Greater Riches than the Treasures in Egypt (6)

by Charles H. Welch

No.6. Righteousness and the Mosaic Law. 

(Numbers 4 and 5 does not appear in this volume 42).

It is impossible to pursue the teaching of the Scriptures on the matter of righteousness without coming up against the relation of righteousness with the law of Moses. One epistle of Paul, namely, that to the Galatians, is almost entirely devoted to that subject. So emphatic is the Apostle on the incompatibility of the two systems, law and grace, that he has written: 

“Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace” (Gal. v. 4). 

Again and again this sentiment is expressed in Paul’s epistles, so that a true understanding of the function of the law is of vital importance. The giving of the law at Mount Sinai took place about 2,400 years after the creation of Adam, but there are many evidences that ‘law’ was known among men during the long period between these two events. Moses himself speaks of making known laws and statutes before Sinai (Exod. xviii. 16); Abraham obeyed God’s “voice” and kept His ‘charge’, ‘commandments’, ‘statutes’ and ‘laws’ (Gen. xxvi. 5). In Genesis alone thirty-four such ‘laws’ have been noted in operation. Moreover Rom. ii. 14, 15, 26, 27 bears evidence to the fact that the nations of the earth had something similar to the law of Sinai ‘written in their hearts’. Finally, the Saviour made it clear that all the law and the prophets hung upon the primal law of love to God and to neighbour. 

We are therefore right in asking the question, Why was the law specially given at Sinai? What purpose did it serve? Has obedience to this law, either in person or by a substitute, any place in the justification which pertains to the gospel? 

Exod. xix. 1-7 and xxiv. 3-8 make it clear that at Sinai, Israel entered into a covenant with God. They would be His peculiar treasure and become a kingdom of priests if they kept this law, but the remainder of the O.T. is tragic witness to the utter failure of Israel to keep its terms. The Old Covenant is likened to Hagar and gendereth to bondage, and all under it are likened to those ‘born after the flesh’ (Gal. iv. 21-31). 

The epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the ‘weakness and unprofitableness’ of this covenant; it shows that ‘the law’ made nothing perfect; that its ordinances were ‘carnal’; its priests ‘infirm’; its sacrifices utterly without avail either to touch the conscience or to put away sins. It declares that God found fault with this first covenant, but that in Christ He has established a New Covenant with a better Sacrifice, a better Priesthood, a better hope and better promises.

“In that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away” (Heb. viii. 13; x. 1-4). 

“By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (Rom. iii. 20). 

As if this were not enough, note the answers of the Scriptures to the question, “Wherefore then serveth the law?” (Gal. iii. 19). 

(1) “It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to Whom the promise was made” (Gal. iii. 19). 

(2) “If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law” (Gal. iii. 21; ii. 21). 

(3) The return of a believer to the law is described as going back to “weak and beggarly elements” (Gal. iv. 9).

(4) “As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse” (Gal. iii. 10). 

(5) “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (Gal. iii. 24). 

(6) “The law which was 430 years after (the promise to Abraham), cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect” (Gal. iii. 17). 

(7) The Old Covenant is described as “the letter that killeth”, “the ministration of death” and “the ministration of condemnation”. It was destined to be “abolished” (II Cor. iii.). 

(8) The law “worketh wrath” (Rom. iv. 15); and entered that sin “might abound” (Rom. v. 20). 

(9) The Apostle, writing as a faithful Christian man, declared that before his conversion as “touching the righteousness of the law” he was “blameless”. This condition he called “mine own righteousness which is of the law”, yet so poor and futile was it (albeit no reader of these lines has ever reached it) that, when compared with the righteousness which is through the faith of Christ, he was constrained to fling aside his own righteousness as so much “refuse” (Phil. iii. 6-9). 

(10) To this law—it claims, its righteousness, its rewards, its works, its promises and its penalties—Paul “died”, that in and with Christ he might “live” unto God (Gal. ii. 19). 

(11) Though the law itself was “holy”, “just”, “good” and “spiritual”, man was carnal and the law was “weak through the flesh” (Rom. vii. 12-14; viii. 3). 

Unconditionally and of set purpose, the Apostle sets the law aside as having no place in the plan of the gospel of grace. When this fact is established beyond the possibility of doubt, he returns to the primeval law of love: 

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Gal. v. 14). 

“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. xiii. 10). 

The law of Moses therefore was a covenant destined to fail because of the inability of Israel to fulfil the terms, and so it becomes a demonstration for all time that ‘by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God’. 

The Apostle’s earliest recorded Gospel address contains these words: 

“Through this Man is preached unto you, the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts xiii. 38, 39).

