderstood. SEE ARTICLE, GREEK.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Law

a rule of action. (1.) The Law of Nature is the will of God as to human conduct, founded on the moral difference of things, and discoverable by natural light (Rom. 1:20; 2:14, 15). This law binds all men at all times. It is generally designated by the term conscience, or the capacity of being influenced by the moral relations of things.

(2.) The Ceremonial Law prescribes under the Old Testament the rites and ceremonies of worship. This law was obligatory only till Christ, of whom these rites were typical, had finished his work (Heb. 7:9, 11; 10:1; Eph. 2:16). It was fulfilled rather than abrogated by the gospel.

(3.) The Judicial Law, the law which directed the civil policy of the Hebrew nation.

(4.) The Moral Law is the revealed will of God as to human conduct, binding on all men to the end of time. It was promulgated at Sinai. It is perfect (Ps. 19:7), perpetual (Matt. 5:17, 18), holy (Rom. 7:12), good, spiritual (14), and exceeding broad (Ps. 119:96). Although binding on all, we are not under it as a covenant of works (Gal. 3:17). (See COMMANDMENTS

(5.) Positive Laws are precepts founded only on the will of God. They are right because God commands them.

(6.) Moral positive laws are commanded by God because they are right.

Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary

Law

The general word for Law is Torah (, Ass. toretu, the law of the gods). by this word the Pentateuch is universally described among the Jews to the present day. The verb () whence it is derived signifies to project, and hence to point out or teach. The law of God is that which points out or indicates his will to man. It is not an arbitrary rule, still less is it a subjective impulse; it is rather to be regarded as A course of guidance from above. The verb and noun are found together in Exo 24:12, ‘I will give thee a law, and commandments which I have written, that thou mayest teach them.’ It is generally, though imperfectly, represented in the LXX by the word .

Torah has been rendered law in all places but one, namely, 2Sa 7:19, ‘The manner of man,’ literally, ‘The law of the man.’ in the parallel passage (1Ch 17:17), t or (), which is evidently the same word, is rendered ‘estate.’

Torah is first found in Gen 26:5, in connection with Abraham’s loyalty to God. It frequently signifies ritual, custom, or prescriptive right. It is applied to specific ordinances, to groups of regulations and instructions, and to the books which contain them.

The word Dath (), an edict, usually a late word, is used as part of a compound word in Deu 33:2, ‘From his right h and went a fiery-law for them.’ this term is frequently adopted in Ezra, Esther, and Daniel. Chok (), a statute or decree, is frequently used, either in its masculine or feminine form, for the Divine statutes. It is rendered law in the following passages:– Gen 47:26, ‘Joseph made it a law over the l and of Egypt unto this day.’ Gen 49:10, ‘The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.’ Num 21:18, ‘The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by (the direction of) the law-giver.’ Deu 33:21, ‘He provided the first part for himself, because there, in a portion of the law-giver, was he seated.’ 1Ch 16:17, Psa 105:10, ‘He confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant.’ Psa 60:7; Psa 108:8, ‘Judah is my law-giver’ (a passage interesting in connection with Gen 49:10, cited above). Psa 94:20, ‘Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?’ Pro 31:5, ‘It is not for kings to drink wine . lest they forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted.’ Isa 33:22, ‘The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us.’

The most usual renderings of Chokin the LXX are , , and .

In Isa 49:24, ‘the lawful captive’ is literally ‘the captivity of the righteous;’ in Jer 32:11 a word is used which signifies ‘commandment;’ in Ezr 7:24, ‘lawful’ means ‘permissible;’ whilst ‘judgment’ is the literal rendering in Lev 24:22; Psa 81:4; Eze 18:5; Eze 18:19; Eze 18:21; Eze 18:27; Eze 33:14; Eze 33:16; Eze 33:19 (‘lawful and right’).

Fuente: Synonyms of the Old Testament

Law

The whole history of the Jews is a riddle if Moses’ narrative is not authentic. If it is authentic, he was inspired to give the law, because he asserts God’s immediate commission. Its recognized inspiration alone can account for the Israelites’ acquiescence in a burdensome ritual, and for their intense attachment to the Scriptures which condemn them as a stiffnecked people. A small, isolated people, no way distinguished for science or art, possessed the most spiritual religion the world has ever seen: this cannot have been of themselves, it must be of God. No Israelite writer hints at the possibility of fraud. The consentient belief of the rival kingdoms northern Israel and Judah, the agreement in all essential parts between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Pentateuch of the Jews who excommunicated the Samaritans as schismatics, accords with the divine origination of the Mosaic law. Even Israel’s frequent apostasies magnify the divine power and wisdom which by such seemingly inadequate instruments effected His purpose of preserving true religion and morality, when all the philosophic and celebrated nations sank deeper and deeper into idolatry and profligacy.

Had Egypt with its learning and wisdom, Greece with its philosophy and refinement, or Rome with its political sagacity, been the medium of revelation, its origination would be attributed to man’s intellect. As it is, the Mosaic law derived little of its influence from men of mere human genius, and it was actually opposed to the sensual and idolatrous inclinations of the mass of the people. Nothing short of its origin being divine, and its continuance effected by divine interposition, can account for the fact that it was only in their prosperity the law was neglected; when adversity awakened them to reflection they always cried unto God and returned to His law, and invariably found deliverance (Graves, Pent. ii. 3, section 2). Unlike the surrounding nations, the Jews have their history almost solely in the written word.

No museum possesses sculptured figures of Jewish antiquities such as are brought from Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Persepolis, Greece, and Rome. The basis of Israel’s polity was the Decalogue, the compendium of the moral law which therefore was proclaimed first, then the other religions and civil ordinances. The end of Israel’s call by the holy God was that they should be “a holy nation” (Lev 19:2), a meadiatorial kingdom between God and the nations, witnessing for Him to them (Isa 43:10-12), and between them and Him, performing those sacrificial ordinances through the divinely constituted Aaronic priests, which were to prefigure the one coming Sacrifice, through whom all the Gentile nations were to be blessed. Thus, Israel was to be “a kingdom of priests,” each subject a priest (though their exercise of the sacrificial functions was delegated to one family as their representative), and God was at once civil and spiritual king; therefore all the theocratic ordinances of the Sinaitic legislation were designed to minister toward holiness, which is His supreme law.

Hence, the religious ordinances had a civil and judicial sanction annexed and the civil enactments had a religious bearing. Both had a typical and spiritual aspect also, in relation to the kingdom of God yet to come. While minute details are of temporary and local application their fundamental principle is eternal, the promotion of God’s glory and man’s good. It is because of this principle pervading more or less all the ordinances, civil and ceremonial alike, that it is not always easy to draw a line between them. Even the moral law is not severed from but intimately bound up with both. The moral precepts are eternally obligatory, because based on God’s own unchangeable character, which is reflected in the enlightened conscience; their positive enactment is only to clear away the mist which sin has spread over even the conscience.

The positive precepts are obligatory only because of enactment, and so long as the divine Legislator appointed them to remain in force. This is illustrated in Hos 6:6, “I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” God did desire “sacrifices” (for He instituted them), but moral obedience more: for this is the end for which positive ordinances, as sacrifices, were instituted; i.e., sacrifices and positive ordinances, as the sabbath, were to be observed, but not made the plea for setting aside the moral duties, justice, love, truth, obedience, which are eternally obligatory. Compare 1Sa 15:22; Psa 50:8-9; Psa 51:16-17; Isa 1:11-12; Mic 6:6-8; Mat 23:23; Mat 9:13; Mat 12:7. Torah (“law”) means strictly a directory. Authoritative enactment is implied.

The elements of the law already existed, but scattered and much obscured amidst incongruous usages which men’s passions had created. The law “was added because of the transgressions” of it, i.e., not to remove all transgressions, for the law rather stimulates the corrupt heart to disobedience (Rom 7:13), but to bring them out into clearer view (Gal 3:19; Rom 3:20 end, Rom 4:15; Rom 5:13; Rom 7:7-9), to make men more conscious of their sins as being transgressions of the law, so to make them feel need and longing for the promised Saviour (Gal 3:17-24), “the law was our “schoolmaster” (paidagoogos, rather guardian-servant leading us to school), to bring us to Christ.” The law is closely connected with the promise to Abraham, “in thy seed shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen 12:3).

It witnessed to the evil in all men, from which the promised Seed should deliver men, and its provisions on the other hand were the chief fence by which Israel was kept separate from surrounding pagandom, the repository of divine revelation for the future good of the world, when the fullness of the time should come. The giving of the law marked the transition of Israel from nonage to full national life. The law formally sanctioned, and grouped together, many of the fragmentary ordinances of God which existed before. The sabbath, marriage, sacrifices (Genesis 2; Genesis 4; Exo 16:23-29), distinction of clean and unclean (Gen 7:2), the shedding of blood for blood (Gen 9:6), circumcision (Genesis 17), the penalty for fornication, and the Levirate usage (a brother being bound to marry and raise up seed by a deceased brother’s widow, Gen 38:8; Gen 38:24) were some of the patriarchal customs which were adopted with modifications by the Mosaic code. In some cases, as divorce, it corrected rather than sanctioned objectionable existing usages, suffering their existence at all only because of the hardness of their hearts (Mat 19:7-8).

So in the case of a disobedient son (Deu 21:18-21), severe as is the penalty, it is an improvement upon existing custom, substituting a judicial appeal to the community for arbitrary parental power of life and death. The Levirate law limited rather than approved of existing custom. The law of the avenger of involuntarily-shed blood (Deu 19:1-13; Numbers 35) mercifully restrained the usage which was too universally recognized to admit of any but gradual abolition. It withdrew the involuntary homicide from before the eyes of the incensed relatives of the deceased. No satisfaction was allowed for murder; the murderer had no asylum, but could be dragged from the altar (Exo 21:14; 1Ki 2:28-34). The comparative smallness of that portion of the Sinaitic law which concerns the political constitution harmonizes with the alleged time of its promulgation, when as yet the form of government was not permanently settled.

The existing patriarchal authorities in the family and tribe are recognized, while the priests and Levites are appointed to take wholly the sacred functions and in part also the judicial ones. The contingency of a kingly government is provided for in general directions (Deu 17:14-20). The outline of the law is given in Exodus 20-23; the outline of the ceremonial law is given in Exodus 25-31. The Decalogue (a term first found in Clement of Alexandria’s Pedag. iii. 12) is the heart of the whole, and therefore was laid up in the ark of the covenant beneath the “mercy-seat” or “propitiatory” (hilasteerion), intimating that it is only as covered over by divine atoning mercy that the law could be the center of the (Rom 3:25-26) covenant of God with us. The law is the reflection of the holy character of the God of the covenant, the embodiment of the inner spirit of the Mosaic code. “The ten commandments” (Hebrew words, Exo 34:28) are frequently called “the testimony,” namely, of Jehovah against all who should transgress (Deu 31:26-27).

By the law came “the knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20; Rom 7:7). Conscience (without the law) caused only a vague discomfort to the sinner. But the law of the Decalogue, when expressed definitely, convicted of sin and was therefore “a ministration of condemnation” and “of death written and engraven on stones” (2Co 3:7; 2Co 3:9). Its preeminence is marked by its being the first part revealed; not like the rest of the code through Moses, but by Jehovah Himself, with attendant angels (Deu 33:2; Act 7:53; Gal 3:19; Heb 2:2); written by God’s finger, and on stone tables to mark its permanence. The number ten expresses completeness, perfection (Psa 19:7; Exo 27:12 1Ki 7:27; Mat 25:1). They were “the tables of the covenant,” and the ark, because containing them, was called “the ark of the covenant” (Deu 4:13; Jos 3:11). The record in Deu 5:6-21 is a slight variation of Exo 20:2-17.

The fourth commandment begins with “keep” instead of “remember,” the reason for its observance in Deuteronomy is Israel’s deliverance from Egypt instead of God’s resting from creation. Deuteronomy is an inspired free repetition of the original in Exodus, suited to Moses’ purpose of exhortation; hence he refers to the original, in the fifth commandment adding “as the Lord thy God commanded thee.” “And” is inserted as suited to the narrative style which Deuteronomy combines with the legislative. “Desire” is substituted for “covet” in the tenth. None but Moses himself would have ventured to alter an iota of what Moses had ascribed to God in Exodus. The special reason for the fourth, applying to the Israelites, does not interfere with the earlier and more universal reason in Exodus, but is an additional motive for their observing the ordinance already resting on the worldwide basis. Coveting the house in Exodus precedes, but in Deuteronomy succeeds, coveting the wife; evidently all kinds of coveting are comprised in the one tenth commandment.

As the seventh and eighth forbid acts of adultery and theft, so the tenth forbids the desire and so seals the inner spirituality of all the commandments of the second table. The claims of God stand first. The love of God is the true spring of the love of our fellow men. Josephus (contra Apion ii. 17) says: “Moses did not (as other legislators) make religion part of virtue, but all other virtues parts of religion.” The order of the ten indicates the divine hand; God’s being, unity, exclusive deity, “have no other gods before My face” (Heb 4:13); His worship as a Spirit without idol symbol; His name; His day; His earthly representatives, parents, to be honoured; then regard for one’s neighbour’s life; for his second self, his wife; his property; character; bridling the desires, the fence of duty to one’s neighbour and one’s self. As deed is fenced by the sixth, seventh, and eighth, so speech by the ninth, and the heart by the tenth. It begins with God, ends with the heart. The fourth and fifth have a positive form, the rest negative.

It is a witness against man’s sin, rather than a giver of holiness. Philo and Josephus (Ant. 3:6, section 5) comprise the first five in the first table, the last five in the second. Augustine, to bring out the Trinity, made our first and second one, and divided our tenth into coveting the wife and coveting the rest; thus, three in the first table, seven in the second. But the command to have only one God is quite distinct from the prohibition to worship Him by an image, and coveting the wife and the other objects falls under one category of unlawful desire. Love to God is expressly taught in the second commandment, “mercy to thousands in them that love Me and keep My commandments.” The five and five division is the best. Five implies imperfection; our duty to God being imperfect if divorced from duty to our neighbour. Five and ten predominate in the proportions of the tabernacle. Piety toward the earthly father is closely joined to piety towards the heavenly (Heb 12:9; 1Ti 5:4; Mar 7:11). Special sanctions are attached to the second, third, fourth, and fifth commandments.

Paul (Rom 13:8; Rom 13:9) makes the second table, or duty to our neighbour, comprise the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, but not the fifth commandment. Spiritual Jews penetrated beneath the surface, and so found in the law peace and purity viewed in connection with the promised Redeemer (Psa 1:2; Psa 1:19; Psa 1:119; Psa 1:15; Psa 1:24; Isa 1:10-18; Rom 2:28-29). As (1) the Decalogue gave the moral tone to all the rest of the law, so (2) the ceremonial part taught symbolically purity, as required by all true subjects of the kingdom of God. It declared the touch of the dead defiling, to remind men that sin’s wages is death. It distinguished clean from unclean foods, to teach men to choose moral good and reject evil. The sacrificial part (3) taught the hope of propitiation, and thus represented the original covenant of promise, and pointed on to Messiah, through whom the sense of guilt, awakened by the moral law which only condemns men through their own inability to keep it, is taken away, and peace with God is realized.

Two particulars are noticeable: (1) Moses does not inculcate as sanctions of his laws the rewards and punish. merits of a future life; (2) he does use as a sanction God’s declaration that He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that fear Him, and shows mercy unto thousands (to the thousandth generation) of them that love Him and keep His commandments” (Exo 20:5-6). The only way we can account for the omission of a future sanction, which all other ancient lawgivers deemed indispensable (Warburton, Div. Legation), is the fact established on independent proofs, namely, that Israel’s government was administered by an extraordinary providence, distributing reward and punishment according to obedience or disobedience severally.

But while not sanctioning his law by future rewards or punishments, Moses shows both that he believed in them himself, and sets forth such proofs of them as would suggest themselves to every thoughtful and devout Israelite, though less clearly than they were revealed subsequently under David, Solomon, and the prophets, when they became matter of general belief. Christ shows that in the very title, “the God of Abraham,” etc., in the Pentateuch the promise of the resurrection is by implication contained (Mat 22:31-32). (See RESURRECTION.) Scripture (Heb 4:2; Gal 3:8) affirms the gospel was preached unto Abraham and to Israel in the wilderness, as well as unto us. The Sinai law in its sacrifices was the bud, the gospel was the flower and the ripened fruit. The law was the gospel in miniature, which Jesus the Sun of righteousness expanded.

So David (Psalm 32; Rom 4:6). On the hope of a future life being held by those under the law see Num 23:10; Psa 16:8-11; Psa 17:15; Psa 21:4; Psa 73:24; Psa 49:14-15; Isa 26:19; Isa 25:8; Isa 57:1-2; Dan 7:9-10; Dan 7:13-14; Dan 12:2. The sense of Psa 139:24 is “see if there be any way of “idolatry” (otseb, as in Isa 48:5; the Hebrew also means pain which is the sure issue of idolatry) in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” promised to David and his seed in Messiah (compare 1Jo 5:21; Pro 8:35; Pro 12:28; Pro 14:32; Pro 21:16; Pro 24:11; Ecc 8:11-12; Ecc 11:9; Ecc 12:7; Ecc 12:13-14; 2Ki 2:11-12; 2Ki 13:21; Ezekiel 37; Hos 13:14; Hos 6:2; Joe 2:32; Job 19:23-27).

Life in man is in Gen 1:26-27; Gen 2:7, distinguished from life in brutes: “Jehovah ‘Elohim breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul”; “God created man in His own image.” It is not immateriality which distinguishes man’s life from the brutes’ life, for the vital principle is immaterial in the brute as in man; it can only be the continuance of life after death of the body, conscience, spirit, and sense of moral responsibility, as well as power of abstract reasoning. Act 24:14-15; Act 24:25 shows the prevalent belief in Paul’s day as to the resurrection and judgment to come. Christ asserts that by searching the Old Testament scriptures eternal life and the promise of Messiah was to be found (Joh 5:39). The barrenness of Judea has been made an objection by Voltaire against Scripture truth, which represents it as “flowing with milk and honey.”

But the very barrenness is the accomplishment of Scripture prophecies, and powerfully confirms the Old Testament The structure of the Mosaic history confirms the reality of the miracles on which the truth of the extraordinary providence rests. Common events are joined with the miraculous so closely that the acknowledged history of this singular people would become unaccountable, unless the (See MIRACLES with which it is inseparably joined be admitted. The miracles could not have been credited by the contemporary generation, nor introduced subsequently into the national records and the national religion, if they had not been real and divine. The Jewish ritual and the singular constitution of the tribe of Levi commemorated them perpetually, and rested on their truth. The political constitution and civil laws presuppose an extraordinary providence limiting the legislative and executive authorities. So also the distribution and tenure of land, the sabbatic and Jubilee years, the three great feasts requiring all males to meet at the central sanctuary thrice each year.

