A New Law for All Nations

It follows, then, that just as the ending of circumcision in the flesh and of the old law has been shown to have been carried through at its own set times, so the keeping of the sabbath is shown to have been for a time as well. For the Jews say that God made the seventh day holy from the beginning, resting on it from all the works he had made, and that this is why Moses said to the people: “Remember the day of the sabbaths, to keep it holy. You shall do no servile work on it, except what has to do with life.” From this we Christians understand that we ought all the more to keep a sabbath from every kind of “servile work” always — not only every seventh day, but through all time. And that raises the question for us: which sabbath did God want us to keep? For the Scriptures point to a sabbath that is eternal and a sabbath that belongs to a time. Isaiah the prophet says, “My soul hates your sabbaths,” and in another place he says, “You have profaned my sabbaths.” From this we can tell that the sabbath belonging to a time is a human thing, and the eternal sabbath is counted as divine. It is the eternal one he foretells through Isaiah: “And there shall be,” he says, “month after month, and day after day, and sabbath after sabbath; and all flesh shall come to worship in Jerusalem, says the Lord.” We understand that this was fulfilled in the time of Christ, when “all flesh” — that is, every nation — “came to worship in Jerusalem” God the Father, through Jesus Christ his Son, as was foretold through the prophet: “Look, converts will come to you through me.” So then, before this sabbath that belonged to a time, an eternal sabbath had already been shown and foretold, just as before circumcision in the flesh a spiritual circumcision had already been shown. [a]

In short, let them teach us — as we have said already — that Adam kept the sabbath; or that Abel, when he offered God a holy victim, pleased him by a religious regard for the sabbath; or that Enoch, when he was taken up, had been a sabbath-keeper; or that Noah the ark-builder kept an enormous sabbath on account of the flood; or that Abraham offered his son Isaac in observance of the sabbath; or that Melchizedek in his priesthood received the law of the sabbath.

But the Jews are sure to say that the observance has been binding ever since this command was given through Moses. Then it is plain that the command was not eternal or spiritual, but for a time, and would one day cease. Here is how true it is that the keeping of this solemn day does not consist in resting from work on the sabbath, that is, on the seventh day. Joshua son of Nun, at the time he was reducing the city of Jericho by war, said that he had received a command from God to order the people that the priests should carry the ark of God’s covenant around the city for seven days, and that when the seventh day’s circuit had been completed the walls of the city would fall of themselves. And so it was done: when the space of the seventh day was finished, down came the walls of the city, exactly as had been foretold. From this it is plainly shown that a sabbath day fell inside that count of seven days. Seven days, whenever they begin, must include a sabbath within them; and on that day not only must the priests have worked, but the city must have been made plunder by the edge of the sword by the whole people of Israel. And there is no doubt that they “did servile work” when, obeying God’s command, they drove off the spoils of war.

In the days of the Maccabees, too, they fought bravely on the sabbaths, routed their foreign enemies, and by fighting on the sabbaths brought their fathers’ law back to its original way of life. And I do not think the law they were defending was any other than the one in which they remembered the standing rule about “the day of the sabbaths.” From all this it is plain that the force of such commands was for a time and had to do with the needs of the moment, and that God did not give them a law like that with a view to keeping it forever.

In the same way we show that sacrifices of earthly offerings and spiritual sacrifices were both foretold; and further, that from the beginning the earthly ones were shown beforehand in the person of Cain, the “elder son” — that is, Israel — and the opposite sacrifices shown to be those of the “younger son,” Abel, that is, of our people. For the elder, Cain, offered God gifts from the fruit of the earth, but the younger son, Abel, from the fruit of his ewes. The account runs: [g]

God had regard for Abel and for his gifts, but for Cain and his gifts he had no regard. And God said to Cain: Why has your face fallen? Have you not sinned — if you offer rightly but do not divide rightly? Be quiet. For your turning shall be to you, and he shall rule over you. And then Cain said to Abel his brother: Let us go out into the field. And he went there with him, and killed him. And then God said to Cain: Where is Abel your brother? And he said: I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper? God said to him: The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. So the ground is cursed, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood. Groaning and trembling you shall be on the earth, and everyone who finds you shall kill you.

From this we gather that the two kinds of sacrifice offered by “the peoples” were shown beforehand from the very beginning. In short, when the priestly law was being drawn up through Moses in Leviticus, we find it laid down for the people of Israel that sacrifices were to be offered to God in no other place than in the land of promise, which the Lord God was about to give to “the people” Israel and to their brothers — so that once Israel had been brought in there, sacrifices and whole burnt offerings should be celebrated there, both for sins and for souls, and nowhere else but in the holy land. Why, then, does the Spirit afterward foretell through the prophets that sacrifices would come to be offered to God in every place and in every land? He says it through Malachi, his messenger, one of the twelve prophets: “I will not accept sacrifice from your hands; for from the rising of the sun to its setting my Name has been made famous among all the nations, says the Lord Almighty, and in every place they offer clean sacrifices to my Name.” Again, in the Psalms, David says: “Bring to God, you countries of the nations” — and no wonder, since the preaching of the apostles had to “go out into every land” — “bring to God fame and honor; bring to God the sacrifices of his name; take up victims and enter his courts.”

That the offering to be made to God is not by earthly sacrifices but by spiritual ones, we read where it is written: “A crushed and humbled heart is a victim for God”; and elsewhere, “Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High.” So the spiritual “sacrifices of praise” are pointed to, and “a crushed heart” is shown to be a sacrifice God accepts. And so, just as sacrifices in the flesh are understood to be rejected — Isaiah speaks of them too, saying, “What is the point of your many sacrifices to me? says the Lord” — so spiritual sacrifices are foretold as accepted, as the prophets announce. For “even if you bring me,” he says, “the finest wheat flour, it is a useless gift of entreaty, a thing I detest”; and again he says, “Your whole burnt offerings and sacrifices, and the fat of goats and the blood of bulls, I do not want — not even if you come to be seen by me. For who has demanded these things from your hands?” Because “from the rising of the sun to its setting my Name has been made famous among all the nations, says the Lord.” But about the spiritual sacrifices he adds, “And in every place they offer clean sacrifices to my Name, says the Lord.”

