Chapter LXXXVII: Section LXXXV: Why the Gentiles were Exempt from the Law

The exemption of the Gentile Christian church from the authority of the ceremonial law must be accounted for upon some principle which will harmonize with all the facts. The common theory assumes it to be of the very nature of a type to perish and be abrogated by its realization in the antitype. Thus, it is supposed, that the sacrificial system of necessity expired with its fulfillment by Christ’s one offering of himself. But, as we have seen, the law was not in fact abrogated, but continues in unimpaired authority over Israel. Why, then, are the Gentiles exempt from its obligations?

The reason was briefly intimated by Peter. “Why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear;”—literally, “neither (_ischusamen_) _were strong_ to bear.”—Acts xv, 10. This verb means, _to be strong_, and is sometimes used with a negative particle, as here, to indicate a labor of great difficulty, not amounting to an impracticability. Thus, in John xxi, 6, it is said of the net of fishes,—“They _were not able_” (were not _strong_) “to draw it, for the multitude of fishes.” And yet, immediately after, when their force had been reduced by Peter casting himself into the sea and swimming to land, they came “dragging the net with fishes,” and Peter himself drew it to land. (vs. 8, 11.) The ritual law was a burdensome, although not impossible institution, for Israel, when dwelling in their own land. But, as a system of worship for a world-religion, it was unsuitable. Essential to it was the one temple, altar and priest, at Jerusalem, typical of the one sanctuary and service in heaven. Hither must all males repair statedly, three times a year, and both men and women upon many special occasions beside, of a personal nature. To a population of four or five millions, dwelling in the narrow limits of Palestine,—a territory the extreme dimensions of which were about 100 miles by 150,—this was possible, although burdensome. But, to the distant millions of the world’s inhabitants, manifestly it would have been utterly impracticable.

Moreover, to the race at large, the ceremonial law had already fulfilled its most important and essential offices. Undoubtedly, it could still have been used by the grace of God, as it had been for ages before, as a mode for the effectual transmission and dissemination of the gospel testimony, kept in unimpaired purity by the agency of unchanging forms. Nor is the fact to be everlooked, or lightly regarded, that representations to the eye and the physical senses have a peculiar power over the affections and the heart, a power often greater and more influential than any appeal to the intellect through the organs of hearing. Had such been the will of God, the ritual system was certainly susceptible of being made a powerful auxiliary to the dissemination of the gospel, by its relation to these principles of man’s nature.

But, when the gospel was given to the Gentiles, the system of elementary ideas which were embodied and exhibited in the Mosaic ceremonial possessed a world-wide diffusion. The art of writing had been developed and disseminated. The Old Testament Scriptures were already written and widely distributed, and the gospels and epistles were soon to follow. Thus the cardinal importance of the ritual ordinances as a mode for the recording and perpetuation of the gospel was obsolete,—replaced by means more appropriate to a religion now destined for the world. And the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power,” which now accompanies the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles, is abundant compensation for the ritual system, as an appeal to the affections, through the senses.

It is thus apparent that the discrimination, in the beginning made between Jew and Gentile respecting the ceremonial law,—its obligation on the one, and the exemption of the other,—was neither arbitrary nor unmeaning, but alike reasonable and susceptible of full and beautiful realization in practice. It implied the continuance of Israel as a priest-kingdom among the nations, maintaining at Jerusalem, as a standard of faith to the world, that system of rites which so beautifully, so clearly and impressively set forth the gospel to the eyes and senses of men; whilst, the world over, the same gospel should have been published, by the written and printed word, by the living voice, and by the simple ritual of Gentile Christianity, practicable everywhere. But such was not the purpose of God. At the beginning, our first parents by sin forfeited the Eden which might have been theirs. So, Israel forfeited her offered privilege. Jerusalem was destroyed, and the gospel and the church were given to the Gentiles,—“until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved.”—Rom. xi, 25, 26.