Present, rather than invisible and future, sanctions were best fitted at that time to establish the superiority of the true God before Israel and heathendom. The low intellectual and moral state of most Israelites incapacitated them from rising above the desires of the present world to look forward to future retributions, which their spiritual dullness would make them feel doubtful of, until first a present special providence visibly proved His claim on their faith and obedience, and prepared them to believe that the same divine justice which had heretofore visibly governed the youth of Israel’s existence would in a future state reward or punish according to men’s deserts, when the present extraordinary providence should be withdrawn. Moreover, national obedience or transgression could as such be recompensed only by temporal prosperity or adversity (for nations have their existence only in the present time). Therefore, the Divine King of the theocracy dispensed with these by an immediate and visible execution, which only partially appears in His present more invisible, though not less real, government of all nations.

Offenses against the state and individuals were punished, as also offenses against God its head. In Israel’s history a visible specimen was given of what is true in all ages and nations, though less immediately seen now when our calling is to believe and wait, that “righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Pro 14:34). The distraction of clean and unclean animals relates to sacrifices. Some animals by filthy, wild, and noxious natures suggest the presence of evil in nature, and therefore give the feeling of unfitness for being offered as symbols of atonement or thanksgiving before the holy God. Others, tame, docile, useful to man, of the flock and herd, seem suitable for offering, as sheep, goats, cows, doves, and the like. Those that both chew the cud and divide the hoof men generally have taken for food by a common instinct. So fish with fins and scales, but not shellfish as less digestible; insects leaping upon the earth, raised above the crawling slimy brood. Other animals, etc., as swine, dogs, etc., offered by idolaters, are called “abominations.”

The aim of the distinction was ethical, to symbolize separation from moral defilement, and to teach to the true Israel self cleansing from all pollution of flesh and spirit (2Co 7:1). The lesson in Acts 10 is that whereas God granted sanctification of spirit to the Gentiles, as He had to Cornelius, the outward symbol of separation between them and the Jews, namely, the distinction of clean and unclean meats, was needless (Mat 15:11; 1Ti 4:4; Rom 14:17). So the impurity contracted by childbirth (Leviticus 12; 15), requiring the mother’s purification, points to the taint of birth sin (Psa 51:5). The uncleanness after a female birth lasted 66 days, after a male 33, to mark the fall as coming through the woman first (1Ti 2:14-15). In the penal code idolatry is the capital crime, treason against the Head of the state and its fundamental constitution. One was bound not to spare the dearest relative, if guilty of tempting to it; any city apostatizing to it was to be destroyed with its spoil and inhabitants (Deu 13:6).

Human sacrifices burnt to Moloch were especially marked for judgment on all who took part in them (Lev 20:1-5). The wizard, witch, and their consulters violated the allegiance due to Jehovah, who alone reveals His will to His people (Num 9:7-8; Num 27:21; Jos 9:14; Jdg 1:1; 2Sa 5:23) and controls future events, and were therefore to die (1Ch 10:13; Lev 20:27). So the blasphemer, presumptuous sabbath breaker, and false prophet (Lev 24:11-16; Num 15:30-36; Deu 17:12; Deu 18:20). So the violator of the command to rest from work on the day of atonement (Lev 23:29; Lev 23:30), of the Passover (Exo 12:15; Exo 12:19); the willful defiler of the sanctuary (Num 19:13; Lev 22:3); the perpetrator of unnatural crimes (Numbers 18; Numbers 20).

The prohibitions of rounding the hair and beard, of wearing a garment of wool and linen mixed, of sowing a field with divers seeds, of women using men’s garments (besides tending to preserve feminine modesty and purity), were directed against existing idolatrous usages in the worship of Baal and Ashteroth (Num 19:19; Num 19:27; Deu 22:5). The ordeal by the water of jealousy depended on an extraordinary providence (Num 5:11). It could injure the guilty only by miracle, the innocent not at all; whereas in the ordeals of the Middle Ages the innocent could scarcely escape but by miracle. Prohibitions such as human tribunals could hardly take cognizance of were sanctioned by penalties which God undertook to execute. He as Sovereign reserved exclusively to Himself the right of legislation. Sins of impurity, next to idolatry, were punished with peculiar severity (Leviticus 18; the adulterer and adulteress, Lev 20:10; Deu 22:22-30; Deu 27:20-26).

Mildness and exact equity pervaded the code so far as was compatible with the state of the people and the age. Interest or “usury” was not to be taken from an Israelite, and only in strict equity from the foreigner. The poor should be relieved liberally (Deu 15:7-11). The hired labourer’s wages were to be paid at once (Deu 24:14-15). Intrusion into a neighbour’s house to recover a loan was forbidden, not to hurt his feelings. The pledged raiment was to be restored, so as not to leave him without a coverlet at night (Deu 24:10-13).

Other characteristic precepts of the law are: reverence to the old; tenderness toward those having bodily infirmity (Deu 24:19-21); gleanings to be left for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow (Lev 19:14-32); faithfulness in rebuking a neighbour’s sin; the dispersion of the Levites, the ministers of religion, forming a sacred He among all the tribes; studied opposition to all the usages of idolaters, as the pagan historian Tacitus notices: “all we hold sacred are with them profane: they offer the ram in contempt of Ammon … and an ox, which the Egyptians worship as Apis (Hist. 5:4); the Jews deem those profane who form any images of the gods … the Divinity they conceive as one, and only to be understood by the mind; with images they would not honour Caesars or flatter kings.” Personal violence was punished retributively in kind, “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for a tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” The false witness had to suffer what he thought to inflict on another (Deu 19:16-21; Exo 21:24; Lev 24:18-21).

This did not sanction individual retaliation, but it was to regulate the magistrate’s award of damages, namely, the worth in money of the bodily power lost by the injured person. It was to protect the community, not to regulate the believer, who when he penetrated beneath the letter into the spirit of the law, which the gospel afterward brought to light, felt constrained to love his enemy and not do to him the injury the latter had done or intended to do. Our Lord quoted the form of the law (Mat 5:38) in order to contrast the pharisaic view, which looked only to the letter, with the true view which looks to the spirit. A striking feature of the penal code, in which it was superior to most codes, was that no crime against mere property incurred death. Bond service until the sabbatic year was the extreme penalty; restitution and fine were the ordinary penalty. The slave’s life was guarded as carefully as the master’s. If the master caused even the loss of a tooth the servant was to be set free. The chastity of female slaves was strictly protected.

No Jew could be kept in bondage more than seven years, and then was to be sent away with liberal gifts (Exo 21:7-26; Deu 15:13-15). In fact Israelite bond service was only a going into service for a term of years, that the creditor might reap the benefit. The creditor could not imprison nor scourge so as to injure the bond debtor, but in Rome the creditor could imprison and even kill him according to the old law. Men stealers were to be put to death. What a contrast to the cruel oppression of slaves in other nations, the Spartans butchering the helots, the Romans torturing their slaves for trifles and goading them to servile rebellions which cost some of Horne’s bravest blood, and enacting that where a master was murdered all the slaves in the house, or within hearing of it, should be killed! In Israel the public peace was never threatened by such a cause. Trials were public, in the city gates. The judges, the elders, and Levitical ministers and officers, as our jurors, were taken from the people. No torture before conviction, no cruelty after it, was permitted.

Forty stripes were the extreme limit of bodily punishment (Deu 25:3). Capital convictions could only be by the agreeing testimony of two witnesses (Deu 17:6). The even distribution of lands, the non-alienation of them from the family and tribe (Numbers 27; Numbers 36), admirably guarded against those agrarian disturbances and intestine discords which in other states and in all ages have flowed from an uneven distribution and an uncertain tenure of property. Love to God, love to one’s neighbour and even to enemies, benevolence to strangers, the poor, the fatherless and widows, repentance and restitution for injuries, sincere worship of the heart and obedience of the life required to accompany outward ceremonial worship, all these are characteristics of the law, such as never originated from the nation itself, long enslaved, and not remarkable for high intellectual and moral capacity, and such as did not then exist in the code of any other nation. The Originator can have only been, as Scripture says, God Himself.

Besides, whatever doubts may be raised respecting the inspiration or authorship, the fact remains and is indisputable, that it was given and was in force ages before Lycurgus or Minos or other noted legislators lived, and that it has retained its influence upon legislation from the time of its promulgation until now, the British and all other codes of civilized nations being based upon it. This is one of those facts which neither evolution, nor revolution, can overthrow. The letter and outward ordinances were the casket, the spirit as brought out by the gospel was the jewel. The sacrifices gave present relief to awakened consciences by the hope of forgiveness through God’s mercy, resting on the promise of the Redeemer.

The law could not give life, that was reserved for the gospel (Gal 3:21-22; Gal 4:6). Spiritual Jews, as David, when convicted by the law of failure in obedience, fell back on the earlier covenant of promise, the covenant of grace, as distinguished from the law the covenant of works (which required perfect obedience as the condition of life, and cursed all who disobeyed in the least point: Gal 3:6-18; Lev 18:5), and by the Spirit cried for a clean heart (Psa 51:10-11). So they could love the law, not as an outward yoke, but as the law of God’s will cherished in the heart (Psa 37:31), such as it was in Him who should come (Psa 40:8). In most Jews, because of the nonconformity between their inward state and the law’s requirements as a rule from without, its tendency was “to gender to bondage” (Gal 2:4; Gal 4:3; Gal 4:9; Gal 4:24-25; Gal 5:1). Inclination rebelled against it.

They either burst its bond for open paganism; or, as in post captivity times, scrupulously held the letter, but had none of its spirit, “love, the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:8-10; Lev 19:18; 1Ti 1:5; Gal 5:14; Mat 7:12; Mat 22:37-40; Jam 2:8). Hence, the prophets looked on to gospel times when God would write the law by His Spirit in the heart (Jer 31:31-33; Jer 31:39; Eze 36:26-27; Eze 11:19-20). In one respect the law continues, in another it is superseded (Mat 5:17-18). In its antitypical realization in Jesus, it is all being fulfilled or has been so. In its spirit, “holy, just, and good,” it is of everlasting obligation as it reflects the mind of God. In its Old Testament form it gives place to its fully developed perfection in the New Testament The temporary and successional Aaronic priesthood gives place to the abiding and intransmissible Melchizedek priesthood of Jesus, the sacrificial types, to the one antitypical sacrifice, never to be repeated (Hebrew 5; Hebrew 7; Hebrew 8; Hebrew 9; Hebrew 10).

So believers, insofar as they are under the gospel law of Christ (Gal 6:2), which is the law of love in the heart, are no longer under the law, as an outward letter ordinance. Through Christ’s death they are dead to the law, as a law of condemnation, and have the Spirit enabling them to “serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter” (Rom 2:29; Rom 7:1-6; 2Co 3:6). “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness (both justification and sanctification) to every one that believeth” Rom 10:4; Rom 8:1-3). He gave not so much new laws of morality as new motives for observing the old law. As a covenant of works, and a provisional mode of discipline, and a typical representation of atonement, the law is no more. As the revelation of God’s righteousness it is everlasting. Free from the letter, the believer fulfills the spirit and end of the law, conformity to God’s will. Moses, in foretelling the rise of the “Prophet like unto himself” and God’s rejection of all who should reject Him (Deu 18:15, etc.), by the Spirit intimates that the law was to give place to the gospel of Jesus.

Moses anticipates also by the Spirit the evils which actually befell them, their being besieged, their captivity, dispersion, and restoration (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 32). The words in Deu 34:10-12 (compare Num 12:1-8) prove that no other prophet or succession of prophets can exhaustively fulfill the prophecy. Both Peter and Stephen authoritatively decide that Messiah is “the Prophet” (Act 3:22; Act 7:37). The gospel attracted and detached from the Jewish nation almost every pure and pious soul, sifting the chaff from the wheat. The destruction of the temple with which Judaism and the ceremonial law were inseparably connected was God’s explicit setting of them aside. The danger to the church from Judaizing Christians, which was among its first trials (Acts 11; 15; Gal 3:5), was thereby diminished, and “the fall of the Jews is the riches of the world” in this as in other respects (Rom 11:12).

Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary

LAW

The word law is used in many ways in the Bible. It may be used of commandments or instructions in general, whether given by God, civil administrators, teachers or parents (Gen 26:5; Exo 18:20; Pro 3:1; Pro 6:20; see also GOVERNMENT). Frequently it is used of the written Word of God (Psa 119:18-20; Psa 119:57-61), sometimes applying to the Old Testament as a whole and sometimes to part of the Old Testament, such as the five books of Moses (Mat 5:17; Luk 24:44; Joh 1:45; Joh 15:25; see PENTATEUCH). Occasionally it means a principle of operation (Rom 7:21; Rom 7:23; Rom 8:2). The most common usage of the term, however, concerns the law of God given to Israel through Moses at Mt Sinai (Exo 24:12; Deu 4:44; Ezr 7:6; Joh 1:17; Gal 3:17; Gal 3:19). This meaning of law is the chief concern of the present article.

Gods covenant with Israel

In his grace God made a covenant with Abraham to make his descendants into a great nation and to give them Canaan as their national homeland (Gen 17:1-8). Over the next four hundred years God directed the affairs of Abrahams descendants so that their numbers increased and they became a distinct people. They were then ready to be formally established as a nation and to receive the land God had promised them. At Mt Sinai God confirmed the covenant made previously with Abraham, this time making it with Abrahams descendants, the nation Israel (Exo 24:7-8; see COVENANT).

God had chosen Israel to be his people, saved them from slavery in Egypt, and taken them into a close relationship with himself, all in fulfilment of his covenant promise made to Abraham. Everything arose out of the sovereign grace of God (Exo 2:24; Exo 3:16; Exo 6:6-8). But if the people were to enjoy the blessings of that covenant, they had to respond to Gods grace in faithful obedience. The people understood this and promised to be obedient to all Gods commands (Exo 24:7-8).

The law that God gave to the people of Israel at Sinai laid down his requirements for them. Through obedience to that law the people would enjoy the life God intended for them in the covenant relationship (Lev 18:5; cf. Rom 7:10; Rom 10:5; Gal 3:12). The ten commandments were the principles by which the nation was to live, and formed the basis on which all Israels other laws were built (Exo 20:1-17).

Characteristics of Israelite law

No part of the lives of the Israelites was outside the demands of the covenant. The law applied to the whole of their lives and made no distinction between moral, religious and civil laws. Laws may have been in the form of absolute demands that allowed no exceptions (e.g. You shall not steal; Exo 20:15), or in the form of guidelines concerning what to do when various situations arose (e.g. If a person borrows anything and it is hurt or dies . . .; Exo 22:14), but the two kinds were equally binding.

Israels law-code was suited to the customs of the time and was designed to administer justice within the established culture. Unlike some ancient law-codes, it did not favour the upper classes, but guaranteed a fair hearing for all. It protected the rights of people who were disadvantaged or defenceless, such as orphans, widows, foreigners, slaves and the poor (Exo 22:22; Exo 23:6; Exo 23:9; Exo 23:12). The penalties it laid down were not brutal or excessive, as in some nations, but were always in proportion to the crime committed (Exo 21:23-24).

Jesus attitude to the law

The covenant made with Israel at Sinai and the law that belonged to that covenant were not intended to be permanent. They were part of the preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ, through whom God would make a new and eternal covenant (Gal 3:19; Gal 3:24; Heb 9:15).

Jesus was born under the law (Gal 4:4) and was brought up according to the law (Luk 2:21-24; Luk 2:42). He obeyed the law (Mat 17:27; Joh 2:13) and he commanded others to obey the law (Mat 8:4; Mat 23:1-3; Mat 23:23). Jesus did not oppose the law, though he certainly did oppose the false interpretations of the law that the Jewish leaders of his time taught. He upheld and fulfilled the law by demonstrating its true meaning (Mat 5:17-19; Mat 5:21; Mat 5:27; Mat 5:31; Mat 5:33; Mat 5:38; Mat 5:43).

Frequently Jesus pointed out that the law was good and holy and that God gave it for peoples benefit (Mat 22:36-40; Luk 10:25-28; cf. Rom 7:12; Rom 7:14). By contrast the Jewish leaders used the law to oppress people, adding their own traditions and forcing people to obey them. In so doing they forgot, or even opposed, the purpose for which God gave the law (Mat 23:4; Mar 7:1-9; see TRADITION). Jesus knew that the law, as a set of regulations, was part of a system that was about to pass away (Mat 9:16-17; cf. Heb 8:13). His death and resurrection would mark the end of the old covenant and the beginning of the new (Heb 9:15).

Under the new covenant people still have to respond to Gods covenant grace with obedience, but the expression of that obedience has changed. Instead of being bound by a set of rules, they have inner spiritual power to do Gods will. Instead of having to offer sacrifices repeatedly, they have their sins taken away once and for all. Instead of having to approach God through priests, they have direct fellowship with God (Jer 31:31-34; Heb 8:8-13; Heb 10:1-4; Heb 10:16-18).

Salvation apart from the law

People have never received forgiveness of sins through keeping the law. Under the old covenant, as under the new, they were saved only through faith in the sovereign God who, in his grace, forgave them and accepted them. Abraham, David and Paul lived respectively before, during and after the period when the old covenant and its law-code operated in Israel, but all three alike were saved by faith (Gen 15:6; Rom 3:28; Rom 4:1-16; Rom 4:22; Gal 3:17-18; Eph 2:8; 1Ti 1:14-16). Salvation depended upon Gods promise, not upon human effort. It was a gracious gift received by faith, not a reward for keeping the law (Gal 3:18; Gal 3:21-22; see PROMISE).

Contrary to popular Jewish opinion, the law was not given as a means of salvation (Rom 9:31-32). It was given to show the standard of behaviour God required from his covenant people. As a set of official regulations, it was given solely to the nation Israel and was in force for the period from Moses to Christ. But as an expression of the character and will of God, it operated on principles that are relevant to people of all nations and all eras. It expressed in a legal code for one nation the principles that are applicable to people in general (Rom 2:12-16; Rom 13:8-10). Through the law given to Israel, God showed the righteous standards that his holiness demanded.

At the same time the law showed the extent of peoples sinfulness, for their behaviour repeatedly fell short of the laws standards. The law therefore showed up human sin; but when sinners acknowledged their sin and turned in faith to God, God in his grace forgave them (Rom 3:19-20; Rom 3:31; Rom 5:20; Rom 7:7; Gal 3:11; Gal 3:19). (Concerning the rituals of the law for the cleansing of sin see SACRIFICE.)

Those who broke the law were under the curse and condemnation of the law (Deu 27:26; Gal 3:10). Jesus Christ, however, lived a perfect life according to the law, and then died to bear the laws curse. By his death he broke its power to condemn those who take refuge in him. Believers in Jesus are freed from the laws curse. They have their sins forgiven and are put right with God (Rom 7:6; Rom 8:1-3; Rom 10:4; Gal 3:13; Eph 2:15; Col 2:14).