So then: a sabbath belonging to a time has been shown and an eternal sabbath foretold; a circumcision in the flesh foretold and a spiritual circumcision indicated beforehand; a law for a time and a law forever formally declared; sacrifices in the flesh and spiritual sacrifices shown beforehand. It follows that after all these commands had been given in the flesh, in the time before, to the people Israel, a time had to come when the commands of the ancient Law and of the old ceremonies would cease, and the promise of the new law, and the recognition of spiritual sacrifices, and the promise of the new covenant would take their place, while the light from on high shone on us who were sitting in darkness and being held in the shadow of death. And so a duty is laid on us. We have already said that a new law was foretold by the prophets, and not one like the law given to their fathers at the time when he led them out of the land of Egypt; so now we must show and prove two things: that the old Law has ceased, and that the promised new law is now in force. [m]

And first we have to ask whether a giver of the new law is expected — an heir of the new covenant, a priest of the new sacrifices, a cleanser of the new circumcision, a keeper of the eternal sabbath — one who will put down the old law and set up the new covenant, offer the new sacrifices and check the ancient ceremonies, put down the old circumcision along with its own sabbath, and announce the new kingdom that cannot decay. We have to ask, I say, whether this giver of the new law, keeper of the spiritual sabbath, priest of the eternal sacrifices, eternal ruler of the eternal kingdom, has come or not. If he has already come, then service is owed him; if he has not yet come, then he must be waited for, until his arrival makes it plain that the old Law’s commands are put down and that the beginnings of the new law ought to arise. And to start with, we must lay it down that the ancient Law and the prophets could not have ceased unless the one had come who was constantly announced, through that same Law and those same prophets, as the one to come.

So here we plant foot against foot on the question: whether the Christ who was constantly announced as the one to come has already come, or whether his coming is still something to hope for. To settle that, we must also examine the times at which the prophets announced that the Christ would come. Then, if we find that he has come inside the limits of those times, we may believe without doubt that he is the very one whose coming was always the theme of the prophets’ song, and on whom we — the nations, that is — were always said to be destined to believe. And once it is agreed that he has come, we may believe just as surely that the new law has been given by him, and not disown the new covenant drawn up for us in him and through him. That Christ was to come, we know even the Jews do not try to disprove, since it is on his arrival that they are setting their hope. There is no need to go into that at length, since in days gone by all the prophets prophesied of it — Isaiah, for instance: “Thus says the Lord God to my Christ the Lord, whose right hand I have held, so that the nations may hear him: I will burst apart the powers of kings; I will open the gates before him, and the cities shall not be shut against him.” [p]

And that very thing we see fulfilled. Whose right hand does God the Father hold but his Son Christ’s — whom all nations have heard, that is, whom all nations have believed? And his preachers, the apostles, are pointed to in the Psalms of David: “Their sound has gone out into the whole earth,” he says, “and their words to the ends of the earth.” On whom else have all the nations believed but on the Christ who has already come? Whom have the nations believed — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and those who live in Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and those who live in Pontus and Asia and Pamphylia, visitors from Egypt and people from the part of Africa that lies beyond Cyrene, Romans and resident foreigners, yes, and Jews in Jerusalem, and all the other nations? And by now the various tribes of the Gaetulians, and the many territories of the Moors, all the borders of the Spains, and the different nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons, which the Romans could not reach but Christ has subdued; and the Sarmatians, Dacians, Germans and Scythians, and many far-off nations, and many provinces and islands we do not know and can hardly count.

In all these places the name of the Christ who has already come is reigning: it is before him that the gates of every city have been opened and none are shut, before him that iron bars have crumbled and bronze gates have swung open. There is also a spiritual sense to be given to these words — that the hearts of individual people, barricaded in all sorts of ways by the devil, are unbarred by faith in Christ — but they have plainly been fulfilled in the plain sense too, since in all these places the “people” of the Name of Christ lives.

For who could have reigned over all nations but Christ, God’s Son, who was always announced as the one destined to reign over all forever? If Solomon “reigned” — well, it was only inside the borders of Judea; “from Beersheba to Dan” the limits of his kingdom are marked. If Darius “reigned” over the Babylonians and Parthians, he had no power over all nations. If Pharaoh, or whoever came after him in the kingdom he inherited, reigned over the Egyptians, his rule reached over that country only. If Nebuchadnezzar with his petty kings, his kingdom’s boundaries ran “from India to Ethiopia.” If Alexander the Macedonian, he held no more than the whole of Asia and the other regions once he had finished conquering them. As for the Germans, to this day they are not allowed to cross their own frontier. The Britons are shut inside the circuit of their own ocean. The nations of the Moors and the barbarian Gaetulians are hemmed in by the Romans so that they cannot pass beyond their own regions.

And what shall I say about the Romans themselves, who fortify their own empire with garrisons of their own legions and cannot push the strength of their kingdom past these same nations? But Christ’s Name is spreading everywhere, believed everywhere, worshiped by all the nations listed above, reigning everywhere, adored everywhere, given out equally everywhere to everyone. With him no king finds greater favor and no barbarian less joy; no ranks or family lines carry any distinction of merit. To all he is equal, to all King, to all Judge, to all “God and Lord.” And you would not hesitate to believe what we are asserting, since you can see it happening.