The Sabbath

and the Lord's Day

The New Covenant

  "Behold, I make all things new." This is the message of the gospel. Christ came to inaugurate a new creation, an entire new order of things. The seers of old foretold and anxiously looked for the dawning of a better day, a day of salvation, a day when the kingdom of heaven would be established upon earth. The law, its offerings, sacrifices, blood, tabernacle, altars, priesthood, feasts, Sabbath, etc., were but types, figures, and shadows of the glories of this new and better day. We now have a new dispensation, "new testament," "new covenant," "new Jerusalem," new church, new kingdom, "new creation," "new man," "new heart," "new born babes," "new commandments" (1 John 13:34; 1 John 2:8); "new name," "new and living way," "walk in newness of life," and "serve in newness of spirit." "Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17).

  In this new dispensation we cannot go back to the Sabbath of the old. The Sabbath enjoined in the first covenant passed away when Christ came and made "all things new." So it was prophesied, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt" (Jer. 31:31, 32). This new covenant is not according to the one made with Israel when God led them out of Egypt. The covenant God made with them at that time was placed in the ark. "The ark, wherein is the covenant of the Lord, which he made with our fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kings 8:21). And "there was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone' (vs. 9). So that which was written on the tables of stone— the Ten [104] Commandments—was the covenant made at that time. But this new one that Jeremiah declared the Lord would make was not to be according to the one written in stones. It is "a better covenant, which was established upon better promises" (Heb. 8:6). "By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament" (Heb. 7:22). This new covenant is the "new testament" (Heb. 9:15). The two covenants are termed "first" and "second" (Heb. 8:7). When Christ delivered the new he took away the first. "He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second" (Heb. 10:9). "In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away" (Heb. 8:13). We are Christians under the new testament, and not Jews under the old. The first, with its Sabbath, temple, blood, oblations, etc., has vanished away, while the new is the "everlasting covenant" (Heb. 13:20).

The Law of Christ

  "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). "Jesus the mediator of the new covenant [testament, margin]" (Heb. 12:24). "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2). Here are contrasted the two systems. The first was "the law" given by Moses, its mediator; the second is "grace and truth," the new testament, which came by Christ, its mediator. The new testament is "the law of Christ." This is the law Christians are now under.

  In Isa. 42:1 7 we have a clear prediction of the coming of Christ and his redemptive work. "And the isles shall wait for his law" (vs. 4). The law of Moses was given to one nation—Israel. But of the law of Christ— the new testament—it was foretold that "the isles" should wait for it. "The isles" here mean the different nations of earth. The gospel is for all people and nations. The command is, "Preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15), "Teach all nations" (Matt. 28:19). The gospel is "his [Christ's] law." The isles and the ends of the [105] earth waited for this law; it is the standard of judgment in the earth.

  Christ is the "one law giver" of this dispensation (Jas. 4:12). For God at "sundry times and in divers [various] manners" spake unto the fathers in time past, but "hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Heb. 1:1, 2). In the presence of Moses on the mount, God said of Christ, "This is my beloved Son; hear ye him" (Matt. 17: 1 5). Moses and his law are ruled out of this dispensation, and Christ and his superior law now rule in its stead To go back to Moses is to reject Christ. To go under the law is to ignore the gospel.

  Christ taught the people "as one having authority" (Matt. 7:29). The precepts he taught are his law. We are under the "law of Christ" (1 Cor. 9:21). "Under Christ's law."—Emphatic Diaglott. His law is the truth (John 1:17). The law of Moses gendered to bondage (Gal. 4:24), while the truth makes men free (John 8:32). We obey and walk in the truth (3 John 3). The law of Christ is the standard of conviction to sinners. When guilty souls fall at the mercy seat for pardon, the law of Sinai never enters their minds. They consider only how they have grieved the Spirit of Christ, and broken his law— the new testament.

  The new testament is a much higher law than the old. It not only condemns all manner of sin, but lifts up a standard of holy living far above the stone table law. The grandest lessons of moral and religious truth ever spoken to men were given in Christ's Sermon on the Mount. The New Testament condemns sin in every form, lifts up the standard of righteousness and holiness in life and experience, and offers life and salvation to all. It is "the perfect law of liberty" (Jas. 1:25), "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:2). To break Moses' law— the Sabbath, etc.—was to be stoned to death. The penalty was temporal. But to break Christ's law is to be worthy of eternal damnation. In the day of judgment the Decalog will not be our standard of judgment but "the word that I [Christ] have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last day" (John 12:48). "When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming [106] fire taking vengeance on them that know not God," punishment will not be meted out to those who disregard the letter of the law as written in the tables of stone, but punishment will then be given to those "that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thess. 1:7 9). The law of Christ—the gospel—will be the standard by which we shall be judged in that day. To disobey the precepts of Christ is to sin. And to sin against his law is to make ourselves liable to eternal judgment and punishment. Obedience to Christ is what the New Testament enjoins (2 Cor. 10:5; Heb. 5:9). But not once in all the New Testament—the law of Christ, that law by which we shall be judged in the last day—are we commanded to keep the seventh day Sabbath. We can observe every precept of the law of liberty, stand clear in his sight, and yet never observe the seventh day, which was one of the shadows of the law dispensation. [107]

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