Jesus Christ is the true fulfilment of the law. The law prepared the way for him and pointed to him. Before his coming, the people of Israel, being under the law, were like children under the control of a guardian. With his coming, the law had fulfilled its purpose; the guardian was no longer necessary. Believers in Jesus are not children under a guardian, but full-grown mature children of God (Gal 3:23-26; Gal 4:4-5; cf. Rom 10:4; see ADOPTION).

Christian life apart from the law

It was some time before Jewish Christians in the early church understood clearly that the law was no longer binding upon them. They still went to the temple at the set hours of prayer and possibly kept the Jewish festivals (Act 2:1; Act 2:46; Act 3:1). Stephen seems to have been the first Christian to see clearly that Christianity was not part of the Jewish system and was not bound by the Jewish law (Act 6:13-14). Then Peter had a vision through which he learnt that Jewish food laws no longer applied. He was harshly criticized by certain Jews in the Jerusalem church when they found he had been eating freely with the Gentiles (Act 10:15; Act 11:2-3).

These Jews later tried to force Gentile converts to keep the law of Moses (Act 15:1), and argued so cleverly that Peter tended to follow them, until Paul corrected him (Gal 2:11-16). When some of the leading Christians met at Jerusalem to discuss the matter, they agreed that Gentiles were not to be put under the law of Moses (Act 15:19). It was now becoming clear, and Pauls teaching soon made it very clear, that there was no difference between Jews and Gentiles concerning requirements for salvation and Christian living. People were saved by faith alone, not by the law, and they lived their Christian lives by faith alone, not by the law (Rom 3:21-31; Gal 3:28).

When he met opposition to his teaching, Paul pointed out the impossibility of being saved through keeping the law (Rom 9:30-32; Gal 2:16; Gal 5:4; Php 3:9). An equal impossibility was to grow in maturity and holiness through keeping the law, or even selected parts of it (Gal 3:2-5; Gal 5:1-3; Jam 2:10-11).

The actions of Paul in occasionally observing Jewish laws were not for the purpose of pursuing personal holiness. They were for the purpose of gaining him acceptance among Jewish opponents whom he wanted to win for Christ. Such actions were purely voluntary on Pauls part (1Co 9:19-23; cf. Act 15:19-21; Act 16:3; Act 21:20-26). If people tried to force Paul to keep the law, he would not yield to them under any circumstances (Gal 2:3-5).

Paul explained the uselessness of trying to grow in holiness through placing oneself under the law. He pointed out that the more the law forbids a thing, the more the sinful human heart wants to do it (Rom 7:7-11). This does not mean that there is anything wrong with the law. On the contrary, the law is holy, just and good. The fault lies rather with sinful human nature (Rom 7:12-14; see FLESH).

Free but not lawless

Although the law aims at righteous behaviour, people cannot produce righteous behaviour by keeping the law. They can produce it only by claiming true Christian liberty and living by the inner spiritual power of the Holy Spirit (Rom 6:14; Rom 8:3-4; Gal 5:13-23; see FREEDOM; HOLY SPIRIT). But the same Holy Spirit who empowers inwardly has given clear guidelines for behaviour in the written Word. It is not surprising, then, to find that those guidelines contain quotations from the law of Moses to indicate the sort of character and conduct that a holy God requires (Mat 22:36-40; Rom 7:12; Rom 13:8-10; Eph 6:2; Heb 8:10; Jam 2:8-12).

Christians are not under law but under grace. Yet they are not lawless (Rom 6:15). They have been freed from the bondage of the law and are now bound to Christ (Rom 7:1-4). The law of Christ is a law of liberty, one that Christians obey not because they are forced to but because they want to. The controlling force in their lives is not a written code but a living person (1Co 9:21; Gal 6:2; Jam 1:25; Jam 2:12).

As Jesus demonstrated his love for the Father by keeping the Fathers commandments, so those who truly love Jesus will keep his commandments (Joh 14:15; Joh 14:21; Joh 15:10; 1Jn 2:3-4; 1Jn 2:7; 1Jn 5:3). And in so doing they will practise love, which itself is the fulfilment of the law (Joh 13:34; Rom 13:8-10; Gal 5:14; 1Jn 5:2-3).

Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary

Law

LAW.The question of Christs relation to the Jewish law is one of fundamental importance for the origin of Christianity, but at the same time one of peculiar difficulty. The difficulty arises, to some extent, from the fact that His own teaching marks a period of transition, when the old was already antiquated, while the new was still unborn. A further difficulty is created by the relation in which the actual conduct of Jesus stood to the principles which He laid down. Moreover, the question arises whether His attitude remained the same through the whole course of His ministry, or whether He came to realize that His fundamental principles carried Him further than He had at first anticipated. Lastly, when we remember how bitter was the strife which this very question aroused in the primitive Church, the misgiving is certainly not unreasonable, that this may have been reflected back into the life of the Founder, and sayings placed in His mouth endorsing one of the later partisan views. Our present subject is that of the Ceremonial Law.

It must be clearly recognized that the distinction between moral and ceremonial law is not one sanctioned in the Law itself. All its parts alike were the command of God. The distinction has maintained its vitality in virtue of a praiseworthy ethical interest. The antinomianism of St. Paul seemed to endanger morality, and those who could not rise to his point of view, that it was precisely in this way that morality was secured, turned Christianity into a new legalism, and explained his doctrine that the Law was abolished to mean that Christians were no longer compelled to practise Jewish ceremonies. This was, of course, to reduce much that he said to the unmeaning. It is precisely the moral law that St. Paul had chiefly in mind. The Decalogue is described as the ministration of death written and engraven on stones (2Co 3:7 Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ); and, to illustrate the sin-producing effects of the Law, St. Paul quotes one of the Ten Commandments (Rom 7:7). His doctrine was unquestionably that the Law as a whole was done away for all who were in Christ, inasmuch as they had crucified the flesh, which was the home of sin, and thus had lost everything to which the Law could appeal as provocation to sin, while they had escaped into the freedom of the Spirit, and could therefore no longer be under the constraint of the Law. But even St. Paul was forced to recognize that his magnificent idealism was not milk for babes, hence moral exhortation found a large place in his Epistles, side by side with the loftiest assertions of a Christians freedom from sin, flesh, and the Law. But St. Paul is quite explicit that this freedom is to be strenuously maintained in the sphere of Jewish ceremonies, especially circumcision, and sacred days and seasons. On the other hand, a party in the Early Church insisted passionately on the permanent validity of the Law, and especially of circumcision, as essential to salvation. It lies beyond our limits to trace the history of this controversy, but a reference to it is necessary for the reason already indicated.

Jesus was Himself born into a Jewish home, and the rites prescribed by the Jewish law were scrupulously fulfilled in His case. His parents did not belong to the ranks of the Pharisees, hence His early training was healthier than that of St. Paul; but He, like His great Apostle, was born under the Law (Gal 4:4), and initiated by circumcision into the Covenant on the eighth day (Luk 2:21). His mother presented Him as her firstborn male child to the Lord in the Temple, and offered the sacrifice of purification prescribed in the Law (Luk 2:22-24), and thus accomplished all things that were according to the law of the Lord (Luk 2:39). Joseph and Mary went up each year to the feast of the Passover at Jerusalem (Luk 2:41). So far as we can see, Jesus Himself was a strict observer of the Law. Whatever His attitude towards it during His ministry, we may assume without question that, till He was conscious of His Messianic vocation, His obedience to the Law was scrupulously and heartily rendered. It lay in the nature of the case, however, that the old bottles of Judaism should be unfit to receive the new wine of the Kingdom with which He knew Himself to be intrusted. The question whether this was clear to Him from the first, or whether it became clear only in the course of His controversy with the scribes, cannot be answered with certainty, in view of the doubt which hangs over the chronology of the ministry. And His conduct here was regulated by much the same need for reserve as He practised in reference to His self-revelation as Messiah. A premature declaration would have created an extremely difficult situation. All He could do was to utter His principles and leave the practical inferences to be drawn, when the time was ripe, by those who shared His spirit.

On one great branch of this question, however, Jesus expressed Himself clearly and without compromise. The morbid anxiety of the scribes to make a hedge about the Law so that all possible approaches to its violation might be blocked, added to the hair-splitting casuistry in which moralists of their type delighted, and the lawyers instinct for precise and exhaustive definition, had led to the elaboration of the precepts in the Law into a vast system of tradition. Moreover, the heavier the burden grew, the greater grew the temptation to find a literal fulfilment which should be an escape from the spirit. All this apparatus of piety demanded leisure to master and perform, such leisure as no man with his daily bread to earn could command; hence arose a morality unfitted for the normal human life. Against all this tradition Jesus entered an emphatic protest. His attitude towards it was wholly different from that which He assumed towards the written Law. The scribes made void by their tradition the word of God, and every plant which His heavenly Father had not planted He said should be rooted up. Nevertheless, in vindicating the Law against the tradition, He enunciated principles which pointed forward to the abolition of both. The points on which He came into conflict with Jewish ceremonialism were Fasting, the law of Uncleanness, the Temple service, and the cancelling of primary human duties by feigned respect for duties to God.

1. If the order of incidents in the Gospel of St. Mark could be accepted as chronological, the first collision of Jesus with the representatives of the tradition was occasioned by His eating with publicans and sinners at the house of Levi (Mar 2:15 ff.). Although stress cannot be laid on the order in which the incidents are narrated, this furnishes us with an excellent illustration of the way in which the fundamental ideas of Jesus brought Him into conflict with the religious prejudices of His time. His doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and of the incomparable value of the human soul were fundamental convictions. To this was added the consciousness of His own mission to restore the lost children to their Father. Hence He met the criticism of His conduct in associating with the degraded by the explanation that He was a physician, and where was the physicians place but in the midst of the sick? There is indeed a terrible irony in the words, for there were none whose moral and religious health was, to the eyes of Jesus, in a more desperate condition than that of His critics. But scandalized as they might be by conduct so unprofessional on the part of a teacher, there was an obvious conclusiveness in the reply of Jesus which could have been evaded only by the assertion that the salvation of such people was not desirable. The two types of holiness emerge in clear contradictionthe type which seeks to avoid all contact with the contaminating in order that personal purity may not be compromised, and the type that is entirely forgetful of self in its zeal for the regeneration of others. It is in connexion with a similar accusation that St. Luke relates the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Drachma, and the Lost Son (Luke 15). Similarly Christs lodging with Zacehaeus the publican gave rise to criticism; and here again Jesus explained His action by His mission: The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luk 19:10).

2. The second point in which the new type displayed a contrast with the old was in the matter of Fasting. Wonder was excited that, while the Pharisees and the disciples of the Baptist fasted, the disciples of Jesus neglected this religious exercise. The Pharisees fasted twice in the week, on Monday and Thursday. What fasts were observed by the disciples of John we do not know. But the distinction was not one simply between disciples, it went back to the leaders. The Baptist was an ascetic, clothed in camels hair and a leathern girdle, with locusts and wild honey for his food; his congenial home was the desert, his message one of judgment to come, the axe already lying at the root of the tree. He came neither eating nor drinking, and this unsociable disposition called forth the charge that he had a devil. Jesus, on the other hand, was no aseetic; so little of an ascetic, in fact, that His enemies taxed Him with over-indulgence: The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners (Mat 11:19). Jesus defends His disciples against the criticism implied in the question, Why do Johns disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not? (Mar 2:18) by the answer, Can the sons of the bride-chamber fast while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. The principle underlying this is that the external practice must be a spontaneous expression of the inward feeling. Fasting is out of place in their present circumstances, they have the bridegroom with them, therefore all is joy and festivity. It would be a piece of unreality to introduce into their present religious life an element so incongruous. But He proceeds: The days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then will they fast in that day. The reference is to His own death; and possibly the foreboding expressed should lead us to assign this incident to His later ministry, after the declaration of Messiahship had been made and the prediction of death had been uttered. On the other hand, the veiled allusion makes it possible that those who heard it would not catch His meaning, and we can, in that case, assign it to a late date only if we are clear that Jesus Himself became conscious at a comparatively late period in His ministry of the death that awaited Him. The incident itself rather makes the impression that it belongs to the earlier period of Christs activity. This was one of the respects in which failure to conform to conventional piety would early attract attention.

Wellhausen regards the incident as unauthentic. He points to the curious fact that the question is one between the disciples of the Baptist and of Jesus, and draws the inference that it is a justification for the deviation of the later practice of Christs followers from that of Jesus Himself, who in practice conformed strictly to the Judaism of His time. He confirms this by pointing out that as a matter of fact the bridegroom is not taken away from wedding festivities, and here therefore the choice of expression has been determined by the actual fact of Christs removal by death. However plausible this suggestion may be, the sayings bear rather the stamp of Jesus than of the early Apostolic Church. The criticism of the disciples rather than of Jesus has its parallel in the incident of the plucking of the ears of corn on the Sabbath and the disciples eating with unwashed hands, and the temper of the Master was much freer than that of the timidly legalistic disciples.

In the Sermon on the Mount fasting is recognized as a fitting religious exercise; but, as in the case of prayer and almsgiving, it is essential, for its true religious quality to be preserved, that it should be practised without ostentation. The religious self-advertisement which characterized the Pharisees eviscerated these exercises of all their value. They were to be a secret between a man and his God. In the most rigorous fasts washing and anointing were forbidden (Taanith, i. 6), while they were allowed in the less severe (ib. i. 4 f.). Jesus bids His followers anoint the head and wash the face when they fast, that no one may be able to detect that they are fasting (Mat 6:16-18). See Fasting.

Immediately following the defence of the disciples for not fasting, we have in all the Synopties (Mat 9:16 f., Mar 2:21 f., Luk 5:36 f.) the sayings about the undressed cloth and the new wine in the old wineskins. The parables are difficult; the lesson taught is clearly the incompatibility of the new with the old, and the disaster that will inevitably follow any attempt to combine them. But it is by no means clear with what old and new should be identified, nor again can we assume that both parables express the same truth. It is possible, though improbable, that Jesus may intend by the old the ancient piety of the Old Testament, and by the new the new-fangled regulations of the scribes, His sense being that the old Divinely-given mode of life is being ruined by the tradition of men. But it is more likely that the usual view is right, according to which the old is Judaism and the new is the gospel. Even so, however, various interpretations are possible. Usually it has been thought that in both sayings Jesus is defending the attitude of His disciples: you cannot expect the new spirit of the gospel to be cast in the old moulds or Judaism; the new spirit must create new forms for itself. Weiss, however, considers that both parables constitute a defence of the attitude of Johns disciples, they cannot be expected to combine the spirit of the Gospel with their legalist and ascetic habit of life (Bibl. Theol. of NT, i. 112). It is possible, however, that Beysehlag is correct in thinking that the parable of the undressed cloth on the old garment is a justification of Johns disciples in fasting, while the parable of the new wine in the old bottles is a justification of the disciples of Jesus for refusing to follow their example (NT Theol. i. 114). The two sayings are connected by and, it is true, but this conjunction has in the Synoptics a wider range of meaning than in English. Wellhausen finds the sayings difficult. He is not disposed to question their authenticity, though, as already mentioned, he strikes out the sayings immediately preceding.

3. Another point in which Jesus came into confliet with the tradition was that of Ablutions (Mar 7:1 ff. ||). To secure that nothing ceremonially unclean should be eaten, the Jews were very scrupulous in washing the hands before meals. The laws of cleanness and uncleanness touch life so much more closely than any others, that the casuistry of the scribes naturally finds in this matter a large field of exercise. The largest of the six books of the Mishna is given up to this topic. The purification of vessels alone occupies thirty chapters of this book. The Pentateuch itself exhibits more than the usual tendency to casuistry in this matter, but the tradition left the Law out of sight in the elaborateness of its regulations. In the time of Jesus tradition had become very strict with reference to the washing of the hands. The practice originated with the Pharisees, but was adopted by almost all the Jews. Even when the hands were ceremonially clean it was necessary to wash them, no doubt to guard against the possibility of unconscious defilement. If they were known to be unclean, they had to be washed twice before a meal; they were also washed after food; and some Pharisees washed even between the courses. The hands were held with the lingers up, so that the uncleanness might be washed down from them; and for the ceremony to be effectual it was necessary that the water should run down to the wrist (though we should probably not translate , Mar 7:3, to the wrist; see Swete, ad loc.). In Joh 2:6 we read of the six stone water-pots for the water of purification at the marriage in Cana; and the same Gospel tells us how the Jews purified themselves for the Passover (Joh 11:55), or took precautions against defilement which would disqualify them from eating it (Joh 18:28).

It was therefore natural that the neglect of some of the disciples should evoke criticism; and this criticism was uttered by officials from Jerusalem who had come down to watch the new movement (Mar 7:1). No mention is made here of any violation of the tradition on the part of Jesus Himself; though in Luk 11:38 we are told that the Pharisee, at whose house Jesus was eating, was surprised that He neglected this ceremony. Jesus defended His disciples by a complete repudiation of the tradition. He pointed out that its effect was to nullify the Law rather than to establish it; and He illustrated this from the practice of dedicating to God that which ought to have been used by a man for the support of his parents. To this point it will be necessary to return. But in connexion with the question of hand-washing Jesus enunciated a principle of far-reaching importance which not only set aside the tradition, but even abrogated a large section of the Law. He asserted that not that which is without a man can, by going into him, defile him, but the things which proceed out of the man. The heart is the essential thing, food cannot come into contact with that; but it is in it that evil thoughts, words, or actions have their rise, and it is these that make a man unclean. Not what a man eats, but what he is, determines the question of his purity. Thus Jesus lifted the whole conception of cleanness and uncleanness out of the ceremonial into the ethical domain. But it is plain that this carried with it revolutionary conclusions, not only as to the tradition, but as to the Law; for much of the Law was occupied precisely with the uncleanness created by external things, and it is not improbable that St. Mark has definitely drawn this inference in his Gospel.

It is possible that the usual view taken of the passage, according to which the words making all meats clean (Mar 7:19) are the concluding words of Jesus, should be accepted. This involves, however, a grammatical irregularity, and we ought perhaps to adopt the view taken by Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Chrysostom, ably defended by Field (Notes on the Translation of the NT, pp. 31, 32) and adopted by Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 , Weizscker, Swete, Gould, Salmond, that they are the comment of the Evangelist, and that we should translate this he said, making all meats clean. On the other hand, the notes of Menzies and Wellhausen on the passage may be consulted.

