Opposition From Jehovah’s Enemies
Any and all true works of God always face opposition from His enemies. In Nehemiah 2, there is a reference to evil forces even before Nehemiah reached Jerusalem. On his journey from the east, Governor Nehemiah was granted a military escort for his own protection, plus letters of safe conduct (9).
However, the most serious enmity spoken of in Nehemiah 2:9-10 came not from bandits (9) but from two nasty individuals (10): Sanballat, the governor of Samaria (to the north of Judah), and Tobiah, his official from Ammon (to the east of Judah). Both of these ungodly civil rulers are mentioned as troublemakers throughout this book, especially in chapters 2, 4, 6 and 13.
At this stage, their hatred had not yet manifested itself in actions or even words. The animosity of Sanballat and Tobiah was experienced by them as internal pain, intense distress that anyone would want to help God’s church: “it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel” (2:10). These two extremely wicked men were hardened and self-conscious enemies of Jehovah’s covenant people. They understood that Nehemiah, the new governor of Judah, would assist the Jews but, as yet, they did not know that he planned to build Jerusalem’s perimeter wall.
Once word got out that the Jews under Nehemiah were going to rebuild the wall of their capital city, we read of three powerful enemies, for Geshem the Arabian is now added to the two opponents mentioned earlier (19). Thus Judah has adversaries from three sides: Sanballat in the north, Tobiah from the east and Geshem from the south.
The hostility against God’s church and covenant intensified. Before Nehemiah’s arrival in Jerusalem, Sanballat and Tobiah were “exceedingly” “grieved” (10), but, after they heard of the Jews’ building project, the three enemies “despised” them (19). Thus we read of their mockery of God’s people: “they laughed us to scorn, and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do? will ye rebel against the king?” namely, Emperor Artaxerxes of Medo-Persia (19).
In every age and land, the true church of the Lord Jesus has enemies on every side. She is despised and derided, as was Christ Himself, especially as He hung upon the cross, where He paid the price of our redemption.
What was Nehemiah’s response to their taunts? It took the form of confident words uttered out of a strong faith in the living Lord: “The God of heaven, he will prosper us” (20). Thus Nehemiah stated his resolute purpose to construct the walls of Jerusalem: “therefore we his servants will arise and build” (20)!
Nehemiah’s rejoinder to his three powerful enemies was also sharply antithetical, for the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls was none of their business. Judah’s governor told them, “ye have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem” (20), since they had no legal or religious authority, portion or inheritance in the city of God! O that all church leaders would take such a no-nonsense, firm and unequivocal line against all syncretism with paganism and false ecumenism in our own day! Rev. Stewart
Is God’s Moral Law Permanent?
We have in this issue of the News another request for an article about the law: “Many people believe that the moral law of God (summarized in the Ten Commandments) was rendered obsolete along with the Mosaic civil and ceremonial laws. I know this is error. Please address this in the Covenant Reformed News.”
Many reckon that the Ten Commandments, sometimes referred to as the moral law, are not in effect in the New Testament era and so they do not think they are obligatory in their requirements. This opposition to the Ten Commandments usually rests on the belief that Israel and the church are two different groups with whom God has two different covenants with each covenant having a different sign (circumcision or baptism). These two groups may even have entirely different futures, as is the teaching of premillennialism and dispensationalism. The Ten Commandments, in this view, belong to Israel and the covenant that God made with them.
Matthew 5:17, where Jesus speaks of His fulfilling the law, is often used as proof for this rejection of the Ten Commandments. That, however, is a misunderstanding of the passage. Jesus does not mean that He has done away with the law or He would be contradicting Himself, for He immediately talks about the importance of doing and teaching, and not breaking, the precepts of the law, and goes on to explain and apply several of the commandments.
Romans 10:4, which says that Christ is the “end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth,” is also misused. “End,” in the minds of many, means that the moral law is finished and done away with, but that is not the meaning of the Greek word translated “end” in Romans 10:4. There are other Greek words for “end” that mean that something is finished, with nothing to follow (Matt. 24:31; 28:1; Heb. 6:16; II Pet. 2:20). The word used in Romans 10:4 and many other passages has the meaning of goal or purpose. Christ is the goal of the law. The word “end” in Romans 10:4 does not imply that the Ten Commandments are finished and done away with.
Another argument against the Ten Commandments is found by some in Romans 6:14: “for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” It is wrongly assumed that, because we are not under the law, we have no relationship to the law at all. But that is wrong. The fact that I am not “under” my wife does not mean I have no relationship at all to her. The fact of the matter is that, just as I am over my wife, so also I am over the law. The law, in God’s gracious saving will towards me, is now my servant, as a “schoolmaster to bring [me] unto Christ” (Gal. 3:24).
