Dead to the Testimonies
“I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.” (Gal. 2:19).
Maybe it sounds like I am against the Testimonies and Spirit of Prophecy. Yet I have always made my case using the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy. It’s the principle Paul used. I, through the Spirit of Prophecy, am dead to the Spirit of Prophecy.
How could Paul use that kind of language? Doesn’t every kingdom divided against itself fall? Yet Paul was so bold about such an assertion! What kind of logic was he using?!
It’s the same kind of reasoning he used in his epistle to the Romans. “But now the righteousness of God without [outside] the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” (Rom. 3:21). Is this saying that interwoven into God’s law is the freedom to dispense with it? God forbid. Rather, when we read on we see that within the Law allowance was given for mercy, even toward a broken Law.
What Paul asserts when he says he is dead to the Law is that he was dead to serving the Law. It was only through a valid reconciliation with Jesus that the Lord gave him the power to obey the Law; a power which the Law was powerless to give. By serving the Law instead of God, he had exalted the Law above God and signally removed God from His throne. With God deposed, there the Law sat, master over all. And serving the Law instead of God, Satan had full reign.
But the Lord, in His infinite wisdom throughout eternity, has balanced His authority with mercy in everything He ever did. In the giving of His Ten Commandments He included the elements of mercy and jealous love. “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.” (Ex. 20:5,6).
Mercy is “outside” of the law, according to Romans 3:21. Justice and mercy are counteracting; pure truth and pure grace are, by nature, mutually exclusive. From the Law’s charter, only justice matters; only justice can keep order. Mercy must take a back seat. But perfect love combines them and uses truth and grace for the perfect uplifting and upkeep of order and happiness; and our Creator is a God of perfect self-sacrificing love. The sacrificial economy was God’s provision toward the breaking of His Law. It was part of the law given to Moses, yet was kept separated from the Ten Commandment Law. For mercy and justice to work properly together, they must remain distinct and separate.
Mercy had escaped the pagan Roman world. In the full result of idolatry, transgression had come to the full. (Dan. 8:23). Self-preservation had become the modis operandi. “Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.” (Rom. 1:28-31).
This spirit had made its way into Israel since the days of Nehemiah. The Maccabean wars are not included into sacred history because they were without God’s leadership and direction through His prophets. The spirit of selfishness was the driving force during those long, dark four centuries before the Messiah came.
The law had become the only leverage to keep the people controlled. It had been embellished with man-made additions to hold the populous bound under the Jewish leadership. They had become slaves again, this time to their own kind. “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and My people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?” (Jer. 5:31).
The “end thereof” was enslavement under a religious guise. The people accepted it because they had lost sight of God. Lost to faith, they could not discern the human fabrications and hypocrisy. This faith and new freedom God planned to give them with the Messiah. (Gal. 3:23).
Christ’s opening address to the leadership in Nazareth was His shot across the bow to deliver the nation from its self-imposed bondage. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Lk. 4:18,19).
And He used the divine Law to deliver His people from the man-made one. Jesus lived the Law perfectly and exposed those who dared to change its holy precepts. He brought faith in the true God into the truth. When God’s Law is taught, God becomes involved in man’s thinking again, and thus faith in God springs up in His presence. He brought life back into a dead system. And He left the door of mercy wide open to His enemies who had declared the old falsehoods to be true. His communications were directed to them as well as the people who heard Him gladly. Most of the leadership rejected Him and the truth; but at the close of the nation’s probationary period “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” (Dan. 9:24;Acts 6:7).
So, now a remnant of priests and people were dead to an old failed system, one “which decayeth and waxeth old” and was “ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). But what about us SDAs at the end of another probationary period? How does our history lay over the Jews’? Or does it? Yes, it does, and fearfully so.
An economic stimulus package is being drummed up to satiate a world driven by greed. Idolatry has taken today’s world by storm, even the religious world, even the Protestant world, and even the Adventist world. Self-preservation has displaced the gospel, and the world’s self-preserving spirit has made its way into the remnant church. The grace of Christ has evaporated from the preaching of the pastors, and the souls of the people are dried up from the constant needling of their unmollified consciences. There is no balm in Gilead to soothe the sin-sick soul.
Its time, once again, to become dead to the current law of falsehood and sin into which transgressors have turned the Testimonies of Jesus. Its time to uplift Christ, the Christ spelled out in those Testimonies for the church and in the Desire of Ages. Cloaked in reproof and correction and instruction in righteousness, those harsh, almost unbearable testimonies bear the stamp of Jesus. Let us find the real Jesus described there. Let us bow to His authoritative voice and seek Him for His grace and acceptance.
Then our eyes will be opened to His mercy and long-suffering. We will see His magnanimity and compassion. We will have sought Him with all our hearts and found Him, and our souls will find rest in finding Him. Through the Law and the Testimonies we will have become dead to serving the Law and the Testimonies that we might serve and live for the Christ found in the Law and the Testimonies. (Rom. 7:4,6,10).