The evasion of the Law by the Tradition here asserted by Jesus has been affirmed by some Jewish scholars not to have existed. (The reader may consult an appendix on Legal Evasions of the Law, by Dr. Schechter in Montefiores Hibbert Lectures, pp. 557563; an article by Monteflore on Jewish Scholarship and Christian Silence in the Hibbert Journal for Jan. 1903; the rejoinder to this by Menzies in July 1903, with a further rejoinder by Monteflore in Oct. 1903.) It is urged that the reference in the Jewish treatise Nedarim does not confirm the statement in St. Mark about Corban. Dr. Menzies accepts this; but when that is said, the matter is by no means ended. To the present writer it seems that the evidence of St. Mark is quite good evidence for the contemporary Judaism. If the assertion about Corban is untrue, of course it cannot be ascribed to Jesus, who could not have quoted, as a conclusive proof that the Jews cancelled the Law by their tradition, an example which His hearers would know to have no existence. Accordingly, if the statement is mistaken, it would have to be put down to the account of the Evangelist, though how he should have hit upon it unless such a custom was actually in vogue would be difficult to understand. In forming our judgment on a question of this kind certain leading principles must be kept in mind. The contemporary Judaism is most imperfectly known to us, and the documents which we have to use as our sources of information are, in many instances, centuries later than the rise of Christianity. Further, the stereotyping of Judaism must not be blindly accepted as if it guaranteed that doctrines or practices for which we have only late literary attestation were already developed in the time of Christ. We must remember that Judaism did not live in an intellectual vacuum, but in an atmosphere saturated with Christian germs. Especially, we cannot forget that controversy went on between Jews and Christians; and under its pressure it is by no means unreasonable to believe that Judaism may have undergone a considerable modification, above all, in the elimination of matter which proved susceptible to criticism. In the light of these principles the present writer has no hesitation in regarding the statement in St. Mark as good evidence for the existence of the practice of Corban in the time of Christ.

4. The next question touches Christs relation to the Temple. His personal attitude towards it was that of a loyal Jew. Not only did He as a boy of twelve years recognize it as His Fathers house (Luk 2:49), but, after He had entered on His ministry, He cleansed it by driving out the money-changers, and overturning the stalls of the traders (Mat 21:12 ff. ||). According to the Fourth Gospel, His visits to Jerusalem were largely connected with the feasts. In His Sermon on the Mount He assumes that His disciples will offer sacrifice, and only requires that, before he offers, a man shall be reconciled to his brother (Mat 5:23 f.). In His great indictment of the scribes and Pharisees He rebukes them for their ruling that an oath by the temple or by the altar counts for nothing, while an oath by the gold of the temple, or a gift at the altar, is binding. The temple is greater than its gold, and makes it holy; and similarly it is by the altar that the gift is sanctified. To swear by the altar is to swear not only by it, but by the offering placed upon it; while to swear by the temple is to swear not only by it and all that it contains, but by Him who dwells therein (Mat 23:16 ff. ||). But all this loyal recognition of the place filled by the temple and the honour due to it was combined with an inward detachment from it, which was a presage of the ultimate deliverance of Christianity from its connexion with it. This comes out very clearly in the story of the stater in the fishs mouth (Mat 17:24 ff.). The very doubt which was implied in the question whether Jesus paid the half-shekel which was levied as a temple-tax is most significant as to the drift towards freedom, which was already detected in His teaching. That He had not repudiated the toll, Peter is aware; but the reason for His obedience comes out plainly in the conversation He has with Peter on the subject. Taxes are taken by monarchs not from their sons, but from strangers. Therefore, since Jesus knows that He and His disciples are not aliens to God, but His children, the inference is that no payment of the tax can be legitimately expected from the children of the Kingdom. Jesus, however, bids Peter pay the tax for both, to avoid giving offence. In other words, Jesus regarded Himself and members of His Kingdom as released from every obligation to pay the half-shekel for the service of the temple, even if, in tender concession to the feelings of others, they did not avail themselves of their liberty. The temple-due in question was not definitely commanded in the Law, though it was a not unnatural deduction from Exo 30:13, which was itself a development of the rule of Nehemiah that there should be an annual payment of a third of a shekel for the temple service (Neh 10:32-33). The temple itself, Christ predicted, would be destroyed. However we may explain the saying, Destroy this temple, and I will build it up in three days (Joh 2:19), He certainly foretold in His eschatological discourse (Mat 24:2) the overthrow of the literal temple, and therewith naturally the cessation of the Jewish cultus.

It is not improbable that the saying, Destroy this temple, should be similarly interpreted. The authenticity of the utterance is guaranteed by the use made of it in the trial of Jesus (Mar 14:58), and the similar accusation at the trial of Stephen (Act 6:14), as well as the taunt addressed to Jesus on the cross (Mar 15:29). It is true that the author of the Fourth Gospel interprets the saying as a reference to the body of Christ, fulfilled in the death and the resurrection. But this interpretation did not at the time occur either to the Jews or to the disciples. The retort of the former showed that they understood the reference to be to the literal temple, while the Evangelist expressly says that the interpretation he adopts occurred to the disciples only after the resurrection. It is, in fact, very difficult to believe that the saying referred to the death and resurrection of Jesus. In its connexion with the desecration and cleansing of the actual temple the allusion could naturally be nothing less than to its destruction, unless Jesus made His meaning clear by pointing to His body. But in that case the misunderstanding on the part of the Jews and the disciples would have been impossible, even if we leave aside the objection that so unveiled an allusion to His death and resurrection at this early period is most unlikely. Moreover, the contrast with the temple made with hands (Mar 14:58) does not at all suit the human body. A difficulty, however, is raised by the Johannine version of the saying. We may, perhaps, assume that the latter is to be preferred to the version of the witnesses at the trial, in that it refers the work of destruction not to Jesus Himself, but to the Jews. Their present course of desecration, if they persist in it, will lead to the destruction of the temple. But it is not easy to believe that Jesus can have said that He would rebuild the temple that had been destroyed. Here the version of the witnesses is intrinsically the more credible, that He would build another temple in its place. And the contrast between the temple made with hands and the temple made without hands bears also the stamp of authenticity; the new is not simply to be a reproduction of the old, it is to be not a material, but a spiritual, structure. We may therefore conclude with some confidence that Jesus definitely anticipated the destruction of the centre of Jewish worship and the substitution of a spiritual temple in its place.

In the conversation with the woman of Samaria (John 4), Jesus is represented as dealing specifically with the question of the legitimate sanctuary as against the Samaritan temple (Joh 4:20-24). He gives His verdict in favour of the temple at Jerusalem, but He asserts that the hour has already come for both sanctuaries to lose whatever exclusive legitimacy they may possess. The true worship of God transcends all local limitations; for God is spirit, and as such cannot be localized; and the worship He desires is a worship in spirit and in truth. There is no reason whatever for supposing that here the Evangelist is putting his own doctrine into the mouth of Jesus. The pregnant aphoristic form and penetrating insight of the saying stamp it as authentic. Moreover, it is quite in the line of the other teachings of Jesus with reference to the temple. He recognizes that the temple is His Fathers house, and yet looks forward to its destruction; and similarly here He asserts the legitimacy of the Jewish as against the Samaritan temple, and yet looks forward to the speedy termination of worship in it.

5. It is certainly a very striking fact, in view of the immense importance attached in Judaism to the rite, that Jesus nowhere raises the question of the permanence of Circumcision. Had He pronounced upon it, the bitter controversy excited by the question in the primitive Church could hardly have arisen. But, naturally, occasion for discussing it did not so readily arise, and it was part of the method of Jesus to leave questions of practice to be settled by His disciples under the guidance of the Spirit and in the light of principles with which He had imbued them. There can be no reasonable doubt that St. Paul drew the true Christian inference. The great principle, that the external was unimportant in comparison with the inward, expressed in the abolition by Jesus of the Levitical laws as to unclean food, and in His doctrine that for worship in the material temple there was to be substituted worship in spirit and in truth, carried with it the conclusion that as a purely external rite circumcision could have no place in the religion of the spirit. Moreover, it was the sign of the Old Covenant; but Jesus knew that His blood consecrated a New Covenant. This implied the abolition of the Old Covenant, and naturally the abolition of circumcision, which was its sign. Indeed, the Old Testament itself was on the way to this, not simply in Jeremiahs prediction (Jer 31:31 ff.) of the New Covenant, but in the prophetic demand for a circumcision of the heart (Jer 4:4; Jer 9:26; cf. Eze 44:7, Lev 26:41). Here, as elsewhere, the attitude of Jesus linked itself closely to that previously taken by the prophets. Nor must we forget that Jesus contemplated that His religion would become universal. This in itself suggested the abolition of a rite which possessed no spiritual value, and was at the same time an almost insuperable barrier to the wide acceptance among the cultured of a religion that required it for full membership. See, further, art. Circumcision.

6. We have left till the last the much-debated passage Mat 5:17-20, since it is helpful in our interpretation of it to have before us the application of the principle in detail. The opening words of the passage, Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets, show clearly that Jesus was conscious that His teaching might not unjustifiably seem to carry this implication with it. There was an element which suggested a revolutionary attitude, but it was a mistaken inference that He meant to destroy the Law or the Prophets; it was His intention to fulfil them. It is important to observe here and elsewhere the way in which Jesus combines the Prophets with the Law. Unlike the current theology of His time, His teaching brought the Prophets into equal prominence with the Law; and it is of the OT system as a whole that He is thinking, and not simply of the legal enactments which constituted for the Rabbis almost the whole of religion. Yet it would be a mistake to infer that the Levitical requirements are here left out of sight. It is true that both the Rabbis and Jesus recognized degrees of importance among the laws, though their emphasis was very differently placed. Yet the Levitical laws were equally with others regarded by Jesus as laws of God, so that, in a comprehensive statement of the relation of His teaching to the religion of the OT, He could not leave them out of account. Now, we have already seen that the teaching of Jesus came into conflict not simply with the Tradition of the Elders, but with the Levitical laws of purity; that He explicitly abolished the laws of clean and unclean food, and looked forward to the cessation of the temple worship. Accordingly, we must give such a sense to His words as will harmonize the explanation of His intention not to destroy the Law with the fact that He did abolish some of its precepts, and contemplate the impossibility, through the destruction of the temple, of a large part of its injunctions. The unifying conception is contained in the word fulfil (). Jesus does not mean that He came to render a perfect obedience to the Law and the Prophets in His own life. The fulfilment forms an antithesis to the destruction. The destruction was such as would be accomplished by His teaching, not by His action, and similarly the fulfilment is something effected by His teaching. Besides, it is very difficult to believe that with the freedom of His principles, Jesus should have attached any importance to the perfect carrying out in action of the Law and the Prophets. What is meant is that, to use a familiar illustration, the gospel fulfils the Law as the flower fulfils the bud. Jesus sees in the Law a Divinely ordained system, but He is conscious that it is stamped with immaturity and defect. His function is to bring out its intrinsic significance by disengaging and carrying to perfection the principles entangled in it. Thus He does not abrogate the Law, but He transcends it, and, in doing so, antiquates it. In Beyschlags words, it is confirmed and transformed in one breath. What this means is admirably explained by Stevens in the following words: Jesus fulfils the OT system by rounding out into entire completeness what is incomplete in that system. In this process of fulfilment all that is imperfect, provisional, temporary, or, for any reason, needless to the perfect religion, falls away of its own accord, and all that is essential and permanent is conserved and embodied in Christianity (The Theology of the New Testament, p. 19).

The two following verses (Mat 5:18-19) create much difficulty. They seem to assert a permanence of the Law and its minutest details, and to affirm the insignificant place assigned in the Kingdom to any who should set aside one of the minor commandments. In view of the attitude adopted by Jesus towards the law of uncleanness, the Sabbath, and divorce, it is not surprising that doubts have been expressed as to the genuineness of the saying. It is out of the question to argue with Wendt that the law is not a written law but an ideal law, for the reference to the jot and tittle implies a written law, and there is nothing to indicate that the law is used here in two different senses. Beyschlag argues for the genuineness of the saying, which is also attested by Luk 16:17 It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fail. If it is genuine, the best explanation is that given by Beyschlag, that we must explain here of spiritual fulfilments. No commandment, even the most trifling, is a mere empty husk; each has a Divine thought which must come to its rights before the husk of the letter is allowed to perish (NT Theol. i. 110 f.). It is, however, very difficult to believe that this interpretation is correct, inasmuch as it would be hard to understand what Divine idea Jesus could think was latent in innumerable trifling details of the Law. The immediate impression made by the words is surely that the Law, to its minutest details, was to be regarded as permanent. When we remember how bitter was the controversy created by the question of the Law in the Early Church, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that here we have an expression from a Jewish-Christian point of view, according to which Jesus is made explicitly to disavow the movement led by St. Paul, not indeed that St. Paul is regarded as outside the Kingdom, but as one of the least in it. It would, however, be perhaps too far-fetched to connect the words least in the kingdom of heaven with St. Pauls designation of himself as the least of the apostles.

Literature.The subject is discussed in the New Testament Theologies, the treatises on the Teaching of Jesus, and in the Lives of Christ and the commentaries. A very able monograph by R. Mackintosh, Christ and the Jewish Law, is devoted to the subject. Other works that may be mentioned are: Schrer, Die Predigt Jesu in ihrem Verhltniss zum alten Testament und zum Judenthum (1882); Bousset, Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum (1892); Jacob, Jesu Stellung zum mosaischen Gesetz (1893); also the section Christus und das mosaische Gesetz in Ritschls Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] (1857); cf. also Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible iii. 7376, and Extra Vol. p. 22 ff.

See also following article (Law of God).

A. S. Peake.

Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels

Law

LAW (IN OT).1. That the law was given by Moses (Joh 1:17) represents the unanimous belief both of the early Christians and of the Chosen Nation. He was their first as well as their greatest law-giver; and in this matter religious tradition is supported by all the historical probabilities of the case. The Exodus and the subsequent wanderings constitute the formative epoch of Israels career: it was the period of combination and adjustment between the various tribes towards effecting a national unity. Such periods necessitate social experiments, for no society can hold together without some basis of permanent security; no nation could be welded together, least of all a nation in ancient times, without some strong sense of corporate responsibilities and corporate religion. It therefore naturally devolved upon Moses to establish a central authority for the administration of justice, which should be universally accessible and universally recognized. There was only one method by which any such universal recognition could be attained; and that was by placing the legal and judicial system upon the basis of an appeal to that religion, which had already been successful in rousing the twelve tribes to a sense of their unity, and which, moreover, was the one force which could and did effectually prevent the disintegration of the heterogeneous elements of which the nation was composed.

2. We see the beginning and character of these legislative functions in Exo 18:16, where Moses explains how the people come unto me to inquire of God: when they have a matter they come unto me; and I judge between a man and his neighbour, and make them know the statutes of God, and his laws (trth). Originally trah (the usual word in the OT for law) meant, as in this passage, oral instruction or direction. This kind of trah survived for long in Israel. It was a method strictly practical and in precise conformity with the genius and requirements of primitive nations, W. R. Smith (OTJC [Note: TJC The Old Test. in the Jewish Church.] 2 339). Cases of exceptional difficulty were brought to the sanctuary, and the decisions there given were accepted as emanating from the Divine Judge of Israel (cf. 1Sa 2:25; and, for the use of Elohim to signify the judges speaking in Jehovahs name, cf. Exo 21:6; Exo 22:7). The cases thus brought before God may be divided into three classes, as they dealt respectively with (1) matters of moral obligation, (2) civil suits, (3) ritual difficulties. We read that Moses found it necessary to devolve some of this administrative work upon various elders, whom he associated with himself in the capacity of law-givers.

In this connexion it is important to remember that

(a) These decisions were orally given. (b) Although binding only on the parties concerned, and in their case only so far as they chose to submit to the ruling of the judge, or as the latter could enforce his authority, yet with the increasing power of the executive government such decisions soon acquired the force of consuetudinary law for a wider circle, until they affected the whole nation. (c) Such oral direction in no sense excludes the idea of any previous laws, or even of a written code. The task of the judges was not so much to create as to interpret. The existence and authority of a law would still leave room for doubt in matters of individual application, (d) As social life became more complex, the three divisions of the trah became more specialized; civil suits were tried by the judge; the prophets almost confined themselves to giving oral direction on moral duties; the priests were concerned mainly with the solution of ritual difficulties. Cf. Justice (II.).

Here, then, we can trace the character of Hebrew legislation in its earliest stages. Law (trah) means oral direction, gradually crystallizing into consuetudinary law, which, so far from excluding, may almost be said to demand, the idea of a definite code as the basis of its interpretative function. Finally, when these directions were classified and reduced to writing (cf. Hos 8:12), trah came to signify such a collection; and ultimately the same word was used as a convenient and comprehensive term for the whole Pentateuch, in which all the most important legal collections were carefully included.

3. The trah of the Prophets was moral, not ceremonial. The priests, while by their office necessarily much engaged in ceremonial and ritual actions, nevertheless had boundless opportunities for giving the worshippers true direction on the principles underlying their religions observances; and it is for their neglect of such opportunities, and not, as is often crudely maintained, on account of any inherently necessary antagonism between priestly and prophetical ideals, that the prophets so frequently rebuke the priests,not because of the fulfilment of their priestly (i.e. ceremonial) duties, but because of the non-fulfilment of their prophetical (i.e. moral) opportunities. For the priests claimed Divine sanction for their worship, and tradition ascribed the origin of all priestly institutions to Mosaic (or Aaronic) authorship. This the prophets do not deny; but they do deny that the distinctive feature of the Sinaitic legislation lay in anything but its moral excellence. In this connexion the words of Jeremiah cannot be quoted too often: I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices; but this thing I commanded them, sayingHear my voice, and walk ye in the way that I command you (Jer 7:21-22). The correct interpretation of Amo 5:24-26 corroborates Jeremiahs contention. It is wholly unwarrantable to say that the prophets condemned the sacrificial system, or denied its worth and Divine sanction; but, on the other hand, we are justified in asserting that the trah of Jehovah, the law of the Lord, meant to the prophets something wholly different from the punctilious observance of traditional ceremonies; and what is more, they appeal without fear of contradiction to the contents of the Mosaic legislation as completely establishing their conviction that it was in the sphere of morality, rather than in the organizing of worship, that the essence of Jehovahs law was to be found.

4. With this test (as well as with the considerations proposed in 1) the character of the Decalogue is found to be in complete agreement. Its Mosaic origin has indeed been questioned, on the ground that such an ethical standard is wholly at variance with the essentially ritualistic character of primitive religions. To this it may be replied: we cannot call the prophets as witnesses for the truth of two mutually contradictory propositions. Having already cited the prophets in disproof of the Mosaic authorship of the Levitical legislation, on the ground that the latter is essentially ritualistic (and therefore does not correspond to the prophets view of the Law of Moses), it is monstrously unfair to deny the Sinaitic origin of what is left in conformity with the prophetical standard, on the ground that it ought to be essentially ritualistic also, and is not. We have rightly had our attention called to the witness of the prophets. But the weight of their evidence against the early elaboration of the ceremonial law is exactly proportioned to the weight attached to their evidence for the existence and authenticity of the moral code.

