WERE
THE OLD COVENANT AND THE TEN COMMANDMENTS THE SAME THING?
By
Eric V. Snow
Should the old covenant be seen as more or less identical
to the law? Or, are the two
substantially different
entities altogether?[1] One of the foundational fallacies of the
teachings of
the Worldwide Church of
God concerning abolition of the Sabbath is about how it equates the
old covenant and the
law.
Pasadena has defined "covenant" the way a
dictionary would: "We can start by
defining
the word covenant. In simple terms, a covenant is a formal
agreement. It can be an agreement
between two people, a
treaty between nations, or a relationship between God and a human
individual or
nation."[2] However, in the course of argumentation, a
truly CRUCIAL term switch
(equivocation)
occurs. Pasadena then says that the law
and the old covenant are the same,
thereby confusing what
the agreement (contract) was about with the agreement itself:
The
Ten Commandments were the words of the covenant. . . . The Ten Commandments
formed the core of the Sinaitic, or old covenant, but the covenant also
included all of Exodus 20-24. . . . The old covenant, as a package of laws
regulating a relationship between God and his people, is obsolete. . . . This
"setting aside" is not just talking about Levitical and sacrificial
laws that were added to the old covenant--it is talking about the old covenant
itself. The whole package was set aside
and replaced by Christ.[3]
David Albert also
expressed this viewpoint succinctly and clearly:
I didn=t know and nobody had
ever taught me in my 35 years in the Church that the Ten Commandments were the
old covenant, as is to clearly stated in Ex. 34:28 and again in Deuteronomy
4:13. I see now that we were ignorant
about such basics as how God in his Word defines the old covenant--namely, by
the Ten Commandments and vice versa.
Nobody ever taught me the truth and the sweeping implications of these
two vitally important verses.[4]
The importance of this
issue can=t be stressed enough. For it was the most important argument
in Mr. Tkach=s three hour sermon that
first announced the Anew covenant@ changes that would
abolish the Sabbath,
tithing, and the holy days.
Here it shall be maintained that the Ten Commandments,
and indeed all the laws God
gave to Israel, are not
the same thing as the old covenant. By
itself, the old covenant was a
contract between God and
Israel in which the latter made a generic promise of obedience in
return for material (not
spiritual) national blessings. (Lev. 26
and Deut. 28 describe the physical
promises, and won't be
the focus of this analysis). Now, the
Ten Commandments are called a
"covenant" in
Deut. 4:13; 9:9-11; I Kings 8:9,21. But
is this covenant the same covenant as the
old covenant? No--instead, actually two covenants
were made with Israel in Ex. 19-24, one of
which was the Ten
Commandments, the other which is the old covenant in which God made
Israel His chosen people
with various (material) blessings in exchange for their promise of
obedience. But--how do we know they are different
covenants?
Evidence that these covenants are different is found in
how Paul's descriptions of the Ten
Commandments or the law
don't fit those made about the old covenant.
For example, the author
of Hebrews (8:6-7) said
about the old covenant: "But now
He has obtained a more excellent
ministry, by as much as
He is also the mediator of a better covenant, WHICH HAS BEEN
ENACTED,[5] on better promises. For if that first covenant had been
faultless, there would have
been no occasion sought
for a second." Consider carefully
as you read through the Ten
Commandments: Can you find anything wrong or weak with
their promises? Paul quotes the
fifth commandment in
Eph. 6:1-3, inserting the parenthetical thought "(which is the first
commandment with a
promise)" concerning its statement, "that it may be well with you,
and that
you may live long on the
earth." Now, what's wrong with
that promise? Don't the meek inherit
the earth (Matt. 5:5)
for life evermore? As Walker put
it: "It is scripturally impossible
for the
Ten Commandments to be
the old covenant, for there are no defective promises found therein."[6]
This text also implies
Paul thought individual parts of the Ten Commandments were still
binding, when he
so-matter-of-factly cites the fifth one.
Consider--the old covenant wasn't "faultless"
(Heb. 8:7). Do the Ten Commandments
have any faults in
them? Would you dare call something
written by the finger of God (Ex.
31:18) and thundered
aloud by His own voice (Ex. 19:11-12, 19-20; 20:1; Deut. 5:4-5, 22-27;
9:10) defective or
faulty? Ps. 19:7 says: "The law of
the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul."
