Objection 24: When we as Sunday keepers declare that the ten-commandment law was abolished at the cross, Adventists try to embarrass us by asking us if we believe it is now lawful to steal or kill or do any other of the heinous deeds prohibited by the Ten Commandments. We do not. We believe that God has great moral principles that have governed the universe from all eternity and will continue to govern it to all eternity. The Ten Commandments were but a partial reflection of these principles. The principles remain, but the Ten Commandments are gone. Hence, the Sabbath is gone.
In essence, this objection contends that there is another repository of law where principles binding upon the Christian are to be found. It is a variant of Objection 12, which contended that it is now the “law of Christ,” not the Ten Commandments, that is binding upon Christians.
Where is this repository of great moral principles found? Does the objector have access to heavenly information that we do not have? Obviously not. Perhaps this is an appeal to “natural law,” to our innate sense of right and wrong, as described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 2:14-15.
If so, we are obliged to point out that Christianity is a revealed religion and does not rest upon our innate sense of right and wrong. Rather, it explains why we have a sense of right and wrong, something Darwinism cannot explain. (Seemingly, if we evolved as is taught in the atheistic origins myth, we should have evolved an ethic that allows and indeed sanctifies whatever is most successful at getting our genes into the next generation; needless to say, such an ethic would not include the Sixth Commandment.)
Again, Christianity is a reveal religion; God has revealed its principles in the Holy Bible. What we infer from studying nature or from our own philosophical musings must always be subject to correction by what we read in God’s word. That is the historic Protestant position, and a position that Seventh-day Adventists share. The objector is correct in affirming that God has had moral principles in force through all eternity, but only by a study of the revealed will of God in the Bible can we know with certainty what those principles are.
We do know from the Bible that when God first called out a people for His own name He delivered to them in His own handwriting the Ten Commandments. We could ask the objector whether he believes that any of the ten were part of the eternal moral laws to which he refers, and he would agree that many of them were, such as the prohibition against murder, adultery, stealing, lying, covetousness, and the command to honor our parents. Thus by the admission of the objector himself, when God saw fit to reveal to men His eternal moral laws, He gave commandments consisting of eternal moral laws.
God's speaking from Sinai made those eternal moral laws audible to men, and His writing them out made them visible, that men might both hear and see, and thus know for certain, the eternal moral laws that should govern their lives. To say that the Ten Commandments was simply a “reflection” of eternal moral laws, as though it were a shadowy image and not the enduring reality, is to attempt to confuse that which should be simple. We might as appropriately say that God's voice that spoke the Ten Commandments and His hand that wrote them down were merely “a shadowy reflection” of Himself.
If the Ten Commandments were an accurate reflection of those “great (but unwritten) moral principles” to which the objector refers, we might well ask why God would abolish them at Calvary? What changed at Calvary that made them inapplicable? Are not men still married, do they not still own property, do they not still testify in court? If these rules were good for people 4,500 years ago, they are still good for us today.
To be clear, we understand, of course, that those who think the Ten Commandments abolished do not actually believe themselves at liberty to kill, steal, and commit adultery. But we are seeking to show that their logic leads to that conclusion, and that the defenses they erect to try to avoid that logical conclusion do not withstand scrutiny. Either the commandments were abolished or they were not. If they were, then yes, we are all free to kill, steal, and commit adultery. If they were not, then neither are we free to disregard the Sabbath day that God commanded us to remember.
How do the advocates of this abolition doctrine seek to avoid this conclusion? By a variety of arguments, some of which have already been considered. For example, they argue that in the Christian Era we are fulfilling the law if we love God and man, per the Golden Rule. Yes, of course love to God and man summarizes the Ten Commandments (Mat. 22:37-40), but the details of how we love God are set forth in the first four commandments, and the specifics of how we love our fellow man are set forth in the last six commandments.
If we love God, we will not have other gods, nor worship idols of our own making, nor claim God’s name when we are not His children, nor profane the day of rest God has commanded us to remember and observe. If we love our fellow man, we will honor our parents, not murder our fellow man, not break the marriage bond and dishonor our spouse, not steal another’s property, not perjure ourselves in court or otherwise lie when it matters, and not covet what belongs to our neighbor.
The Ten Commandments are love in action; to say that love has abolished them is the exact opposite of the truth. Love established them. If we have the spiritual discernment and tenderness of heart that genuine love brings about, we will see that these commandments embody love and must be obeyed.
The objector's primary reasons for claiming that the abolition of the Ten Commandments permits him to break the fourth commandment, but does not permit him to break the other nine, are these:
1. The fourth commandment alone, of the ten, was ceremonial, and with all the other ceremonies, expired at Calvary. Therefore we are not required to keep it.
2. The other nine commandments, because they are moral, were re-enacted by the apostles, and thus are binding on us.
These two contentions carry us into new areas of discussion. Hence they will be examined separately in the next installment.