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The New Covenant Promise, February 23
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the
Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write
them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
Hebrews 10:16, 17
.
It is the Creator of men, the Giver of the law, who declares that it is not His
purpose to set aside its precepts. Everything in nature, from the mote in the
sunbeam to the worlds on high, is under law. And upon obedience to these laws
the order and harmony of the natural world depend. So there are great principles
of righteousness to control the life of all intelligent beings, and upon conformity
to these principles the well-being of the universe depends.
Before this earth was called into being, God’s law existed. Angels are governed
by its principles, and in order for earth to be in harmony with heaven, man also
must obey the divine statutes. To man in Eden Christ made known the precepts of
the law “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted
for joy” (
Job 38:7
). The mission of Christ on earth was not to destroy the law, but
by His grace to bring man back to obedience to its precepts.
The beloved disciple, who listened to the words of Jesus on the mount, writing
long afterward under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, speaks of the law as of
perpetual obligation. He says that “sin is the transgression of the law” and that
“whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law” (
1 John 3:4
). He makes it
plain that the law to which he refers is “an old commandment which ye had from
the beginning” (
chap. 2:7
). He is speaking of the law that existed at the creation
and was reiterated upon Mount Sinai....
He [Jesus] was to show the spiritual nature of the law, to present its far-reaching
principles, and to make plain its eternal obligation.
The divine beauty of the character of Christ, of whom the noblest and most
gentle among men are but a faint reflection; of whom Solomon by the Spirit of
inspiration wrote, He is “the chiefest among ten thousand.... Yea, he is altogether
lovely” (
Song of Solomon 5:10-16
); of whom David, seeing Him in prophetic
vision, said, “Thou art fairer than the children of men” (
Psalm 45:2
); Jesus, the
express image of the Father’s person, the effulgence of His glory; the self-denying
Redeemer, throughout His pilgrimage of love on earth, was a living representation
of the character of the law of God. In His life it is made manifest that heaven-born
love, Christlike principles, underlie the laws of eternal rectitude....
Those principles that were made known to man in Paradise as the great law
of life will exist unchanged in Paradise restored.—
Thoughts from the Mount of
Blessing, 48-51
.
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