In view of the consistent testimony of Scripture to the character of that righteousness which is of the law, but to which Paul, as a Pharisee had attained (Phil. iii. 6), any system of teaching that maintains that the obedience of Christ to the law of Moses constitutes the righteousness in which the believer stands accepted, must be repudiated. We stand in ‘a righteousness of God’, a righteousness so far above that attainable under the law, that we must confess that ‘all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags’ in comparison, and like the Apostle, we gladly relinquish all such claim, that we may be found in Christ, not having our own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is by faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. 

If the reader should still feel that the righteousness that is imputed to the believer is the righteousness attained by the obedience of Christ to the law of Moses, let him consider the following: 

(1) Is it not abundantly clear, that the whole doctrine of imputed righteousness is given its fullest and clearest exposition in Rom. iv.? 
(2) Is it not also as abundantly clear that the great outstanding example and illustration of this doctrine of imputed righteousness is that of Abraham, of whom it is written “And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. xv. 6)? 
(3) Inasmuch as Abraham lived before Moses was born and so before the Mosaic law was instituted, it is utterly impossible that the justification of Abraham can have anything to do with obedience to that law, imputed or otherwise. 
(4) Does an examination of either Gen. xv. or of Rom. iv. permit the slightest intrusion of obedience to law either by Abraham himself or the Lord for him? If the answer must be “No” then the teaching that splits the great work of Christ into His active obedience under the law of Moses, and His passive obedience in death, must be repudiated 

(5) It is written that we are justified “by His blood” (Rom. v. 9). 

Let us not by any system of theology veil that simple yet all-embracive fact. 

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(From The Berean Expositor vol. 42, page 104).
http://charleswelch.net/BE%20Vol%2042%20Final.pdf

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The Pleroma (12) - Charles H. Welch

No.12. “The earth is the Lord’s 

and the fullness thereof.”

The principle, that a movement toward the goal of the ages is followed by a rupture and a gap, which in its turn is followed by another movement in the nature of ‘fullness’ or pleroma, has now been established. The cataclysm of Gen. i. 2 is succeeded by the six-day creation which in its turn ends with the expulsion of man from the garden and his ultimate return to the dust from which he was taken. This lesser creation, with its stretched out heaven, the firmament, is the first of a series of fullnesses that pave the way for the advent of Him in Whom “All the fullness” dwells. 

The reader will be familiar with the words: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”, but may not be aware that in addition to these, there are several passages which read “and all that is therein”, these two must be included in the references to the great ‘fullness’. In most cases, the A.V. gives a marginal note to guide the student, but no theory that involves the number of references should be built without personal investigation of the original. 

This conception of ‘fullness’ is not limited to the earth, for the sea, the world and the land are also included. In some instances the ‘earth’ is limited to the land of Israel, as for example the reference in Deut. xxxiii. 16 where we read of the precious things of the ‘earth’ and by the fact that the Hebrew eretz is used, we might assume that this passage refers to the wide ‘earth’. A glance at the context however will show that eretz is here used in its more restricted sense for it occurs in verse 13 “Blessed of the Lord be His land” and the whole chapter is devoted to ‘the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel’. In nearly ever case, however, what is said of the ‘land’ of Israel is but a type and shadow of what shall one day be true of the earth. 

No such limitation however is attached to Psa. xxiv. 1, 2 for we read not only that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, but ‘the world, and all they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods’. 

Expositors and commentators have given scant attention to these words, and many appear to have looked at them and ‘passed by on the other side’. There is more here however than at first appears. In Psa. cxxxvi. we read: 

“To Him that by wisdom, made the heavens: 

For His mercy endureth for ever. 

To Him that stretched out the earth above the waters; 

For His mercy endureth for ever” (Psa. cxxxvi. 5, 6). 

That the creation of the six days is in view, the subsequent references to ‘great lights’, ‘the sun to rule by day and the moon and stars to rule by night’, make clear. 

In article No.4 of this series we observed that the ‘firmament’ or that which for the time is ‘called heaven’ (Gen. i. 6) is the translation of the Hebrew raqia “thinness” or “expansion”. It is the verb raqa ‘to stretch out’ that is employed of the earth in Psa. cxxxvi. 6. Not only so, but Isaiah on two occasions uses the same verb in the same context: 

“He that created the heavens, and stretched them out; He that spread forth (raqa) the earth” (Isa. xlii. 5). 

“That stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad (raqa) the earth by Himself” (Isa. xliv. 24). 

Whatever meaning therefore we attach to the stretching out of the firmament over the earth we must also attach to the stretching out of the earth over the waters. 

This is not the only passage that speaks in this wise. 

“The heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water” (II Pet. iii. 5). 