A more serious difficulty, however, arises from the fact that we have apparently three accounts of the Decalogue, exhibiting positively astounding divergences (Exo 20:1-26, Deu 5:1-33, and Exo 34:1-35). The differences between Exo 20:1-26 and Deu 5:1-33 are not hard to explain, as the Ten Words themselves are in each case identical, and it is only in the explanatory comments that the differences are marked. Stylistic peculiarities, as well as other considerations, seem to show that these latter are subsequent editorial additions, and that originally the Decalogue contained no more than the actual commandments, without note or explanation. It is, however, most instructive to observe that no theory of inspiration or literary scruples prevented the editors from incorporating into their account of the Ten Words of God to Moses, the basis of all Hebrew legislation, such comments and exhortations as they considered suitable to the needs of their own times. The difficulty with regard to Exo 34:1-35, where a wholly different set of laws seems to be called The Ten Words, has not been solved. Hypotheses of textual displacement abound (cf. OTJC [Note: TJC The Old Test. in the Jewish Church.] 2 336), others confidently assert that the author manifestly intends to allude to the Decalogue (Driver, LOT [Note: OT Introd. to the Literature of the Old Testament.] 6 39), while some scholars have suggested, with much force and ingenuity, that we have in Exo 20:1-26; Exo 21:1-36; Exo 22:1-31; Exo 23:1-33; Exo 34:1-35 a series of abbreviations, re-arrangements, and expansions of ten groups of ten laws each. No final solution has yet been reached; but we may hold with confidence that the traditional account of the Decalogue is correct, and that the Ten Commandments in their original and shorter form were promulgated by Moses himself. On this basis the law of Israel rests, and in the Pentateuch we can distinguish the attempts made from time to time to apply their principles to the life of the people.

5. The Book of the Covenant (Exo 20:22 to Exo 23:33) is a collection of words and judgments arising out of the needs of a very simple community. The frequent mention of the ox, the ass, and the sheep proves that this code of law was designed for an agricultural people. The state of civilization may be inferred from the fact that the principles of civil and criminal justice are all comprehended under the two heads of retaliation and pecuniary compensation (cf. OTJC [Note: TJC The Old Test. in the Jewish Church.] 2 340). Religious institutions also are in an undeveloped and archaic stage. The laws, however, recognize, and even insist upon, the claims of humanity and justice. It is possible that the original code may have been promulgated at Sinai; but if so, it has received considerable expansions to suit the agricultural requirements, which first became part of Israels daily life in the early years of the occupation of Canaan.

6. The Law of Deuteronomy shows a civilization far in advance of that contemplated in the preceding code. Life is more complex; and religious problems unknown to an earlier generation demand and receive full treatment. It is not difficult to fix its approximate date. In the year b.c. 621, king Josiah inaugurated a national reformation resulting from the discovery of a Book of the Law in the Temple. All the evidence points to this book being practically identical with Deuteronomy; all the reforms which Josiah inaugurated were based upon laws practically indistinguishable from those we now possess in the Deuteronomic Code; in fact, no conclusion of historical or literary criticism has been reached more nearly approaching to absolute certainty than that the Book of the Law brought to light in 621 was none other than the fifth book of the Pentateuch.

But was it written by Moses?(i.) The book itself nowhere makes such a claim, (ii.) The historical situation (suiting the times of the later monarchy) is not merely anticipated, but actually presupposed, (iii.) The linguistic evidence points to a long development of the art of public oratory. (iv.) The religious standpoint is that of, e.g., Jeremiah rather than Isaiah. (v.) Some of its chief provisions appear to have been entirely unknown before 600; even the most fervid champions of prophetism before that date seem to have systematically violated the central law of the one sanctuary, (vi.) While subsequent writers show abundant traces of Deuteronomic influence, we search in vain for any such traces in earlier literature. On the contrary, Deut. is itself seen to be an attempt to realize in a legal code those great principles which had been so emphatically enunciated by Hosea and Isaiah.

The laws of Deuteronomy are, however, in many instances much earlier than the 7th century. The Book of the Covenant supplies much of the groundwork; and the antiquity of others is independently attested. It is not so much the substance (with perhaps the exception of (a) below) as the expansions and explanations that are new. A law-book must be kept up to date if it is to have any practical value, and in Deuteronomy we have a prophetic re-formulation and adaptation to new needs of an older legislation (LOT [Note: OT Introd. to the Literature of the Old Testament.] 6 91).

The main characteristics of Deut. are to be found in

(a) The Law of the one Sanctuary, which aimed at the total extinction of the worship of the high places. By confining the central act of worship, i.e. the rite of sacrifice, to Jerusalem, this law certainly had put an end to the syncretistic tendencies which constituted a perpetual danger to Israelitish religion; but while establishing monotheism, it also somewhat impoverished the free religious life of the common people, who had aforetime learned at all times and in all places to do sacrifice and hold communion with their God.

(b) The wonderful humanity which is so striking a feature of these laws. The religion of Jehovah is not confined to worship, but is to be manifested in daily life: and as Gods love is the great outstanding fact in Israels history, so the true Israelite must show love for God, whom he has not seen, by loving his neighbour, whom he has seen. Even the animals are to be treated with consideration and kindness.

(c) The evangelical fervour with which the claims of Jehovah upon Israels devotion are urged. He is so utterly different from the dead heathen divinities. He is a living, loving God, who cannot be satisfied with anything less than the undivided heart-service of His children.

It is not surprising that Deuteronomy should have been especially dear to our Lord (cf. Mat 4:1-25), or that He should have proclaimed its highest word as the first law no longer for Judah, but for the world (Mat 12:28-30, Deu 6:4-5) [Carpenter, quoted by Driver, Deut. p. xxxiv.].

7. The Law of Holiness (Lev 17:1-16; Lev 18:1-30; Lev 19:1-37; Lev 20:1-27; Lev 21:1-24; Lev 22:1-33; Lev 23:1-44; Lev 24:1-23; Lev 25:1-55; Lev 26:1-46) is a short collection of laws embedded in Leviticus. The precepts of this code deal mainly with moral and ceremonial matters, and hardly touch questions of civil and criminal law. We should notice especially the prominence of agricultural allusions, the multiplication of ritual regulations, the conception of sin as impurity, and, again, the predominance of humanitarian principles.

8. The Priestly Code, comprising the concluding chapters of Exodus, the whole of Leviticus, and other portions of the Hexateuch, probably represents a determined attempt to give practical effect to the teaching of Ezekiel. We may approximately fix its date by observing that some of its fundamental institututions are unknown to, and even contradicted by, the Deuteronomic legislation. On the other hand, the influence of Ezekiel is prominent. The Priestly editor, or school, lays special stress on the ceremonial institutions of Israelite worship. We must not, however, conclude that they are therefore all post-exilic. On the contrary, the origin of a great number is demonstrably of high antiquity; but their elaboration is of a far more modern date. It is sometimes customary to sneer at the Priestly Code as a mass of Levitical deterioration. It would be as justifiable to quote the rubrics of the Prayer Book as a fair representation of the moral teaching of the Church of England. As a matter of fact, P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] does not profess to supplant, or even to supplement, all other laws. The editor has simply collected the details of ceremonial legislation, and the rubrics of Temple worship, with some account of their origin and purpose. In later history, the expression of Israels religion through Temple services acquired an increased significance. If the national life and faith were to be preserved, it was absolutely essential that the ceremonial law should be developed in order to mark the distinctive features of the Jewish creed. It is argued that such a policy is in direct contradiction to the universalistic teaching of the earlier prophets. That may be so, but cosmopolitanism at this stage would have meant not the diffusion but the destruction of Jewish religion. It was only by emphasizing their national peculiarities that they were able to concentrate their attention, and consequently to retain a firm hold, upon their distinctive truths. Ezekiels ideal city was named Jehovah is there (Eze 48:35). P [Note: Priestly Narrative.] seeks to realize this ideal. All the laws, all the ceremonies, are intended to stamp this conviction indelibly upon Israels imagination, Jehovah is there. Therefore the sense of sin must be deepened, that sin may be removed: therefore the need of purification must be constantly proclaimed, that the corrupting and disintegrating influences of surrounding heathenism may not prevail against the remnant of the holy people: therefore the ideal of national holiness must be sacramentally symbolized, and, through the symbol, actually attained.

9. It must be plain that such stress on ritual enactments inevitably facilitated the growth of formalism and hypocrisy. We know that in our Lords time the weightier matters of the law were systematically neglected, while the tithing of mint, anise, and cummin, together with similar subtleties and refinements, occupied the attention of the lawyer and exhausted the energies of the zealous. But our Lord did not abrogate the law either in its ceremonial or in its moral injunctions. He came to fulfil it, that is, to fill it full, to give the substance, where the law was only a shadow of good things to come. He declared that not one jot or tittle should pass away till all things were accomplished; that is to say, until the end for which the law had been ordained should be reached. It took people some time to see that by His Incarnation and the foundation of the Christian Church that end had been gained; and that by His fulfilment He had made the law of none effectnot merely abrogating distinctions between meats, but transferring mans whole relation to God into another region than that of law.

10. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The impossibility of ever fulfilling its multitudinous requirements had filled the more earnest with despair. There it remained confronting the sinner with his sin; but its pitiless Thou shalt and Thou shalt not gave him no comfort and no power of resistance. The law was as cold and hard as the tables on which it was inscribed. It taught the meaning of sin, but gave no help as to how sin was to be overcome. The sacrificial system attempted to supply the want; but it was plain that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin. In desperation the law-convicted sinner looked for a Saviour to deliver him from this body of death, and that Saviour he found in Christ. The law had been his pedagogue, and had brought him to the Master from whom he could receive that help and grace it had been powerless to bestow. But Christianity not merely gave power; it altered mans whole outlook on the world. The Jews lived under the law: they were the unwilling subjects of an inexorable despotism; the law was excellent in itself, but to them it remained something external; obedience was not far removed from bondage and fear. The prophets realized the inadequacy of this legal system: it was no real appeal to mans highest nature; it did not spring from the mans own heart; and so they prophesied of the New Covenant when Jehovahs laws should be written in the heart, and His sin-forgiving grace should remove all elements of servile fear (cf. esp. Jer 31:31-34); but it was only the hard discipline of the law that made them realize the necessity and superiority of a more spiritual covenant between man and his God.

11. A word may be said about the giving of the law. Whatever physical disturbances may have accompanied its original proclamation, it is not upon such natural phenomena that its claims to the homage of mankind are based. It is, in a manner, far more miraculous that God should at that early age, among those half-civilized tribes, have written these laws by His spirit on mans conscience and understanding, than that amid thunder and flame He should have inscribed them with His own fingers upon two tables of stone. The Old Testament itself teaches us that we may look in vain for God among the most orthodox manifestations of a thenphany, and yet hear Him speaking in the still, small voice. Miracle is not the essence of Gods revelation to us, though it may accompany and authenticate His message. The law stands because the Saviour, in laying down for us the correct lines of its interpretation has sealed it with the stamp of Divine approval, but also because the conscience and reason of mankind have recognized in its simplicity and comprehensiveness a sublime exposition of mans duty to his God and to his neighbour; because by manifestation of the truth it has commended itself to every mans conscience in the sight of God (cf. 2Co 4:2).

Ernest Arthur Enghill.

LAW (IN NT).This subject will be treated as follows: (1) the relation of Jesus Christ to the OT Law; (2) the doctrine of law in St. Pauls Epistles; (3) the complementary teaching of Hebrews; (4) the attitude of St. James representing primitive Jewish Christianity.

1. Our Lord stated His position in the saying of Mat 5:17 : I did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil. The expression covers the whole contents of Divine Scripture (sometimes, for brevity, spoken of simply as the law; see Joh 10:34; Joh 12:34; Joh 15:25), which He does not mean to invalidate in the least (Mat 5:18), as the novelty of His teaching led some to suppose (see Mat 7:28 f.), but will vindicate and complete. But His fulfilment was that of the Master, who knows the inner mind and real intent of the Scripture He expounds. It was not the fulfilment of one who rehearses a prescribed lesson or tracks out a path marked for him by predecessors, but the crowning of an edifice already founded, the carrying forward to their issue of the lines projected in Israelite revelation, the fulfilment of the blade and ear in the full corn. Jesus penetrated the shell to reach the kernel of OT representations; and He regarded HimselfHis Person, sacrifice, salvation, Kingdomas the focus of manifold previous revelations (see Luk 4:17-21; Luk 16:16; Luk 24:27, Joh 1:17; Joh 6:45). The warning of Mat 5:17-20 was aimed at the Jewish legists, who dissolved the authority of the law, while jealously guarding its letter, by casuistical comments and smothering traditions, who put light and grave on a like footing, and blunted the sharpness of Gods commands in favour of mans corrupt inclinations. The Corban formula, exposed in Mar 7:7-13, was a notorious instance of the Rabbinical quibbling that our Lord denounced. It is a severer not a laxer ethics that Jesus introduces, a searching in place of a superficial discipline; Your righteousness, He says, must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.

Our Lords fulfilment of the lawi.e. in the stricter sense, the body of Mosaic statutes regulating Israelite life and worshipincluded (a) the personal and free submission to it, due to His birth and circumcision as a son of Israel (Gal 4:4; cf. Mat 3:15; Mat 8:4; Mat 15:24; Mat 17:27, Luk 2:21 ff.).

His fulfilment included (b) the development of its unrecognized or partially disclosed principles. Thus Jesus asserted, in accordance with views already advanced among the scribes, that the whole law and the prophets hang on the two commandments of love to God and to our neighbour (Mat 22:34-40, Luk 10:25-37)the parable of the Good Samaritan gives to the second command an unprecedented scope. His distinction between the weightier matters of justice, mercy, fidelity, and the lighter of tithes and washings, was calculated to revolutionize current Judaism.

(c) A large part of the Sermon on the Mount (Mat 5:21-48) is devoted to clearing the law from erroneous glosses and false applications: on each point Jesus sets His I say unto you against what was said to the ancientsmere antiquity goes for nothing; nor is He careful to distinguish here between the text of the written law and its traditional modifications. With each correction the law in His hands grows morestringent; its observance is made a matter of inoer disposition, of intrinsic loyalty, not of formal conduct; the criterion applied to all law-keeping is that it shall proceed out of the heart.

(d) Further, our Lords fulfilment of the law necessitated the abrogation of temporary and defective statutes. In such instances the letter of the old precept stood only till it should be translated into a worthier form and raised to a higher potency (Mat 5:18), by the sweeping away of limiting exceptions (as with the compromise in the matter of wedlock allowed to the hard-heartedness of Israelites, Mat 19:3-9), or by the translation of the symbolic into the spiritual, as when cleansing of hands and vessels is displaced by inner purification (Mar 7:14-23, Luk 11:37-41; cf. Col 2:18 f., Heb 9:9 f.). Our Lords reformation of the marriage law is also a case for (b) above: He rectifies the law by the aid of the law; in mans creation He finds a principle which nullifies the provisions that facilitated divorce. The abolition of the distinction of meats (Mar 7:19), making a rift in Jewish daily habits and in the whole Levitical scheme of life, is the one instance in which Jesus laid down what seemed to be a new principle of ethics. The maxim that what enters into the man from without cannot defile, but only the things that issue out of the man, was of far-reaching application, and supplied afterwards the charter of Gentile Christianity. Its underlying principle was, however, implicit in OT teaching, and belonged to the essence of the doctrine of Jesus. He could not consistently vindicate heart-religion without combating Judaism in the matter of its ablutions and food-regulations and Sabbath-keeping.

(e) Over the last question Jesus came into the severest-conflict with Jewish orthodoxy; and in this struggle He revealed the consciousness, latent throughout His dealings with OT legislation, of being the sovereign, and not a subject like others, in this realm. Our Lord fulfilled the law by sealing it with His own final authority. His I say unto you, spoken in a tone never assumed by Moses or the prophets, implied so much and was so understood by His Apostles (1Co 7:10, Gal 6:2, 1Jn 2:3 f. etc.). Christ arrogates the rle of a son over his house, whereas Moses was a servant in the house (Heb 3:5 f.). Assuming to be greater than Solomon, than Abraham, than the temple (Mat 12:6; Mat 12:42, Joh 8:53), He acted as one greater than Moses! The Sabbath-law was the chosen battle-ground between Him and the established masters in Israel (Mar 2:23-28; Mar 3:2 ff., Luk 13:16-17, Joh 5:9-16). In the public Sabbath assemblies Jesus was oftenest confronted with cases of disease and demoniacal possession; He must do His work as Gods sent physician. The Sabbath-rules were clear and familiar; His infraction of them in acts of healing was flagrant, repeated, defiant; popular reverence for the day made accusations on this count particularly dangerous. Men were placed in a dilemma: the Sabbath-breaker is ipso facto a sinner; on the other hand, how can a sinner do such signs? (Joh 9:16; Joh 9:24 ff.). Jesus argues the matter on legal grounds, showing from recognized practice that the 4th Commandment must be construed with common sense, and that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day and to work in the service of God (Mat 12:5; Mat 12:11 f.). He goes behind those examples to the governing principle (see (b) above), that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath (Mar 2:27 f.): the institution is designed for human benefit, and its usages should he determined by its object. But He is not content with saving this: the war against Him was driven on the Sabbath-question outrance; Jesus draws the sword of His reserved authority. He claims, as sovereign in human affairs, to decide what is right in the matterThe Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath; more than this, He professes to have wrought His Sabbath works as God the Father does, to whom all days are alike in His beneficence, and through the insight of a Son watching the Father at His labour (Joh 5:17-20)a pretension, to Jewish ears, of blasphemous arrogance: He maketh himself equal with God! On this ground Jesus was condemned by the Sanhedrin (cf. Joh 19:7), because He set Himself above the Sabbath, on the strength of being one with God. Thus the law of Moses put Jesus Christ to death; it was too small to hold Him; its administrators thought themselves bound to inflict the capital sentence on One who said, I am the Son of the Blessed (Mar 14:61 ff.).

(f) At the same time, Caiaphas, the official head of the system, gave another explanation, far deeper than he guessed, of the execution: That Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only (Joh 11:49 ff.). Virtually, He was offering Himself for the lamb of the Paschal Feast, ready to be slain in sacrifice, that He might take away the sin of the world. This mysterious relation of the death of Jesus to Divine law He had hinted at here and there (Mat 20:28; Mat 26:28, Luk 22:37, Joh 3:14; Joh 6:51; Joh 12:24); its exposition was reserved for His Apostles speaking in the light of this grandest of all fulfilments. Jesus made good the implicit promise of the sacrificial institutions of Israel.

2. The word law occurs 118 times in St. Pauls Epistles,103 times in Romans and Galatians alone. It is manifest how absorbing an interest the subject had for this Apostle, and where that interest mainly lay. Gal 2:19 puts us at the centre of St. Pauls position: I through law died to law, that I might live to God. From legalism, as from a house of bondage, he had escaped into the freedom of the sons of God. (a) Paul died to the law, as he had understood and served it when a Pharisee, regarding obedience to its precepts as the sole ground of acceptance with God. He had sought there a righteousness of his own, even that which is of the law (Php 3:9), to be gained by works, by which he strove to merit salvation as a debt due from God for service rendered,a righteousness such as its possessor could boast of, as his own (Rom 4:1-5; Rom 9:31 to Rom 10:3). Pursuing this path, Israel had failed to win the righteousness of God, such as is valid before God; the method was impracticablejustification on the terms of the law of Moses is unattainable (Act 13:38 f., Rom 8:3). Instead of destroying sin, the law arouses it to new vigour, multiplying where it aimed at suppressing the trespass (Rom 5:20; Rom 7:7-13, 1Co 15:56). Not the law in itself, but the carnal sin-bound nature of the man, is to blame for this; arrayed against the law of God, to which reason bows, is another law successfully oppugning it, that of sin which occupies my members (Rom 7:12-23), and which is, in effect, a law of death (Rom 8:2).