James 1:25 says: "But one who looks intently at the
perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by
it, not having become a
forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what
he does." In Romans
7:12, Paul maintains: "So then,
the Law is holy, and the commandment is
holy and righteous and
good." Could such a law be faulty
as well if it is "perfect," "holy,"
"righteous,"
and "good"? Can you honestly
maintain these descriptions of the Ten
Commandments or the law
fit the old covenant? (Remember, Paul
had just quoted the tenth
commandment in Rom. 7:7,
so this should be the "law" he has in mind in v. 12). God found fault
with the people of Israel (Heb. 8:8), not His law itself,
because they tried to obey it by human
effort. For the basic flaw of the old covenant lies
not in the law Israel was supposed to obey in
its contract with God,
but in them trying to do it without God's Holy Spirit to aid them in their
attempt.
The old covenant now no longer exists, which is what Heb.
8:13 really says: "When He
said, 'A new covenant,'
He had made the first obsolete. But
whatever is becoming obsolete and
growing old is ready to
disappear." But does God's law
continue to exist? James thinks so
(2:10-
11): "For whoever keeps the whole law and
yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of
all. For He who said, 'Do not commit adultery,'
also said, 'Do not commit murder.' Now
if you
do not commit adultery,
but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law."
Paul also thinks so in
Romans 7:7-8: "What shall we say
then? Is the Law sin? May it never be!
On the contrary, I would
not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not
have known about
coveting [i.e as a sin] if the Law had not said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin,
taking opportunity
through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart
from the Law sin is dead
[i.e. doesn't exist]." Hence, the
law couldn't be the same thing as the
old covenant since one
still exists and the other doesn't.
Similarly, if the law was substantially
identical to the old
covenant, then one could insert into Romans 3:31 "old covenant" where
"law"
appears, and it would
make sense: "Do we then nullify
the (old covenant) through faith? May
it
never be! On the contrary, we establish the (old
covenant)." The absurdity of
saying the law and
the old covenant are
substantially one and the same is evident.
Now the giving of the law is implied to be different from
the covenants in Romans 9:4:
"(W)ho are
Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the
covenants and
the giving of the law
and the temple service and the promises."
Implicitly, the law is not made
identical to the
covenants (plural) mentioned since it is listed separately from them. The old
covenant wasn't the law
itself, but it was made "concerning all these words" (Ex.
24:8, KJV) of
God's law in written
form. A similar distinction exists in
Ex. 34:27-28 in which the covenant
between God and Israel
is different from the Ten Commandments:
"And the Lord said to Moses,
'Write these words, for
after the purpose and character of these words I have made a covenant
with you and with
Israel'" (v. 27, Amplified).
"It was not the law itself but over the keeping of
the law--'the tenor of
the words'--that the Old Covenant was made.@[7] Moses called the golden
calf Israel worshipped
"your sin, the calf which you had made," yet this wasn't the sin itself
(compare I Cor.
10:19). "In the same way the Old
Covenant was not the law, but it was
concerning the law. Thus it is called the covenant." Again,
we have more reasons to doubt the
view the law and the old
covenant are basically identical.
Another way to look at the
relationship between the old covenant and the Ten
Commandments
is to see the latter as the basis for the former.[8] For the failure of Israel to obey
God
(i.e., uphold its part of the contract) doesn't make its basis cease to exist,
since the contract
is
about or concerns the basis, but isn't it itself. The old covenant was not a law, but an
agreement
to keep the law. And Israel failed
miserably in keeping this law, and failed to uphold
its
part of the covenant. For God found
"fault with them" (Heb. 8:8), that is, the people, not his
perfect
law (Ps. 19:17; James 1:25). The basic
flaw with the old covenant was on the human end
(trying
to obey without spiritual help), not God's (concerning His law). It=s incorrect to say the
law,
sacrificial or moral, was the old covenant, as opposed to saying it was about,
concerning, or
was
the basis for, Israel's general promise to obey in return for material national
blessings.
Hence, the teaching of the Worldwide Church of God that
the Ten Commandments are
basically the same thing
as the old covenant is incorrect.
Therefore, one can=t argue that the
end of the old covenant
abolishes the Sabbath, the Holy Days, or tithing. For after all, if God
says (Heb. 8:10), AI will put My laws into
their minds, and I will write them upon their hearts,@
how does that abolish
the law, as opposed to making it more binding?
Therefore, the end of the
old covenant and the
establishment of the new, far from abolishing these laws, allows them to be
written on our hearts.
[1]This whole line of ultimately reasoning comes from a truly
brilliant SDA book by Allen Walker called The Law and the Sabbath. Its
chief value lies in how it refutes this crucial argument of Pasadena=s, which Dr. Bacchiocchi=s works don=t appear to deal with. For this argument was at the core of the
arguments Brinsmead made in his Verdict articles and Ratzlaff made in Sabbath
in Crisis. It can be ordered for
$6.95 plus $2 postage from: Amazing
Facts, P.O. Box 680, Frederick, MD
21705-0680.