Maybe it sounds like I am against the Testimonies and Spirit of Prophecy. Yet I have always made my case using the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy. It’s the principle Paul used. I, through the Spirit of Prophecy, am dead to the Spirit of Prophecy.
How could Paul use that kind of language? Doesn’t every kingdom divided against itself fall? Yet Paul was so bold about such an assertion! What kind of logic was he using?!
It’s the same kind of reasoning he used in his epistle to the Romans. “But now the righteousness of God without [outside] the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” (Rom. 3:21). Is this saying that interwoven into God’s law is the freedom to dispense with it? God forbid. Rather, when we read on we see that within the Law allowance was given for mercy, even toward a broken Law.
What Paul asserts when he says he is dead to the Law is that he was dead to serving the Law. It was only through a valid reconciliation with Jesus that the Lord gave him the power to obey the Law; a power which the Law was powerless to give. By serving the Law instead of God, he had exalted the Law above God and signally removed God from His throne. With God deposed, there the Law sat, master over all. And serving the Law instead of God, Satan had full reign.
But the Lord, in His infinite wisdom throughout eternity, has balanced His authority with mercy in everything He ever did. In the giving of His Ten Commandments He included the elements of mercy and jealous love. “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.” (Ex. 20:5,6).
Mercy is “outside” of the law, according to Romans 3:21. Justice and mercy are counteracting; pure truth and pure grace are, by nature, mutually exclusive. From the Law’s charter, only justice matters; only justice can keep order. Mercy must take a back seat. But perfect love combines them and uses truth and grace for the perfect uplifting and upkeep of order and happiness; and our Creator is a God of perfect self-sacrificing love. The sacrificial economy was God’s provision toward the breaking of His Law. It was part of the law given to Moses, yet was kept separated from the Ten Commandment Law. For mercy and justice to work properly together, they must remain distinct and separate.
Mercy had escaped the pagan Roman world. In the full result of idolatry, transgression had come to the full. (Dan. 8:23). Self-preservation had become the modis operandi. “Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.” (Rom. 1:28-31).
This spirit had made its way into Israel since the days of Nehemiah. The Maccabean wars are not included into sacred history because they were without God’s leadership and direction through His prophets. The spirit of selfishness was the driving force during those long, dark four centuries before the Messiah came.
The law had become the only leverage to keep the people controlled. It had been embellished with man-made additions to hold the populous bound under the Jewish leadership. They had become slaves again, this time to their own kind. “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and My people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?” (Jer. 5:31).
The “end thereof” was enslavement under a religious guise. The people accepted it because they had lost sight of God. Lost to faith, they could not discern the human fabrications and hypocrisy. This faith and new freedom God planned to give them with the Messiah. (Gal. 3:23).
Christ’s opening address to the leadership in Nazareth was His shot across the bow to deliver the nation from its self-imposed bondage. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Lk. 4:18,19).
And He used the divine Law to deliver His people from the man-made one. Jesus lived the Law perfectly and exposed those who dared to change its holy precepts. He brought faith in the true God into the truth. When God’s Law is taught, God becomes involved in man’s thinking again, and thus faith in God springs up in His presence. He brought life back into a dead system. And He left the door of mercy wide open to His enemies who had declared the old falsehoods to be true. His communications were directed to them as well as the people who heard Him gladly. Most of the leadership rejected Him and the truth; but at the close of the nation’s probationary period “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” (Dan. 9:24;Acts 6:7).
So, now a remnant of priests and people were dead to an old failed system, one “which decayeth and waxeth old” and was “ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). But what about us SDAs at the end of another probationary period? How does our history lay over the Jews’? Or does it? Yes, it does, and fearfully so.
An economic stimulus package is being drummed up to satiate a world driven by greed. Idolatry has taken today’s world by storm, even the religious world, even the Protestant world, and even the Adventist world. Self-preservation has displaced the gospel, and the world’s self-preserving spirit has made its way into the remnant church. The grace of Christ has evaporated from the preaching of the pastors, and the souls of the people are dried up from the constant needling of their unmollified consciences. There is no balm in Gilead to soothe the sin-sick soul.
Its time, once again, to become dead to the current law of falsehood and sin into which transgressors have turned the Testimonies of Jesus. Its time to uplift Christ, the Christ spelled out in those Testimonies for the church and in the Desire of Ages. Cloaked in reproof and correction and instruction in righteousness, those harsh, almost unbearable testimonies bear the stamp of Jesus. Let us find the real Jesus described there. Let us bow to His authoritative voice and seek Him for His grace and acceptance.
Then our eyes will be opened to His mercy and long-suffering. We will see His magnanimity and compassion. We will have sought Him with all our hearts and found Him, and our souls will find rest in finding Him. Through the Law and the Testimonies we will have become dead to serving the Law and the Testimonies that we might serve and live for the Christ found in the Law and the Testimonies. (Rom. 7:4,6,10).
posted by David | 6:32 AM
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