Confession of Faith: Article XXV

This article about the ceremonial law follows the article of man’s sanctification and good works, for the rule for that sanctification is the law of God. Now the law of God is dealt with in this article.

The word law is related to a Latin word, lex, which comes from a verb which may mean reading or the conditions of a contract or of an agreement. The Hebrew word for law, Torah, means instruction or guidance. And in the Greek you have the word nomos, which means direction. The word law is used in different meanings in the Bible. Sometimes it means the Holy Scriptures or the books of the Old Testament. Sometimes it means just the first five books of Moses. Sometimes the word law stands in contrast to the word gospel, and then it points to the requirements of the covenant of works. Sometimes it is even used for instruction in the broader sense, the teachings of the gospel. So the word law can have different meanings.

We also know that there are three kinds of laws: the moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law. The moral law is the law of the Ten Commandments, written in stone, which signifies that it is an eternal law; it is not abolished. The civil laws were the laws about Israel’s government, Israel’s political daily life. The ceremonial law deals with Israel’s worship. Those ceremonial laws also deal, in the first place, with holy or sacred persons, such as the high priest, the priests, the Levites, or the people who worked in the sanctuary. They deal, in the second place, with holy places, such as the tabernacle, the temple, the holy place, and the Holy of Holies. The ceremonial laws also deal with holy seasons, such as the feasts, the religious feasts which Israel had: Passover, Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, the great day of atonement, the Purim feast, and several others.

They also had ceremonial laws about the sacred things or objects, such as the ark with the golden mercy seat, with the cherubim on it, and the Lord speaking from above the mercy seat. All the furnishings in the tabernacle, such as the table of shewbread, were described by the Lord: how they were to look, their exact measurements, and whether they had to be of gold or shittim wood. The ceremonial laws also described the holy operations in the tabernacle and the temple: the washings, the cleansings, the purifications.

There are those who say, “The Old Testament is a very inferior part of the Bible when compared with the New Testament. It is very dark, and incomprehensible, and full of laws and prescriptions which we do not keep anymore, so why should we bother with it?” That is what this article addresses. It says two things. First, “that the ceremonies and figures of the law ceased at the coming of Christ.” The High Priest had come; the true Lamb of God had been slain; the true Sacrifice had been brought. The Antitype had come, therefore it was no longer necessary that the types, ceremonies, and shadows be practiced. We no longer need priests, an altar in the church, and the washings and cleansings as described in the ceremonial law. The civil law of Israel is also not our rule anymore. It gives instruction, useful instruction, but we are not ruled by the civil law. That was the law for Israel’s nation, which was a theocratic nation: God reigned over Israel. These laws were for the old dispensation.

The only law which is still our guideline and which we still are to obey is the moral law or the law of the Ten Commandments. That does not mean, however, that those other laws do not have any meaning for us. All those prescriptions are still part of the holy canon of the Word of God, and they have much significance for us. They still are a rich pictorial gospel of the Old Testament. In the whole epistle to the Hebrews, especially in chapter 9, the author constantly uses that pictorial gospel and applies those examples to the New Testament dispensation. In that respect the ceremonial law is still very important for us. When we read that the Lord speaks from above the mercy seat, and what the mercy seat points to, then we are to think about the ark pointing to Christ. When we hear about the mercy seat as the place where the Lord rests in the blood of the Lamb, in the sacrifice being brought, and how it all points to the sacrifice of Golgotha, then we should never say that it is just something of the old dispensation and but a shadow or a ceremony. It has a rich meaning.

The high priest in the Old Testament also has such a rich significance. For example, the high priest bore the breastplate, and in the breastplate were twelve stones, twelve names, one stone for each tribe. The breastplate was attached to two shoulder plates; in those shoulder plates were onyx stones, and in each stone were the names of six tribes. Together those stones carried all the names of all the tribes. What does that signify? It signifies that Christ, the great High Priest, bears the names of His Church, all of them, upon His heart, and He carries them upon His shoulders. Is it not a rich word and a rich gospel for weary and heavy laden ones that they are carried on the shoulders of the great High Priest, or, if they may see by faith, that they are written, as it were, on, or in, the heart of the High Priest Himself?

When we read about the passover, the holy season, and what had to take place, how that a lamb had to be taken from among the other lambs and set apart for that purpose, we must think of Christ being separated for that specific purpose. The lamb had to be examined, and it had to be approved; it was to be without blemish; it had to be set apart for four days; and then it had to be slain, and the blood applied to the door-posts. Does this not also have a rich meaning? Does this not point to the Lamb of God slain on Golgotha and to the necessity of, and the safety behind, the blood on the door-post of the human heart?

When we look at the offerings, then we can say that one can also find the contents of the gospel or of the epistle to the Romans in the books of Moses. There is justification and there is sanctification, which are the main contents of the epistle to the Romans. You find justification in the sacrifices, in the sin-offerings and guilt-offerings. You find sanctification in the washings, in the cleansings. There was not only an altar of burnt offering; there was also a laver where washings were needed for the priests, signifying that we all need to be washed, otherwise we cannot enter into the presence of God. There is justification, but also sanctification.

It should be sufficiently clear that we must never minimize the value, the significance, of the old ceremonial laws. They are still a pictorial gospel. We must never say, as many do today, that the Old Testament contains another message than the New Testament, that the Old Testament is only law, and the New Testament is only gospel. There is also gospel in the entire Old Testament. The difference is this: the Old Testament (in the old dispensation) is, as it were, the blossom, and the New Testament is the ripe fruit. The old dispensation is the flower not yet budding out, but the New Testament is the flower flourishing. The Old Testament is the promise, the New Testament is the fulfillment. We need both. One can never understand the Old Testament without the New. The Old Testament points to the New Testament. So if one takes a text or reads a chapter from the Old Testament, he should always realize that this must be understood in the light of the New Testament. It points through the shadows to the New Testament revelation of salvation in the Lamb of God. But the New Testament should never be read without the Old Testament, for the Old Testament is, as it were, the illustration or the pointing to the gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament.

— to be continued —

“Thou God Seest Me”
(Genesis 16:13)

The wicked, indeed, habitually act as if God were not omnipresent. They feel it a relief, a positive relief, to escape from the eye of some fellow-creature whom they believe to be penetrated with a profound hatred of their wicked purposes. And when they can contrive to hide them from all such, to keep them from the knowledge of all save those who happen to be as tolerant of sin as themselves, or more so, they are at their ease. A most conclusive demonstration that they either altogether disbelieve the plain and fundamental scriptural truth that “God seeth all things,” or that, if they believe it, they have made up their minds to defy Him to His face!

There are few more conclusive and continually operating proofs of the depravity and ungodliness of the carnal mind than its strange, cool, unaccountable, and settled forgetfulness of the very existence and nature of God as an infinite and omnipresent Spirit. Well may it be said to the sinner, if there is anything to which you can give yourself, on Sabbath or on weekday, which you could not bear to have some holy man acquainted with, or in which you could not bear to have some holy man your spectator or companion, what are you better than an atheist? Are you not practically denying a God altogether? for a Being not everywhere present, beholding the evil and the good, is no God, but an idol. How can you profess to have in you even the very beginnings of religion, if you habitually and coolly set aside the foundation of all personal piety?

— Hugh Martin

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