(b) But St. Pauls Judaistic experience had a positive as well as a negative result: if he died to law, it was through law; the law has proved our pdagogus [for leading us] to Christ (Gal 3:24). Law awakened conscience and disciplined the moral faculties; the Jewish people were like an heir placed under guardians and stewards until the appointed times, and trained in bond-service with a view to their adoption (Gal 4:1-5). Even the aggravations of sin caused by the law had their benefit, as they brought the disease to a head and reduced the patient to a state in which he was ready to accept the proffered remedy (Rom 7:24). The Scripture had in this way shut up all things under sin, blocking every door of escape and blighting every hope of a self-earned righteousness (Gal 3:21 f.), that the sinner might accept unconditionally the righteousness which is through faith in Christ (Php 3:9).

(c) Contact with Gentile life had widened St. Pauls conception of moral law; it was touched by the influences of Greek philosophy and Roman government. He discerned a law established by nature, and inscribed in the hearts of men ignorant of the Mosaic Code and counting with Jews as lawless. This Divine jus (and fas) gentium served, in a less distinct but very real sense, the purpose of the written law in Israel; it impressed on the heathen moral responsibility and the consciousness of sin (Rom 2:6-16). The rule of right and wrong Paul regards as a universal human institute, operating so as to bring the whole world under judgment before God (Rom 3:9-19); its action is manifested by the universal incidence of death: in this sense, and in the light of Rom 2:12-16, should be read the obscure parenthesis of Rom 5:13 f., as stating that law is concomitant with sin; the existence of sin, followed by death, in the generations between Adam and Moses proves that law was there all along, whether in a less or a more explicit form; the connexion of sin and death in humanity is, in fact, a fundamental legal principle (Rom 8:2).

(d) Having died to law by renouncing the futile salvation it appeared to offer, the Apostle had learned to live to it again in a better way and under a nobler form, since he had begun to live to God in Christ. St. Paul is at the farthest remove from Antinomianism; the charge made against him on this score was wholly mistaken. While no longer under law, he is not lawless toward God, but in law toward Christ (Rom 6:14 f., 1Co 9:21). The old ego, the flesh with its passions and lusts, has been crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20; Gal 5:16-24). Gods law ceases to press on him as an external power counteracted by the law of sin in the members; the latter has been expelled by the Spirit of Gods Son, which forms Christ in him; the new, Christian man is in law as he is in Christhe sees the law now from the inside, in its unity and charm, and it constrains him with the inward force of the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus possessing his nature. He serves indeed, but it is in the new life wrought of the Spirit, and not in the old servitude to the letter (Rom 7:6). Constituting now one new man, believers of every race and rank through love serve one another, as the hand serves the eye or the head the feet; for them the whole law is fulfilled in one word, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Rom 13:8-10, 1Co 12:13; 1Co 12:25 f., Gal 5:13 f., Eph 2:16-18). The Christian fulfils the law of Christ, as the limb the law of the head. Thus St. Pauls doctrine of the Law joins hands with that of Jesus (see 1 above). Thus also, in his system of thought, the law of God revealed in the OT, when received from Christ revised and spiritualized, and planted by faith along with Him in the believers heart (cf. Jer 31:31-34), becomes for the first time really valid and effective: Do we nullify law through faith? God forbid; nay, he cries, we establish law! (Rom 3:31).

(e) Neither Jesus nor Paul makes a formal distinction between the moral and the ceremonial law (see, however, Rom 9:4). St. Pauls teaching bears mainly on the former: as a Pharisee he had no ritualistic bent, and his ambition was for ethical perfection. Circumcision has lost in his eyes all religious value, and remains a mere national custom, now that it ceases to be the covenant-sign and is replaced in this sense by baptism (1Co 7:18 ff., Gal 6:16, Col 2:11 ff.). It becomes a snare to Gentiles when imposed on them as necessary to salvation, or even to advancement in the favour of God; for it binds them to keep the whole law of Moses, and leads into the fatal path of justification by law (Gal 2:2-5; Gal 3:2 ff; Gal 5:3-6). St. Pauls contention with the legalists of Jerusalem on this question was a life and death struggle, touching the very truth of the gospel and the freedom of the Church (Act 15:1-11, Gal 2:1-10; Gal 5:1). The same interests were threatened, more insidiously, by the subsequent attempt, countenanced by Peter and Barnabas at Antioch, to separate Jewish from Gentile Christians at table through the re-assertion of the Mosaic distinction of meats which had been expressly discarded by Jesus. The assumption of a privileged legal status within the Church meant the surrender of the whole principle of salvation by faith and of Christian saintship (Gal 2:11-21, Rom 14:17 f., 1Co 8:8; cf. Mar 7:14-28). In some Churches Paul had to deal with the inculcation of Jewish ritual from another point of view. At Coloss the dietary rules and sacred seasons of Mosaism were imposed on grounds of ascetic discipline, and of reverence towards angelic (scil. astral) powers; he pronounces them valueless in the former respect, and in the latter treasonous towards Christ, who supplies the body of which those prescriptions were but a shadow (Col 2:16-23).

3. Col 2:17 forms a link between the doctrine of St. Paul on the Law and the complementary teaching of the writer of Hebrews,a Jew of very different temperament and antecedents from Saul of Tarsus. This author emphasizes the ceremonial, as Paul the moral, factors of the OT; the Temple, not the synagogue, was for him the centre of Judaism. The first covenant, he says, had ordinances of divine service, providing for and guarding mans approach to God in worship (Heb 9:1 etc.); for St. Paul, it consisted chiefly of commandments expressed in ordinances (Eph 2:15), which prescribe the path of righteousness in daily life. The law means for this great Christian thinker the institutions of the Israelite priesthood, sanctuary, sacrificesall consummated in Christ and His one offering, by which he has perfected for ever them that are sanctified (Heb 9:1 to Heb 10:14). In his view, the law is superseded as the imperfect, provisional, and ineffective, by the perfect, permanent, and satisfying, as the shadowy outline by the full image of things Divine (Heb 7:18 f., Heb 8:1-4, Heb 10:1-4); the sanctuary of this world gives place to heaven itself, revealed as the temple where the great high priestDivine-human in person, sinless in nature, perfected in experience, and immeasurably superior to the Aaronic order (Heb 4:14 ff., Heb 7:26 ff.,)appears before the face of God for us, having entered through the virtue of his own blood as our surety and the mediator of our covenant, who has won for mankind an eternal redemption (Heb 2:9, Heb 7:22, Heb 8:8, Heb 9:24-28). Jesus thus inaugurated a new and living way into the holy place (in contrast with the old and dead way of the law); as experience proves, He has cleansed the conscience from dead works to serve the living God, while the law with its repeated animal sacrifices served to remind men of their sins rather than to remove them (Heb 7:25, Heb 9:14, Heb 10:1-4). Equally with St. Paul, the auctor ad Hebros regards remission of sins as the initial blessing of the Christian state, which had been unattainable under law, and the blood of Christ as the means of procuring this immense boon. In Pauls interpretation, this offering justifies the unrighteous before God and restores them to the forfeited status of sonship; in the interpretation of Hebrews, it cleanses worshippers and brings them nigh to God within His sanctuary; on either view, the sacrifice of Calvary removes the harriers set up, by mans sin under the law, between humanity and God.

4. For St. James also the OT law was transformed. He conceives the change in a less radical fashion than Paul or the writer of Hebrews; James stands sturdily on the platform of the Sermon on the Mount. Re-cast by the Lord of glory and charged with the wisdom that cometh from above, the law is new and glorified in his eyes; like Paul, he knows it as the law of Christ. All the disciples of Jesus were one in the place they gave to that which James calls the sovereign law, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Jam 2:8-13; cf. 1Co 13:1-13); deeds of pure brotherly love prove faith alive and genuine; they make it perfect, and guarantee the believers justification (ch. 2). When he describes this law as a perfect law, the law of liberty, James idea is substantially that of Paul in 1Co 9:21 and Rom 8:2; Rom 8:4, viz. that the law of God is no yoke compelling the Christian man from without, but a life actuating him from within; the believer bends over it in contemplation, till he grows one with it (Jam 1:24; cf. 2Co 3:18). The tongue is the index of the heart, and St. James regards its control as a sure sign of perfection in law-keeping (Jam 3:1-12). James treats of the law, not, like Paul, as it affects the sinners standing before God,nor, like the author of Hebrews, as it regulates his approach in worship,but as it governs the walk before God of the professed believer. His Epistle is, in effect, a comment on the last clause of Rom 8:4, that the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us.

5. The word law is entirely wanting in the Epistles of St. Peter and of St. John. 1Pe 1:18-19; 1Pe 2:24; 1Pe 3:18 manifest the influence of Pauls doctrine of salvation on the writer; while 1Jn 1:7; 1Jn 1:9, indicates a leaning to the mode of representation characteristic of Hebrews, and 1Jn 2:2; 1Jn 4:10 virtually sustain the doctrine of St. Paul on law, sin, and sacrifice.

G. G. Findlay.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Law

See Testimony.

Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures

Law

The subject of ‘law’ is not restricted in scripture to the law given by Moses. God gave a commandment (or law) to Adam, which made Adam’s subsequent sin to be transgression. Where there is no law there is no transgression (Rom 4:15), though there may be sin, as there was from Adam to Moses: “until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed [or put to account] when there is no law.” Rom 5:13. This doubtless signifies that specific acts were not put to account as a question of God’s governmental dealings, when there was no law forbidding them. Men sinned, and death reigned, though they “had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (Rom 5:14), for no definite law had been given to them. The nations that had not the law were however a law unto themselves, having some sense of good and evil, and their conscience bore witness accordingly. It is not a true definition of sin, to say that it is “the transgression of the law,” as in the A.V. of 1Jn 3:4. The passage should read “Sin is lawlessness:” that is, man doing his own will, defiant of restraint, and regardless of his Creator and of his neighbour.

‘Law’ may be considered as a principle in contrast to ‘grace,’ in which sense it occurs in the N.T., the word ‘law’ being often without the article (though the law of Moses may at times be alluded to in the same way). In this sense it raises the question of what man is for God, and hence involves works. “The doers of [the] law shall be justified,” Rom 2:13; but if, on the other hand, salvation be “by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.” Rom 11:6. The conclusion is that “by the deeds of [the] law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight.” None can be saved on that principle. In opposition to it “the righteousness of God without [the] law is manifested.” The believer is “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Rom 3:20-24. ‘Law’ a principle stands also in scripture in contrast to ‘faith.’ “The just shall live by faith: and the law is not of faith; but the man that doeth them shall live in them.” Gal 3:11.

The word ‘law’ is also used for a fixed and unvarying principle such as ‘a law of nature:’ thus we read of the ‘law of faith,’ ‘law of sin,’ ‘law of righteousness,’ ‘law of the Spirit of life,’ etc.; cf. Rom 7:21.

The term ‘law’ is occasionally used in the N.T. as a designation of other parts of the O.T. besides the Pentateuch. The Lord said, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods ?” when the quotation was from the Psalms. Joh 10:34: similarly 1Co 14:21.

The LAW OF LIBERTY, Jam 1:25; Jam 2:12, implies that, the nature being congruous, the things enjoined, instead of being a burden, are a pleasure. Doing the commandments of the Lord is the fruit of the divine nature: they are therefore both law and liberty.

Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary

Law

General references

Psa 19:7-9; Psa 119:1-8; Pro 28:4-5; Mat 22:21; Luk 20:22-25; Luk 16:17; Rom 2:14-15; Rom 7:7; Rom 7:12; Rom 7:14; Rom 13:10; 1Ti 1:5; 1Ti 1:8-10; Jas 1:25; 1Jn 3:4; 1Jn 5:3 Litigation; Commandments; Duty, Of Man to God

Of Moses (Contained in the books: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy):

– Given at Sinai

Exo 19; Deu 1:1; Deu 4:10-13; Deu 33:2; Hab 3:3

– Received by the disposition of angels

Deu 33:2; Psa 68:17; Act 7:53; Gal 3:19; Heb 2:2

– Was given because of transgressions until the Messiah had come

Gal 3:19

– Engraved on stone

b General references

Exo 20:3-17; Exo 24:12; Exo 31:18; Exo 32:16; Exo 34:29; Exo 40:20; Deu 4:13; Deu 5:4-22; Deu 9:10 Table; Commandments

– Preserved in the ark of the covenant

Exo 25:16; Deu 31:9; Deu 31:26

– Found by Hilkiah in the house of the Lord

2Ki 22:8

– Engraved upon monuments

Deu 27:2-8; Jos 8:30-35

– To be written:

b On door posts

Deu 6:9; Deu 11:20

b On frontlets for the forehead, and parchment for the hand

Exo 13:9; Exo 13:16; Deu 6:4-9; Deu 11:18-21 Children; Instruction

– Expounded:

b By the priests and Levites

Lev 10:11; Deu 33:10; 2Ch 35:3

b Princes, priests and Levites publicly taught

Ezr 7:10; Neh 8:1-18

b From city to city

2Ch 17:7-10

b In synagogues

Luk 4:16-32; Act 13:14-52; Act 15:21; Act 9:20; Act 14:1; Act 17:1-3; Act 18:4; Act 18:26

b To the assembled nation at the feast of tabernacles in the sabbatic year

Deu 31:10-13

– Renewed by Moses

Deu 4:44-46

– Curses of, responsively read by Levites and people at Ebal and Gerizim

Deu 27:12-26; Jos 8:33-35

– Formed a constitution on which the civil government of the Israelites was founded, and according to which rulers were required to rule

b General references

Deu 17:18-20; 2Ki 11:12; 2Ch 23:11 Government, Constitutional

– Divine authority for

Exo 19:16-24; Exo 20:1-17; Exo 24:12-18; Exo 31:18; Exo 32:15-16; Exo 34:1-4; Exo 34:27-28; Lev 26:46; Deu 4:10-13; Deu 4:36; Deu 5:1-22; Deu 9:10; Deu 10:1-5; Deu 33:2-4; 1Ki 8:9; Ezr 7:6; Neh 1:7; Neh 8:1; Neh 9:14; Psa 78:5; Psa 103:7; Isa 33:22; Mal 4:4; Act 7:38; Act 7:53; Gal 3:19; Heb 9:18-21

– Prophecies in, of the Messiah

b General references

Luk 24:44; Joh 1:45; Joh 5:46; Joh 12:34; Act 26:22-23; Act 28:23; Rom 3:21-22 Jesus, The Christ, Prophecies Concerning

– Epitomized by Jesus

Mat 22:40; Mar 12:29-33; Luk 10:27

– Book of law found by Hilkiah in the temple

2Ki 22:8; 2Ch 34:14

Temporary law

Jer 3:16; Dan 9:27; Mat 5:17-45; Luk 16:16-17; Joh 1:17; Joh 4:20-24; Joh 8:35; Act 6:14; Act 10:28; Act 13:39; Act 15:1-29; Act 21:20-25; Rom 3:1-2; Rom 7:1-6; Rom 8:3; Rom 10:4; 2Co 3:7-14; Gal 2:3-9; Gal 4:30-31; Eph 2:15; Col 2:14-23; Heb 8:4-13; Heb 9:8-24; Heb 10:1-18; Heb 11:40; Heb 12:18-19; Heb 12:27

Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible

Law

Law, The. This term is applied in the New Testament to the old covenant and revelation, in distinction from the new; the dispensation under the law in distinction from the dispensation under the gospel; that by Moses and the prophets in distinction from the dispensation by Christ. Joh 1:17; Act 25:8; Heb 10:1-18. It was the title applied by the Jews to the first five books of the Bible. The law, the prophets, and the psalms, Luk 24:27; Luk 24:44; Act 13:15, thus designate the entire Old Testament. The term often refers more specially to the Mosaic legislation, including the moral, Mat 6:17, the ceremonial, Eph 2:15, and the political, but particularly the first. Sometimes Paul uses the word “law” (without the article) in a wider senseof principle, rule of moral conductand speaks of the heathen as having such a law written on their conscience or being a law to themselves. Rom 2:14-15.

Fuente: People’s Dictionary of the Bible

Law

(in Kant) “Every formula which expresses the necessity of an action is called a law” (Kant). — P. A.S.

Fuente: The Dictionary of Philosophy

Law

Law. The word is properly used, in Scripture as elsewhere, to express a definite commandment laid down by any recognized authority; but when the word is used with the article, and without any words of limitation, it refers to the expressed will to God, and in nine cases out of ten, to the Mosaic law, or to the Pentateuch of which it forms the chief portion. The Hebrew word, torah (law) lays more stress on its moral authority, as teaching the truth and guiding in the right way; the Greek nomos (law), on its constraining power as imposed and enforced by a recognized authority. The sense of the word, however, extends its scope and assumes a more abstracts character in the writings of St. Paul.

Nomos, when used by him with the article, still refers in general to the law of Moses; but when used without the article, so as to embrace any manifestation of “law,” it includes all powers which act on the will of man by compulsion, or by the pressure of external motives, whether their commands be or be not expressed in definite forms. The occasional use of the word “law” (as in Rom 3:27, “law of faith”) to denote an internal principle of action does not really mitigate against the general rule. It should also be noticed that the title “the Law” is occasionally used loosely to refer to the whole of the Old Testament, as in Joh 10:34 referring to Psa 82:6 in Joh 15:25 referring to Psa 35:19 and in 1Co 14:21 referring to Isa 28:11-12.

Fuente: Smith’s Bible Dictionary

Law

akin to nemo, “to divide out, distribute,” primarily meant “that which is assigned;” hence, “usage, custom,” and then, “law, law as prescribed by custom, or by statute;” the word ethos, “custom,” was retained for unwritten “law,” while nomos became the established name for “law” as decreed by a state and set up as the standard for the administration of justice.

In the NT it is used (a) of “law” in general, e.g., Rom 2:12-13, “a law” (RV), expressing a general principle relating to “law;” Rom 2:14, last part; Rom 3:27, “By what manner of law?” i.e., “by what sort of principle (has the glorying been excluded)?;” Rom 4:15 (last part); Rom 5:13, referring to the period between Adam’s trespass and the giving of the Law; Rom 7:1 (1st part, RV marg., “law”); against those graces which constitute the fruit of the Spirit “there is no law,” Gal 5:23; “the ostensible aim of the law is to restrain the evil tendencies natural to man in his fallen estate; yet in experience law finds itself not merely ineffective, it actually provokes those tendencies to greater activity. The intention of the gift of the Spirit is to constrain the believer to a life in which the natural tendencies shall have no place, and to produce in him their direct contraries. Law, therefore, has nothing to say against the fruit of the Spirit; hence the believer is not only not under law, Gal 5:18, the law finds no scope in his life, inasmuch as, and in so far as, he is led by the Spirit;” * [* From Notes on Galatians, by Hogg and Vine, p. 298.]