The Lord said to Job: 

“Whereupon are the foundations fastened?” (Job xxxviii. 6). 

Here, as we have remarked earlier, the word ‘foundations’ is the same as the word ‘socket’ used of the Tabernacle, and we now observe that the word translated ‘fastened’ is the Hebrew taba which means ‘to sink’ as in mire (Psa. lxix. 2, 14) or as when one is ‘drowned’ (Exod. xv. 4), and so most clearly visualizes the earth as stretched out over the waters and anchored by some means to the earth beneath. This necessitates further explanation. One might object to such a statement and say “How can the earth be anchored to the earth?” but such an objection is not valid for it ignores an essential principle of all interpretation, namely, to use terms according to any explanation that may have been attached by authority or custom. Now just as the ‘firmament’ was ‘called’ heaven, so the ‘dry land’ that appeared above the waters on the third day is ‘called’ by a similar concession ‘earth’ (Gen. i. 10), but this is by no means commensurate with the original ‘earth’ of Gen. i. 1. Just as the firmament is stretched out under the true heaven, so the dry land is the earth that is stretched out over the waters. If the reader is at all abreast of scientific discovery, he will know that these references to the stretching out of the earth’s crust upon the waters are a most wonderful evidence of their inspiration. 

“For He hath formed it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods” (Psa. xxiv. 2). 

Punch, which is a very sure index of contemporary thought, makes it very evident that the possibility of the movement of the continents has so far become a matter of common knowledge that it can form the basis of the following pleasantry. 

From Punch, May 19, 1948. 

Lost Touch 

(A scientific expedition is hoping to establish the fact that

north Russia and the American Continent were once joined) 

It doesn’t seem tactful to make such a move 

 At rather a delicate juncture, to prove 

That once the U.S.—though in ages afar 

 Was once with what now is the U.S.S.R. 

                                               W.K.H. 

From Punch, July 7, 1948. 

 “A geologist thinks that Britain is slowly tilting towards the south. Holiday 

makers are asked not to crowd together on the end of Brighton pier.”

To return seriously to the matter in hand, the following extracts are taken from the work entitled The Origin of Continents and Oceans by Alfred Wegener, Professor of Geophysics and Meteorology at the University of Graz, Austria. 

In the introduction to the English translation, John W. Evans, C.B.E., F.R.S., President of the Geological Society, makes the following observation: 

One of the most interesting questions raised by Professor Wegener is the possibility of actually detecting the relative movement of land masses at the present time by instrumental means . . . . . In 1922, Lt.-Col. Jensen made a careful determination of the longitude by means of wireless signals from Naven . . . . . he considered that this was a confirmation of the westward movement of Greenland.”

The reader will note the words ‘the relative movement of land masses’ and ‘the westward movement of Greenland’. These are words of a scientist who apparently had no intention of relating his findings to the teaching of the Word. Professor Wegener calls his views ‘The Displacement Theory’ and draws attention to the similarity of the contours of the coast line of Brazil and Africa. 

“Not only does the great right-angled bend formed by the Brazilian coast at Cape San Roque find its exact counterpart in the re-entrant angle of the African coast line near the Cameroons, but also, south of these two corresponding points, every projection of the Brazilian side corresponds to a similarly shaped bay in the African, and conversely each indentation on the Brazilian coast has a complementary protuberance on the African. Experiment with a compass on a globe shows that their dimensions agree accurately. This new idea is called the theory of the displacement of continents, or more shortly, the displacement theory, since its prominent component is the assumption of great horizontal drifting movements which the continental blocks underwent in the course of geological time and which presumably continue even today. According to this idea, to take a particular case, millions of years ago, the South American continental plateau lay directly adjoining the African plateau, even forming one large continental mass. This first split in cretaceous* (* - Cretaceous = chalk like. A geological term for certain rock formations.) time into two parts, which then like floating icebergs drifted farther and farther apart.” 

The reader will not fail to mark the figure employed here. How different from the conception of a solid earth, and how near an approximation to the Scriptural teaching of the earth spread out on sea and flood, is the figure ‘like floating icebergs’, yet this figure occurs in a scientific and non-Biblical treatise. 

“It is assumed that the continental blocks with a thickness of about 100km. swim in a magma out of which they only project about 5km.” 

Note the words ‘swim in a magma’. A magma is a crude mixture of mineral or organic matter in a thin paste, a confection. How did Job, Isaiah and the Psalmist know that the dry land ‘swam in a magma’ apart from revelation? And how the so-called ‘man in the street’ would scoff at such an idea today as unscientific! 

“The floors of the ocean, form the surface of the next layer of the body of the earth which is also assumed to exist under the continental blocks.” 

