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The Grace of Christ and the New Covenant
At their creation Adam and Eve knew about the law of God. They
had been introduced to its claims, and its principles were written
on their hearts. When they fell to sin, the law was not changed but
God gave the promise of a Savior. Sacrificial offerings pointed to
the death of Christ as the great sin offering.
The law of God was handed down from father to son through
each generation, but only a few people obeyed. The world became
so evil that it was necessary to cleanse it from its wickedness by
the Flood. Noah taught his descendants the Ten Commandments.
As they again departed from God, the Lord chose Abraham, of
whom He said, “Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge,
My commandments, My statutes, and My laws” (
Genesis 26:5
).
God gave him the rite of circumcision, a pledge to be separate
from idolatry and obey the law of God. The failure of Abraham’s
descendants to keep their pledge was the cause of their slavery
in Egypt. In their contact with idol worshippers and their forced
submission to the Egyptians, the divine principles became still more
corrupted with the shameful teachings of heathenism. So the Lord
came down on Mt. Sinai and spoke His law in awesome majesty in
the hearing of all the people.
He did not even then trust His laws to the memory of a people
so likely to forget, but wrote them on tablets of stone. And He did
not stop with giving them the Ten Commandments. He commanded
Moses to write judgments and laws giving detailed instruction about
what He required. These directions only amplified the principles
of the Ten Commandments in a specific manner, designed to guard
their sacredness.
If Abraham’s descendants had kept the covenant, of which cir-
cumcision was a sign, there would have been no need for God’s law
to be proclaimed from Mt. Sinai or engraved on tablets of stone.
The sacrificial system was also perverted. Through long contacts
with idolaters, Israel had mixed in many heathen customs with their
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