(b) of a force or influence impelling to action, Rom 7:21, Rom 7:23 (1st part), “a different law,” RV; (c) of the Mosaic Law, the “law” of Sinai, (1) with the definite article, e.g., Mat 5:18; Joh 1:17; Rom 2:15, Rom 2:18, Rom 2:20, Rom 2:26-27; Rom 3:19; Rom 4:15; Rom 7:4, Rom 7:7, Rom 7:14, Rom 7:16, Rom 7:22; Rom 8:3-4, Rom 8:7; Gal 3:10, Gal 3:12, Gal 3:19, Gal 3:21, Gal 3:24; Gal 5:3; Eph 2:15; Phi 3:6; 1Ti 1:8; Heb 7:19; Jam 2:9; (2) without the article, thus stressing the Mosaic Law in its quality as “law,” e.g., Rom 2:14 (1st part); Rom 5:20; Rom 7:9, where the stress in the quality lies in this, that “the commandment which was unto (i.e., which he though would be a means of) life,” he found to be “unto (i.e., to have the effect of revealing his actual state of) death;” Rom 10:4; 1Co 9:20; Gal 2:16, Gal 2:19, Gal 2:21; Gal 3:2, Gal 3:5, Gal 3:10 (1st part), Gal 3:11, Gal 3:18, Gal 3:23; Gal 4:4-5, Gal 4:21 (1st part); Gal 5:4, Gal 5:18; Gal 6:13; Phi 3:5, Phi 3:9; Heb 7:16; Heb 9:19; Jam 2:11; Jam 4:11; (in regard to the statement in Gal 2:16, that “a man is not justified by the works of the Law,” the absence of the article before nomos indicates the assertion of a principle, “by obedience to law,” but evidently the Mosaic Law is in view. Here the Apostle is maintaining that submission to circumcision entails the obligation to do the whole “Law.” Circumcision belongs to the ceremonial part of the “Law,” but, while the Mosaic Law is actually divisible into the ceremonial and the moral, no such distinction is made or even assumed in Scripture. The statement maintains the freedom of the believer from the “law” of Moses in its totality as a means of justification);

(d) by metonymy, of the books which contain the “law,” (1) of the Pentateuch, e.g., Mat 5:17; Mat 12:5; Luk 16:16; Luk 24:44; Joh 1:45; Rom 3:21; Gal 3:10; (2) of the Psalms, Joh 10:34; Joh 15:25; of the Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, Joh 12:34; the Psalms and Isaiah, Rom 3:19 (with Rom 3:10-18); Isaiah, 1Co 14:21; from all this it may be inferred that “the law” in the most comprehensive sense was an alternative title to “The Scriptures.”

The following phrases specify “laws” of various kinds; (a) “the law of Christ,” Gal 6:2, i.e., either given by Him (as in the Sermon on the Mount and in Joh 13:14-15; Joh 15:4), or the “law” or principle by which Christ Himself lived (Mat 20:28; Joh 13:1); these are not actual alternatives, for the “law” imposed by Christ was always that by which He Himself lived in the “days of His flesh.” He confirmed the “Law” as being of Divine authority (cp. Mat 5:18): yet He presented a higher standard of life than perfunctory obedience to the current legal rendering of the “Law,” a standard which, without annulling the “Law,” He embodied in His own character and life (see, e.g., Mat. 5:21-48; this breach with legalism is especially seen in regard to the ritual or ceremonial part of the “Law” in its wide scope); He showed Himself superior to all human interpretations of it; (b) “a law of faith,” Rom 3:27, i.e., a principle which demands only faith on man’s part; (c) “the law of my mind,” Rom 7:23, that principle which governs the new nature in virtue of the new birth; (d) “the law of sin,” Rom 7:23, the principle by which sin exerts its influence and power despite the desire to do what is right; “of sin and death,” Rom 8:2, death being the effect; (e) “the law of liberty,” Jam 1:25; Jam 2:12, a term comprehensive of all the Scriptures, not a “law” of compulsion enforced from without, but meeting with ready obedience through the desire and delight of the renewed being who is subject to it; into it he looks, and in its teaching he delights; he is “under law (ennomos, “in law,” implying union and subjection) to Christ,” 1Co 9:21; cp., e.g., Psa 119:32, Psa 119:45, Psa 119:97; 2Co 3:17; (f) “the royal law,” Jam 2:8, i.e., the “law” of love, royal in the majesty of its power, the “law” upon which all others hang, Mat 22:34-40; Rom 13:8; Gal 5:14; (g) “the law of the Spirit of life,” Rom 8:2, i.e., the animating principle by which the Holy Spirit acts as the imparter of life (cp. Joh 6:63); (h) “a law of righteousness,” Rom 9:31, i.e., a general principle presenting righteousness as the object and outcome of keeping a “law,” particularly the “Law” of Moses (cp. Gal 3:21); (i) “the law of a carnal commandment,” Heb 7:16, i.e., the “law” respecting the Aaronic priesthood, which appointed men conditioned by the circumstances and limitations of the flesh. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the “Law” is treated of especially in regard to the contrast between the Priesthood of Christ and that established under the “law” of Moses, and in regard to access to God and to worship. In these respects the “Law” “made nothing perfect,” Heb 7:19. There was “a disannulling of a foregoing commandment … and a bringing in of a better hope.” This is established under the “new Covenant,” a covenant instituted on the basis of “better promises,” Heb 8:6.

Notes: (1) In Gal 5:3, the statement that to receive circumcision constitutes a man a debtor to do “the whole Law,” views the “Law” as made up of separate commands, each essential to the whole, and predicates the unity of the “Law;” in Gal 5:14, the statement that “the whole law” is fulfilled in the one commandment concerning love, views the separate commandments as combined to make a complete “law.” (2) In Rom 8:3, “what the law could not do,” is lit., “the inability (adunaton, the neuter of the adjective adunatos, ‘unable,’ used as a noun) of the Law;” this may mean either “the weakness of the Law” or “that which was impossible for the Law;” the latter is preferable; the significance is the same in effect; the “Law” could neither give freedom from condemnation nor impart life. (3) For the difference between the teaching of Paul and that of James in regard to the “Law,” see under JUSTIFICATION. (4) For Act 19:38, AV, “the law is open” (RV, “courts,” etc.) see COURT, No. 1. (5) For nomodidaskaloi, “doctors of the law,” Luk 5:17, singular in Act 5:34, “teachers of the law,” 1Ti 1:7, see DOCTOR.

denotes “legislation, lawgiving” (No. 1, and tithemi, “to place, to put”), Rom 9:4, “(the) giving of the law.” Cp. B, No. 1.

(a) used intransitively, signifies “to make laws” (cp. A, No. 2, above); in the Passive Voice, “to be furnished with laws,” Heb 7:11, “received the law,” lit., “was furnished with (the) law;” (b) used transitively, it signifies “to ordain by law, to enact;” in the Passive Voice, Heb 8:6. See ENACT.

“to esteem, judge,” etc., signifies “to go to law,” and is so used in the Middle Voice in Mat 5:40, RV, “go to law” (AV, “sue … at the law”); 1Co 6:1, 1Co 6:6. See ESTEEM.

Note: In 1Co 6:7, the AV, “go to law,” is a rendering of the phrase echo krimata, “to have lawsuits,” as in the RV.

“to transgress law” (para, “contrary to,” and nomos), is used in the present participle in Act 23:3, and translated “contrary to the law,” lit., “transgressing the law.”

denotes “relating to law;” in Tit 3:9 it is translated “about the law,” describing “fightings” (AV, “strivings”); see LAWYER.

(a) “lawful, legal,” lit., “in law” (en, “in,” and nomos), or, strictly, “what is within the range of law,” is translated “lawful” in Act 19:39, AV (RV, “regular”), of the legal tribunals in Ephesus; (b) “under law” (RV), in relation to Christ, 1Co 9:21, where it is contrasted with anomos (see No. 3 below); the word as used by the Apostle suggests not merely the condition of being under “law,” but the intimacy of a relation established in the loyalty of a will devoted to his Master. See LAWFUL.

signifies “without law” (a, negative) and has this meaning in 1Co 9:21 (four times). See LAWLESS, TRANSGRESSOR, UNLAWFUL, WICKED.

“without law” (the adverbial form of C, No. 3), is used in Rom 2:12 (twice), where “(have sinned) without law” means in the absence of some specifically revealed “law,” like the “law” of Sinai; “(shall perish) without law” predicates that the absence of such a “law” will not prevent their doom; the “law” of conscience is not in view here. The succeeding phrase “under law” is lit., “in law,” not the same as the adjective ennomos (C, No. 2), but two distinct words.

Fuente: Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words

Law

a rule of action; a precept or command, coming from a superior authority, which an inferior is bound to obey. The manner in which God governs rational creatures is by a law, as the rule of their obedience to him, and this is what we call God’s moral government of the world. The term, however, is used in Scripture with considerable latitude of meaning; and to ascertain its precise import in any particular place, it is necessary to regard the scope and connection of the passage in which it occurs. Thus, for instance, sometimes it denotes the whole revealed will of God as communicated to us in his word. In this sense it is generally used in the book of Psalms, Psa 1:2; Psa 19:7; Psalms 119; Isa 8:20; Isa 42:21. Sometimes it is taken for the Mosaical institution distinguished from the Gospel, Joh 1:17; Mat 11:13; Mat 12:5; Act 25:8. Hence we frequently read of the law of Moses as expressive of the whole religion of the Jews, Heb 9:19; Heb 10:28. Sometimes, in a more restricted sense, for the ritual or ceremonial observances of the Jewish religion. In this sense the Apostle speaks of the law of commandments contained in ordinances.

Eph 2:15; Heb 10:1; and which, being only a shadow of good things to come, Christ Jesus abolished by his death, and so in effect destroyed the ancient distinction between Jew and Gentile, Gal 3:17. Very frequently it is used to signify the decalogue, or ten precepts which were delivered to the Israelites from Mount Sinai. It is in this acceptation of the term that the Lord Jesus declares he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, Mat 5:17; and he explains its import as requiring perfect love to God and man Luk 10:27. It is in reference to this view that St. Paul affirms, By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified; for by the law is the knowledge of sin,

Rom 3:20. The language of this law is, The soul that sinneth it shall die, and Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written, or required, in the book of the law, to do them, Gal 3:10. To deliver man from this penalty, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being himself made a curse for us, Gal 3:13. The law, in this sense, was not given that men should obtain righteousness or justification by it, but to convince them of sin, to show them their need of a Saviour, to shut them up, as it were, from all hopes of salvation from that source, and to recommend the Gospel of divine grace to their acceptance, Gal 3:19-25. Again, the law often denotes the rule of good and evil, or of right and wrong, revealed by the Creator and inscribed on man’s conscience, even at his creation, and consequently binding upon him by divine authority; and in this respect it is in substance the same with the decalogue. That such a law was connate with, and, as it were, implanted in, man, appears from its traces, which, like the ruins of some noble building, are still extant in every man. It is from those common notions, handed down by tradition, though often imperfect and perverted, that the Heathens themselves distinguished right from wrong, by which they were a law unto themselves, showing the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, Rom 2:12-15, although they had no express revelation.

The term law, is, however, eminently given to the Mosaic law; on the principles and spirit of which, a few general remarks may be offered. The right consideration of this divine institute, says Dr. Graves, will surround it with a glory of truth and holiness, not only worthy of its claims, but which has continued to be the light of the world on theological and moral subjects, and often on great political principles, to this day. If we examine the Jewish law, to discover the principle on which the whole system depends, the primary truth, to inculcate and illustrate which is its leading object, we find it to be that great basis of all religion, both natural and revealed, the self-existence, essential unity, perfections, and providence of the supreme Jehovah, the Creator of heaven and earth. The first line of the Mosaic writings inculcates this great truth: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. When the lawgiver begins to recapitulate the statutes and judgments he had enjoined to his nation, it is with this declaration: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,

Deu 6:4; or, as it might be more closely expressed, Jehovah our Elohim, or God, is one Jehovah. And at the commencement of that sublime hymn, delivered by Moses immediately before his death, in which this illustrious prophet sums up the doctrines he had taught, the wonders by which they had been confirmed, and the denunciations by which they were enforced, he declares this great tenet with the sublimity of eastern poetry, but at the same time with the precision of philosophic truth: Give ear, says he, O ye heavens, and I will speak: and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop rain: my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb and as the showers upon the grass, Deu 32:1, &c. What, is that doctrine so awful, that the whole universe is thus invoked to attend to it? so salutary as to be compared with the principle whose operation diffuses beauty and fertility over the vegetable world? Hear the answer: Because I will publish the name of Jehovah; ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the rock, his work is perfect: a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he.

This, then, is one great leading doctrine of the Jewish code. But the manner in which this doctrine is taught displays such wise accommodation to the capacity and character of the nation to whom it is addressed, as deserves to be carefully remarked. That character by which the supreme Being is most clearly distinguished from every other, however exalted; that character from which the acutest reasoners have endeavoured demonstratively to deduce, as from their source, all the divine attributes, is self-existence. Is it not then highly remarkable, that it is under this character the Divinity is described on his first manifestation to the Jewish lawgiver? The Deity at first reveals himself unto him as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob; and therefore the peculiar national and guardian God of the Jewish race. Moses, conscious of the degeneracy of the Israelites, their ignorance of, or their inattention to, the true God, and the difficulty and danger of any attempt to recall them to his exclusive worship, and to withdraw them from Egypt, seems to decline the task; but when absolutely commanded to undertake it, he said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I am that I am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you,

Exo 3:13-14. Here we observe, according to the constant method of the divine wisdom, when it condescends to the prejudices of men, how in the very instance of indulgence it corrects their superstition. The religion of names arose from an idolatrous polytheism; and the name given here directly opposes this error, and in the ignorance of that dark and corrupted period establishes that great truth, to which the most enlightened philosophy can add no new lustre, and on which all the most refined speculations on the divine nature ultimately rest, the self-existence, and, by consequence, the eternity and immutability, of the one great Jehovah.

But though the self-existence of the Deity was a fact too abstract to require its being frequently inculcated, his essential unity was a practical principle, the sure foundation on which to erect the structure of true religion, and form a barrier against the encroachments of idolatry: for this commenced not so frequently in denying the existence, or even the supremacy, of the one true God, as in associating with him for objects of adoration inferior intermediate beings, who were supposed to be more directly employed in the administration of human affairs. To confute and resist this false principle was, therefore, one great object of the Jewish scheme. Hence the unity of God is inculcated with perpetual solicitude; it stands at the head of the system of moral law promulgated to the Jews from Sinai by the divine voice, heard by the assembled nation, and issuing from the divine glory, with every circumstance which could impress the deepest awe upon even the dullest minds: I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; thou shalt have no others gods beside me, Exo 20:2-3. And in the recapitulation of the divine laws in Deuteronomy, It is repeatedly enforced with the most solemn earnestness: Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord,

Deu 6:4. And again: Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him. Know, therefore, this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and in the earth beneath: there is none else,

Deu 4:35; Deu 4:39.

This self-existent, supreme and only God is moreover described as possessed of every perfection which can be ascribed to the Divinity: Ye shall be holy, says the Lord to the people of the Jews; for I the Lord your God am holy, Lev 19:2. Ascribe ye, says the legislator, greatness unto our God; he is the rock; his work is perfect; a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he, Deu 32:4. And in the hymn of thanksgiving on the miraculous escape of the Israelites at the Red Sea, this is its burden: Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like unto thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Exo 15:11. And when the Lord delivered to Moses the two tables of the moral law, he is described as descending in the cloud, and proclaiming the name of the Lord: And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty, Exo 34:6-7.

But to teach the self-existence, the unity, the wisdom, and the power of the Deity, nay, even his moral perfections of mercy, justice, and truth, would have been insufficient to arrest the attention, and command the obedience of a nation, the majority of which looked no farther than mere present objects, and at that early period cherished scarcely any hopes higher than those of a temporal kind,if, in addition to all this, care had not been taken to represent the providence of God as not only directing the government of the universe by general laws, but also perpetually superintending the conduct and determining the fortune of every nation, of every family, nay, of every individual. It was the disbelief or the neglect of this great truth which gave spirit and energy, plausibility and attraction to the whole system of idolatry. While men believed that the supreme God and Lord of all was too exalted in his dignity, too remote from this sublunary scene, to regard its vicissitudes with an attentive eye, and too constantly engaged in the contemplation of his own perfections, and the enjoyment of his own independent and all-perfect happiness, to interfere in the regulation of human affairs, they regarded with indifference that supreme Divinity who seemed to take no concern in their conduct, and not to interfere as to their happiness. However exalted and perfect such a Being might appear to abstract speculation, he was to the generality of mankind as if he did not exist; as their happiness or misery were not supposed to be influenced by his power, they referred not their conduct to his direction. If he delegated to inferior beings the regulation of this inferior world; if all its concerns were conducted by their immediate agency, and all its blessings or calamities distributed by their immediate determination; it seemed rational, and even necessary, to supplicate their favour and submit to their authority; and neither unwise nor unsafe to neglect that Being, who, though all-perfect and supreme, would, on this supposition appear, with respect to mankind, altogether inoperative. In truth, this fact of the perpetual providence of God extending even to the minutest events, is inseparably connected with every motive which is offered to sway the conduct of the Jews, and forcibly inculcated by every event of their history. This had been manifested in the appointment of the land of Canaan for the future settlement of the chosen people on the first covenant which God entered into with the Patriarch Abraham; in the prophecy, that for four hundred years they should be afflicted in Egypt, and afterward be thence delivered; in the increase of their nation, under circumstances of extreme oppression, and their supernatural deliverance from that oppression. The same providence was displayed in the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea; the travels of the thousands of Israel through the wilderness, sustained by food from heaven; and in their subsequent settlement in the promised land by means entirely distinct from their own strength. Reliance on the same providence was the foundation of their civil government, the spirit and the principle of their constitution. On this only could they be commanded to keep the sabbatic year without tilling their land, or even gathering its spontaneous produce; confiding in the promise, that God would send his blessing on the sixth year, so that it should bring forth fruit for three years, Lev 25:21. The same faith in Divine Providence alone could prevail on them to leave their properties and families exposed to the attack of their surrounding enemies; while all the males of the nation assembled at Jerusalem to celebrate the three great festivals, enjoined by divine command, with the assurance that no man should desire their land when they went up to appear before the Lord their God thrice in the year, Exo 34:24. And, finally, it is most evident, that, contrary to all other lawgivers, the Jewish legislator renders his civil institutions entirely subordinate to his religious; and announces to his nation that their temporal adversity or prosperity would entirely depend, not on their observance of their political regulations; not on their preserving a military spirit, or acquiring commercial wealth, or strengthening themselves by powerful alliances; but on their continuing to worship the one true God according to the religious rites and ceremonies by him prescribed, and preserving their piety and morals untainted by the corruptions and vices which idolatry tended to introduce.