“The rotation of the entire crust of the earth—but whose parts however did not alter their relative positions—has already been assumed by many authors, as Sir John Evans, Loffelholz von Colberg, Kreichgauer and others.” 

After several pages of complicated mathematics, Wegener continues: 

“From this it must be concluded that there are already undisturbed levels, and from this the step seems inevitable, that in the continents and the floors of the ocean we have two different layers of the body of the earth, which expressed in a somewhat exaggerated form, act as water does between great sheets of ice.” 

Gen. i. 9, 10 draws attention to the fact that ‘God called the dry land earth’ and that it ‘appeared’ when the waters were gathered together which He called ‘seas’, which fact is often expanded by the references already given from Psa. cxxxvi. 6; Isa. xlii. 5 and Psa. xxiv. 2. 

Speaking of the phenomenon, the movement of the magnetic poles, Wegener says, “In the matter of the displacement of the pole relative to the intercover of the earth we need a viscous earth. Laplace has shown that the axes in a rigid earth cannot be displaced”. Viscous means, in physics, imperfectly fluid; adhesively soft. 

A Further testimony is reported by Reuter 22/6/48. Dr. F. W. Whitehouse, Queensland University lecturer in geology told a meeting in Brisbane that from calculations made in the U.S. it had been estimated that the sea level was rising about four inches a century on a world-wide average. Four inches per century, means that at the time of Christ, nineteen hundred years ago, the level of the land was 6 ft. 4 ins. higher than it was today, and that if the sinkage continues, it will not be long before some lands will be endangered and disappear. Everything points to a not far distant future when this exhausted earth will have reached its foreknown limits, and be ready for the great purging and the still greater renewal. Such is the testimony of modern science to the veracity and to the inspiration of the Scriptures, and to statements of Scripture which some years ago would have been held up to ridicule by the ‘science of the day’. This earth, the habitable world (Psa. xxiv. 1, Heb. tebel, Greek oikoumene), this earth over which the heaven stretches like the curtains of the Tabernacle and whose sockets, like the silver sockets of the Tabernacle speak of redemptive purpose, this, ‘the dry land’ of Gen. i. 10 is associated with ‘fullness’ as we have already seen, and with the glory of God as we must now consider. 

“The whole earth is full of His glory” (Isa. vi. 3). 

This cry of the Seraphim when they beheld His glory (i.e. the glory of Christ, John xii. 41) is variously translated. The A.V. margin reads ‘His glory is the fullness of the whole earth’ whereas the R.V. margin reads ‘The fullness of the whole earth is His glory’ and this follows most clearly the order of the Hebrew original. 

It is beyond the power of man to decide whether the words ‘the whole earth’ embrace the whole world, or whether in the first instance they mean the whole land, for the same word which is translated ‘earth’ is also translated ‘land’ (Isa. i. 19; ii. 7, 8; v. 30; vi. 12, etc.) but even so, the lesser ‘land’ of Israel is a type or symbol of the whole earth, and so whatever is said of the ultimate blessing of ‘the land’ but foreshadows the greater blessing of ‘the earth’ in the Lord’s good time. 

So, when Israel were crossing the Jordan in order to ‘divide for an inheritance the LAND’ (Heb. eretz Josh i. 6, 11, 13, 14, 15), the Lord is called “The Lord of all the EARTH” (Heb. eretz Josh. iii. 11, 13), and when at the other end of their history, under another “Joshua” (Zech. iii. 1) Israel return from their captivity to the same land (Zech. iii. 9; vii. 14), once again the Lord is called ‘the Lord of all the earth’ (Zech. vi. 5) even though in the very next verse, eretz is translated ‘country’.

The twenty-fourth Psalm that speaks of the earth being the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, uses the word ‘glory’ more than any other of the Psalms. Five times it speaks of “The King of glory”, Who is to be “King over all the earth” (Zech. xiv. 9). A further link between Psa. xxiv., Isa. vi. and Zech. xiv., is found in the reference to the earthquake which took place in the days of Uzziah king of Judah (Zech. xiv. 5), which appears by the context to have been one of the many foreshadowings of the Second Coming of the Lord. The fullness of the earth and the glory of the Lord are bound up together; he that furthers the one, enhances the other, and that which ‘comes short of the glory of God’ militates against the blessing of man. 

Since the first great gap (Gen. i. 2) other lesser gaps have come, as Adam, Noah, Abraham and the successive stories of their stand or fall are unfolded. Equally so, a succession of ‘fullnesses’ follow, until all is headed up in Him, in Whom ‘all fullness’ dwells. Let us pursue this theme, for in its understanding is enshrined the heart of God’s age-long purpose. 

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(From The Berean Expositor vol. 42, page 237).

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