When asked whether this means that Christians have no law that must be obeyed, the answer is often that Christians obey “the law of Christ” (a phrase only found in Galatians 6:2), that is, the commands and precepts found in the New Testament, which may or may not be the same as the precepts of the Ten Commandments. This is classic Antinomianism, that is, a rejection of God’s law as embodied in the Ten Commandments.
That argument is nullified by Galatians 3:19: “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.” The Ten Commandments, from the time that God gave them at Sinai, were “the law of Christ,” our mediator, and were in His “hand.” To make a distinction between the Ten Commandments and another law of Christ is explicitly contrary to Scripture. To this Paul adds the important truth that the law is not “against the promises of God” (21), as those allege who find a dichotomy between His moral law and grace.
That the Ten Commandments are still in force follows from two arguments. First, the law as embodied in the Ten Commandments is called the law of God, and to say that it is different from the law of Christ comes very close to a denial of Christ’s divinity. Also the Ten Commandments are rooted in the very nature of God and it seems very difficult, therefore, to understand how they could go out of force.
A good example is the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). This command follows from the great truth that He is God alone and that there are no other gods beside Him. The other commandments are similar. The second flows from the truth that God is spirit (John 4:24), and the third from the truth that His name is holy and separate from all other names. The fourth rests upon the truth that He is the eternal Creator who made time, as well as space, and who worked six days and rested on the seventh. The fifth is based upon His sovereign authority, and so on.
If the commandments are not arbitrary rules but follow from the nature of God Himself, they must be still in force and we believe they are. We agree with Westminster Confession 19:5: “The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God, the Creator, who gave it. Neither doth Christ in the gospel any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation” (Rom. 13:8-10; Eph. 6:2; I John 2:3-4, 7-8; James 2:8, 10-11; Matt. 5:17-19; Rom. 3:31).
Those who do not believe that the Ten Commandments are in force for New Testament Christians will admit that almost all of the commandments are repeated in the New Testament. This we see as further evidence that the moral law is abiding. In Matthew 5:21-42, commandments 6, 7 and 3 are explained by Jesus, and He validates the whole second table of the law, commandments 5-10, in verses 43-48. He repeats commandments 5-9 in Matthew 19:18-19. What is more, these examples in Matthew 5 help us to identify the “law” that Jesus is talking about when He says, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (17).
Commandments 7 and 6 are repeated in James 2:11, and James also refers to the rest of the second table when he speaks of loving our neighbour as ourselves (8). Commandment 10, “Thou shalt not covet,” is repeated in Romans 7:7 and Paul establishes the validity of the second table in Romans 13:8-9, where commandments 6-10 are repeated and reference is made to “any other commandment.”
The requirements of the first table are also permanent, according to the teaching of the New Testament. If “love thy neighbour as thyself” is a summary of the second table of the law and “love the Lord thy God” is a summary of the first table, then the New Testament clearly enjoins both. All idolatry and false worship (the first and second commandments) and blasphemy (the third commandment) are clearly forbidden in the New Testament (John 4:24; Gal. 5:20; Col. 3:8; I Tim. 6:1; I John 5:19-21). That leaves only the fourth commandment which is not explicitly repeated but, as we will see in another article, DV, that commandment is also still in force.
I and II John, in their repeated references to the importance of keeping the divine precepts, speak of the commandments of God and make no distinction between these and a “law of Christ” (I John 2:3-4; 3:22, 24; 5:2-3; II John 1:6). Revelation also speaks of the commandments of God and makes no mention of any law of Christ which is different (12:17; 14:12; 22:14). It is difficult to see how this can be anything else but a reference to God’s moral law.
For Paul, the “law” and the “commandment” are “holy, and just, and good” (Rom. 7:12; cf. 13:9), and he confesses that he “delight[s] in the law of God after the inward man” (7:22), which can mean nothing else but that he, regenerated and renewed by grace, a new man in Christ, finds that the law is not something to be despised but cherished.
That the Ten Commandments were written by the finger of God in tables of stone also indicates the permanence of these regulations. That they were spoken by God Himself from Mount Sinai and the stone tables were placed in the ark confirms this, for it shows the difference between these commandments and all the rest of the Mosaic legislation.
John Calvin is right in his comments on Romans 7:12: “I consider that there is a peculiar force in the words, when he says, that the law itself and whatever is commanded in the law, is holy, and therefore to be regarded with the highest reverence—that it is just, and cannot therefore be charged with anything wrong—that it is good, and hence pure and free from everything that can do harm. He thus defends the law against every charge of blame, that no one should ascribe to it what is contrary to goodness, justice, and holiness.”
This leaves us with several matters that still need explanation. We need to look at what it means that we are “dead to the law” (Rom. 7:4; Gal. 2:19). We also must examine the reasons why the fourth commandment, regarding the sabbath, is not explicitly repeated in the New Testament. Rev. Ron Hanko