Such was the theology of the Jewish religion, at a period when the whole world was deeply infected with idolatry; when all knowledge of the one true God, all reverence for his sacred name, all reliance on his providence, all obedience to his laws, were nearly banished from the earth; when the severest chastisements had been tried in vain; when no hope of reformation appeared from the refinements of civilization or the researches of philosophy; for the most civilized and enlightened nations adopted with the greatest eagerness, and disseminated with the greatest activity, the absurdities, impieties, and pollutions of idolatry. Then was the Jewish law promulgated to a nation, who, to mere human judgment, might have appeared incapable of inventing or receiving such a high degree of intellectual and moral improvement; for they had been long enslaved to the Egyptians, the authors and supporters of the grossest idolatry; they had been weighed down by the severest bondage, perpetually harassed by the most incessant manual labours; for the Egyptians made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, Exo 1:14. At this time, and in this nation, was the Mosaic law promulgated, teaching the great principles of true religion, the self- existence, the unity, the perfections, and the providence of the one great Jehovah; reprobating all false gods, all image worship, all the absurdities and profanations of idolatry. At this time, and in this nation, was a system of government framed, which had for its basis the reception of, and steady adherence to, this system of true religion; and establishing many regulations which would be in the highest degree irrational, and could never hope to be received, except from a general and thorough reliance on the superintendence of Divine Providence, controlling the course of nature, and directing every event, so as to proportion the prosperity of the Hebrew people, according to their obedience to that law which they had received as divine.

It is an obvious, but it is not therefore a less important remark, that to the Jewish religion we owe that admirable summary of moral duty, contained in the ten commandments. All fair reasoners will admit that each of these must be understood to condemn, not merely the extreme crime which it expressly prohibits, but every inferior offence of the same kind, and every mode of conduct leading to such transgression; and, on the contrary, to enjoin opposite conduct, and the cultivation of opposite dispositions. Thus, the command, Thou shalt not kill, condemns not merely the single crime of deliberate murder, but every kind of violence, and every indulgence of passion and resentment, which tends either to excite such violence, or to produce that malignant disposition of mind, in which the guilt of murder principally consists: and similarly of the rest. In this extensive interpretation of the commandments, we are warranted, not merely by the deductions of reason, but by the letter of the law itself. For the addition of the last, Thou shalt not covet, proves clearly that in all, the dispositions of the heart, as much as the immediate outward act, is the object of the divine Legislator; and thus it forms a comment on the meaning, as well as a guard for the observance, of all the preceding commands. Interpreted in this natural and rational latitude, how comprehensive and important is this summary of moral duty! It inculcates the adoration of the one true God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is; who must, therefore, be infinite in power, and wisdom, and goodness; the object of exclusive adoration; of gratitude for every blessing we enjoy; of fear, for he is a jealous God; of hope, for he is merciful. It prohibits every species of idolatry; whether by associating false gods with the true, or worshipping the true by symbols and images. Commanding not to take the name of God in vain, it enjoins the observance of all outward respect for the divine authority, as well as the cultivation of inward sentiments and feelings suited to this outward reverence; and it establishes the obligation of oaths, and, by consequence, of all compacts and deliberate promises; a principle, without which the administration of laws would be impracticable, and the bonds of society must be dissolved. By commanding to keep holy the Sabbath, as the memorial of the creation, it establishes the necessity of public worship, and of a stated and outward profession of the truths of religion, as well as of the cultivation of suitable feelings; and it enforces this by a motive which is equally applicable to all mankind, and which should have taught the Jew that he ought to consider all nations as equally creatures of that Jehovah whom he himself adored; equally subject to his government, and, if sincerely obedient, entitled to all the privileges his favour could bestow. It is also remarkable, that this commandment, requiring that the rest of the Sabbath should include the man-servant, and the maid-servant, and the stranger that was within their gates, nay, even their cattle, proved that the Creator of the universe extended his attention to all his creatures; that the humblest of mankind were the objects of his paternal love; that no accidental differences, which so often create alienation among different nations, would alienate any from the divine regard; and that even the brute creation shared the benevolence of their Creator, and ought to be treated by men with gentleness and humanity.

When we proceed to the second table, comprehending more expressly our social duties, we find all the most important principles on which they depend clearly enforced. The commandment which enjoins, Honour thy father and mother, sanctions the principles, not merely of filial obedience, but of all those duties which arise from our domestic relations; and, while it requires not so much any one specific act, as the general disposition which should regulate our whole course of conduct in this instance, it impresses the important conviction, that the entire law proceeds from a Legislator able to search and judge the heart of man. The subsequent commands coincide with the clear dictates of reason, and prohibit crimes which human laws in general have prohibited as plainly destructive of social happiness. But it was of infinite importance to rest the prohibitions, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, not merely on the deductions of reason, but also on the weight of a divine authority. How often have false ideas of public good in some places, depraved passions in others, and the delusions of idolatry in still more, established a law of reputation contrary to the dictates of reason, and the real interests of society. In one country we see theft allowed, if perpetrated with address; in others, piracy and rapine honoured, if conducted with intrepidity. Sometimes we perceive adultery permitted, the most unnatural crimes committed without remorse or shame; nay, every species of impurity enjoined and consecrated as a part of divine worship. In others, we find revenge honoured as spirit, and death inflicted at its impulse with ferocious triumph. Again, we see every feeling of nature outraged, and parents exposing their helpless children to perish for deformity of body or weakness of mind; or, what is still more dreadful, from mercenary or political views; and this inhuman practice familiarized by custom, and authorized by law. And, to close the horrid catalogue, we see false religions leading their deluded votaries to heap the altars of their idols with human victims; the master butchers his slave, the conqueror his captive; nay, dreadful to relate, the parent sacrifices his children, and, while they shriek amidst the tortures of the flames, or in the agonies of death, he drowns their cries by the clangour of cymbals and the yells of fanaticism. Yet these abominations, separate or combined, have disgraced ages and nations which we are accustomed to admire and celebrate as civilized and enlightened,Babylon and Egypt, Phenicia and Carthage, Greece and Rome. Many of these crimes legislators have enjoined, or philosophers defended. What, indeed, could be hoped from legislators and philosophers, when we recollect the institutions of Lycurgus, especially as to purity of manners, and the regulations of Plato on the same subject, in his model of a perfect republic; when we consider the sensuality of the Epicureans, and immodesty of the Cynics; when we find suicide applauded by the Stoics, and the murderous combats of gladiators defended by Cicero, and exhibited by Trajan. Such variation and inconstancy in the rule and practice of moral duty, as established by the feeble or fluctuating authority of human opinion, demonstrates the utility of a clear divine interposition, to impress these important prohibitions; and it is difficult for any sagacity to calculate how far such an interposition was necessary, and what effect it may have produced by influencing human opinions and regulating human conduct, when we recollect that the Mosaic code was probably the first written law ever delivered to any nation; and that it must have been generally known in those eastern countries, from which the most ancient and celebrated legislators and sages derived the models of their laws and the principles of their philosophy.

But the Jewish religion promoted the interests of moral virtue, not merely by the positive injunctions of the decalogue; it also inculcated clearly and authoritatively the two great principles on which all piety and virtue depend, and which our blessed Lord recognised as the commandments on which hang the law and the prophets,the principles of love to God and love to our neighbour. The love of God is every where enjoined in the Mosaic law, as the ruling disposition of the heart, from which all obedience should spring, and in which it ought to terminate. With what solemnity does the Jewish lawgiver impress it at the commencement of his recapitulation of the divine law: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might, Deu 6:4-5. And again: And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul? Deu 10:12. Nor is the love of our neighbour less explicitly enforced: Thou shalt not, says the law, avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord,

Lev 19:18. The operation of this benevolence, thus solemnly required, was not to be confined to their own countrymen; it was to extend to the stranger, who, having renounced idolatry, was permitted to live among them, worshipping the true God, though without submitting to circumcision or the other ceremonial parts of the Mosaic law: If a stranger, says the law, sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord thy God, Lev 19:33-34.

Thus, on a review of the topics we have discussed, it appears that the Jewish law promulgated the great principles of moral duty in the decalogue, with a solemnity suited to their high preeminence; that it enjoined love to God with the most unceasing solicitude, and love to our neighbour, as extensively and forcibly, as the peculiar design of the Jewish economy, and the peculiar character of the Jewish people, would permit; that it impressed the deepest conviction of God’s requiring, not mere external observances, but heart-felt piety, well regulated desires, and active benevolence; that it taught sacrifice could not obtain pardon without repentance, or repentance without reformation and restitution; that it described circumcision itself, and, by consequence, every other legal rite, as designed to typify and inculcate internal holiness, which alone could render men acceptable to God; that it represented the love of God as designed to act as a practical principle, stimulating to the constant and sincere cultivation of purity, mercy, and truth; and that it enforced all these principles and precepts by sanctions the most likely to operate powerfully on minds unaccustomed to abstract speculations and remote views, even by temporal rewards and punishments; the assurance of which was confirmed from the immediate experience of similar rewards and punishments, dispensed to their enemies and to themselves by that supernatural Power which had delivered the Hebrew nation out of Egypt, conducted them through the wilderness, planted them in the land of Canaan, regulated their government, distributed their possessions, and to which alone they could look to obtain new blessings, or secure those already enjoyed. From all this we derive another presumptive argument for the divine authority of the Mosaic code; and it may be contended, that a moral system thus perfect, promulgated at so early a period, to such a people, and enforced by such sanctions as no human power could undertake to execute, strongly bespeaks a divine original.

2. The moral law is sometimes called the Mosaic law, because it was one great branch of those injunctions which, under divine authority, Moses enjoined upon the Israelites when they were gathered into a political community under the theocracy. But it existed previously as the law of all mankind; and it has been taken up into the Christian system, and there more fully illustrated. As the obligation of the moral law upon Christians has, however, been disputed by some perverters of the Christian faith, or held by others on loose and fallacious grounds, this subject ought to be clearly understood. It is, nevertheless, to be noticed, that the morals of the New Testament are not proposed to us in the form of a regular code. Even in the books of Moses, which have the legislative form to a great extent, not all the principles and duties which constituted the full character of godliness, under that dispensation, are made the subjects of formal injunction by particular precepts. They are partly infolded in general principles, or often take the form of injunction in an apparently incidental manner, or are matters of obvious inference. A preceding code of traditionary moral law is all along supposed in the writings of Moses and the prophets, as well as a consuetudinary ritual and a doctrinal theology, both transmitted from the patriarchs. This, too, is eminently the case with Christianity. It supposes that all who believed in Christ admitted the divine authority of the Old Testament; and it assumes the perpetual authority of its morals, as well as the truth of its fundamental theology. The constant allusions in the New Testament to the moral rules of the Jews and patriarchs, either expressly as precepts, or as the data of argument, sufficiently guard us against the notion, that what has not in so many words been re-enacted by Christ and his Apostles is of no authority among Christians. In a great number of instances, however, the form of injunction is directly preceptive, so as to have all the explicitness and force of a regular code of law, and is, as much as a regular code could be, a declaration of the sovereign will of Christ, enforced by the sanctions of eternal life and death. This, however, is a point on which a few confirmatory observations may be usefully adduced. No part of the preceding dispensation, designated generally by the appellation of the law, is repealed in the New Testament, but what is obviously ceremonial, typical, and incapable of coexisting with Christianity. Our Lord, in his discourse with the Samaritan woman, declares, that the hour of the abolition of the temple worship was come; the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, teaches us that the Levitical services were but shadows, the substance and end of which is Christ; and the ancient visible church, as constituted upon the ground of natural descent from Abraham, was abolished by the establishment of a spiritual body of believers to take its place. No precepts of a purely political nature, that is, which respect the civil subjection of the Jews to their theocracy, are, therefore, of any force to us as laws, although they may have, in many cases, the greatest authority as principles. No ceremonial precepts can be binding, since they were restrained to a period terminating with the death and resurrection of Christ; nor are even the patriarchal rites of circumcision and the passover obligatory upon Christians, since we have sufficient evidence that they were of an adumbrative character, and were laid aside by the first inspired teachers of Christianity.

With the moral precepts which abound in the Old Testament the case is very different, as sufficiently appears from the different, and even contrary, manner in which they are always spoken of by Christ and his Apostles. When our Lord, in his sermon on the mount, says, Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil; that is, to confirm or establish it; the entire scope of his discourse shows that he is speaking exclusively of the moral precepts of the law, eminently so called, and of the moral injunctions of the prophets founded upon them, and to which he thus gives an equal authority. And in so solemn a manner does he enforce this, that he adds, doubtless as foreseeing that attempts would be made by deceiving or deceived men, professing his religion, to lessen the authority of the moral law, 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; that is, as St. Chrysostom interprets, He shall be the farthest from attaining heaven and happiness, which imports that he shall not attain it at all. In like manner St. Paul, after having strenuously maintained the doctrine of justification by faith alone, anticipates an objection by asking, Do we then make void the law through faith? and subjoins, God forbid: yea, we establish the law; meaning by the law, as the context and his argument clearly show, the moral and not the ceremonial law.

After such declarations, it is worse than trifling for any to contend that, in order to establish the authority of the moral law of the Jews over Christians, it ought to have been formally reenacted. To this we may, however, farther reply, not only that many important moral principles and rules found in the Old Testament were never formally enacted among the Jews; were traditional from an earlier age; and received at different times the more indirect authority of inspired recognition; but, to put the matter in a stronger light, that all the leading moral precepts of the Jewish Scriptures are, in point of fact, proposed in the New Testament in a manner which has the full force of formal reenactment, as the laws of the Christian church. This argument, from the want of formal reenactment, will therefore have no weight. The summary of the law and the prophets, which is to love God with all our heart, and to serve him with all our strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves, is unquestionably enjoined, and even reenacted by the Christian lawgiver. When our Lord is explicitly asked by one who came unto him and said, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? the answer given shows that the moral law contained in the decalogue is so in force under the Christian dispensation, that obedience to it is necessary to final salvation: If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. And that nothing ceremonial is intended by this term, is manifest from what follows: He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal, &c. Mat 19:17-19. Here, also, we have all the force of a formal reenactment of the decalogue, a part of it being evidently put for the whole. Nor were it difficult to produce passages from the discourses of Christ and the writings of the Apostles, which enjoin all the precepts of this law taken separately, by their authority, as indispensable parts of Christian duty, and that, too, under their original sanctions of life and death; so that the two circumstances which form the true character of a law in its highest sense, divine authority and penal sanctions, are found as truly in the New Testament as in the Old. It will not, for instance, be contended, that the New Testament does not enjoin the acknowledgment and worship of one God alone; nor that it does not prohibit idolatry; nor that it does not level its maledictions against false and profane swearing; nor that the Apostle Paul does not use the very words of the fifth commandment preceptively, when he says, Honour thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, Eph 6:2; nor that murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness are not all prohibited under pain of exclusion from the kingdom of God. Thus, then, we have the whole decalogue brought into the Christian code of morals, by a distinct injunction of its separate precepts, and by their recognition as of permanent and unchangeable obligation; the fourth commandment, respecting the Sabbath only, being so far excepted, that its injunction is not so expressly marked. This, however, is no exception in fact; for beside that its original place in the two tables sufficiently distinguishes it from all positive, ceremonial, and typical precepts, and gives it a moral character, in respect to its ends, which are, first, mercy to servants and cattle, and, second, the worship of almighty God, undisturbed by worldly interruptions and cares, it is necessarily included in that law which our Lord declares he came not to destroy, or abrogate; in that law which St. Paul declares to be established by faith, and among those commandments which our Lord declares must be kept, if any one would enter into life. To this, also, the practice of the Apostles is to be added, who did not cease themselves from keeping one day in seven holy, nor teach others so to do; but gave to the Lord’s day that eminence and sanctity in the Christian church which the seventh day had in the Jewish, by consecrating it to holy uses; an alteration not affecting the precept at all, except in an unessential circumstance, (if indeed in that,) and in which we may suppose them to have acted under divine suggestion.

Thus, then, we have the obligation of the whole decalogue as fully established in the New Testament as in the Old, as if it had been formally reenacted; and that no formal reenactment of it took place, is itself a presumptive proof that it was never regarded by the lawgiver as temporary, which the formality of republication might have supposed. It is important to remark, however, that, although the moral laws of the Mosaic dispensation pass into the Christian code, they stand there in other and higher circumstances; so that the New Testament is a more perfect dispensation of the knowledge of the moral will of God than the Old. In particular, (1.) They are more expressly extended to the heart, as by our Lord, in his sermon on the mount; who teaches us that the thought and inward purpose of any offence is a violation of the law prohibiting its external and visible commission.

(2.) The principles on which they are founded are carried out in the New Testament into a greater variety of duties, which, by embracing more perfectly the social and civil relations of life, are of a more universal character.

(3.) There is a much more enlarged injunction of positive and particular virtues, especially those which constitute the Christian temper.

(4.) By all overt acts being inseparably connected with corresponding principles in the heart, in order to constitute acceptable obedience, which principles suppose the regeneration of the soul by the Holy Ghost. This moral renovation is, therefore, held out as necessary to our salvation, and promised as a part of the grace of our redemption by Christ.

(5.) By being connected with promises of divine assistance, which is peculiar to a law connected with evangelical provisions.

(6.) By their having a living illustration in the perfect and practical example of Christ.

(7.) By the higher sanctions derived from the clearer revelation of a future state, and the more explicit promises of eternal life, and threatenings of eternal punishment. It follows from this, that we have in the Gospel the most complete and perfect revelation of moral law ever given to men; and a more exact manifestation of the brightness, perfection, and glory of that law, under which angels and our progenitors in paradise were placed, and which it is at once the delight and the interest of the most perfect and happy beings to obey.

Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary

Law

Also called testimony, commandments, statutes, precepts, judgments, the Word, and words.

Called “Law of Moses” 1Ki 2:3

Called “Law of the Lord” 2Ki 10:31

Called “Law of God” Rom 7:22

Called “Law of the Spirit” Rom 8:2

Called “Law of Righteousness” Rom 9:31

Called “Law of Liberty” Jam 2:12

Jam 2:12 (a) This is the law that operates when there is no restraint nor hindrance. We judge a lion by the way he would act if free, and not by the way he acts in the cage. So GOD will judge people by the way they act when they are free to do as they please, and no one sees or knows of their actions.

GOD’s law is like a light Psa 119:130

GOD’s law is like a lamp Psa 119:105

GOD’s law is like a hammer Jer 23:29

GOD’s law is like a fire Jer 23:29

GOD’s law is like a seed Luk 8:11

GOD’s law is like water Eph 5:26

GOD’s law is like a sword Heb 4:12

Fuente: Wilson’s Dictionary of Bible Types