Everything in Israel’s life and worship revolved around the tabernacle. The visible proof that God was among the nation was the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. God dwelt behind the veil in the Most Holy Place. There was physical evidence of his presence. That little tent was the most important and holy spot on earth because God’s immediate presence was there. Only the High Priest, on the yearly Day of Atonement, was allowed into God’s presence in the Most Holy Place. Aaron’s most important function of the entire year was to take the blood that had been shed on the altar and sprinkle it on the mercy seat, or lid of the ark of the covenant. As the Most Holy Place was the most holy spot on earth, so the ark of the covenant was the single most holy piece of furniture in that spot. That box was important and holy because of its contents. It contained the covenant document that established Israel as God’s special nation. If we understand the purpose and function of the tabernacle and its ministry around the ark of the covenant, we will also understand the nature, function, and purpose of the Ten Commandments. The two serve identical purposes; and the Bible never records that purpose as having changed. Indeed the function did not change—it ended because it was fulfilled! The purpose and function of the tablets of the covenant never changed from the day of their inception at Mount Sinai until the day that written code was nailed to the Cross.
The ‘ark of the covenant’ was so named because of its CONTENT.
We will review one point covered earlier concerning the ark. The ark of the covenant was built for the express purpose of housing the specific covenant document that established Israel as a nation; that covenant document was the Ten Commandments. The ark of the covenant housed the Ten Commandments. It was called the ark of the covenant and the ark of testimony because it held the written covenant that testified against Israel when they disobeyed the covenant terms, or Ten Commandments. All of this is so clear and so simple when we use the terms and phrases used by the Holy Spirit. However, it is very confusing when we start saying the Bible really means “one covenant with two administrations” when it speaks of a new covenant that replaces and an old and different covenant.
Notice how the following texts establish the contents of the ark:
And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. (Exod. 25:10)
And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee. (Exod. 25:16)
And he spread abroad the tent over the tabernacle, and put the covering of the tent above upon it; as the LORD commanded Moses. And he took and put the testimony [the “testimony” is the Ten Commandments] into the ark, and set the staves on the ark, and put the mercy seat above upon the ark. (Exod. 40:19, 20)
The words ‘covenant’, or ‘Ten Commandments’ could be interchanged with the term ‘testimony’ in this verse. The ark of the testimony is the ark of the covenant. It is clear in the following passages that the ‘testimony’ in the ark is the Ten Commandments written on the tablets of stone:
At that time the LORD said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood. And I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark. And I made an ark of shittim wood, and hewed two tables of stone like unto the first, and went up into the mount, having the two tables in mine hand. And he wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which the LORD spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly: and the LORD gave them unto me. And I turned myself and came down from the mount, and put the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they be, as the LORD commanded me. (Deut. 10:1-5)
Why were the Ten Commandments placed in the ark of the covenant? Why was that box so sacred that human hands were not allowed even to touch it? If we want to see how holy the ark was, we only need read 2 Samuel, chapters 5 and 6. When we understand why God instantly killed a man for merely putting his hand on the ark to steady it, we will see the nature, purpose and function of the Ten Commandments that were inside the ark of the covenant. There could be no entrance into the presence of God in the Most Holy Place as long as the tablets of stone in the ark of the covenant were in force as a covenant document.
The nature, purpose, and function of the ark of the covenant is the same as the nature, purpose and function of the Ten Commandments! The Ten Commandments began their ministry of covenant law in the history of redemption when Moses placed them in the box that was designed especially to be their home. Exactly what was the purpose and function of the ark of the covenant and its contents? What particular function did it play in the life and worship of the nation of Israel?
The ark of the covenant prohibited all approach into the immediate presence of God until the terms of the covenant spelled out on the tablets of the covenant had been fully met. Those terms demanded a kind of life that no sinner could produce. Failure to obey the covenant terms written on that covenant document closed off the entrance into God’s presence. Aaron alone was allowed, one day a year, to enter the Most Holy Place. He always had to take with him some blood that had been shed on the altar of sacrifice. The purpose and function of the Ten Commandments in the ark of the covenant can be summed up in one word−DEATH. The message in the box was the same message on the veil. You could have put big letters on both the veil and the ark that said: “KEEP AWAY−DO NOT EVEN TOUCH−YOU WILL DIE!” Disobedience to this message caused Uzzah to die (2 Sam. 6:6, 7) and the two sons of Aaron to also die (Lev. 10:1).
Paul presents the same truth in the following passages:
He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant−not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone …(2 Cor. 3:6, 7 NIV)
Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. (Rom. 7:9, 10 NIV)
Paul saw that the “commandment was ordained to life.” However, because of sin, he discovered the commandment was ‘death to him’. The tables of the covenant did indeed promise life to anyone that perfectly kept the terms: the Ten Commandments written on the tablets. The same tables also promised death to all who failed to keep those commandments. When Paul specifically says, “…the very commandment that was intended to bring life…,” he is talking about the tablets of the covenant, or Ten Commandments. If the Ten Commandments, considered as a covenant document, were not a legal/works covenant that promised life for obedience and death for disobedience, then Paul’s statements do not make sense.
Jesus responded to the rich young ruler as he did because the Ten Commandments, as a covenant, offered life to those who perfectly obey. The young man wanted to ‘earn’ his way to eternal life by ‘doing’ and Jesus told him to ‘keep the law’ (Matt. 19:17). When the young man asked, “Which one?”, Jesus quoted five of the commandments written on the tablets of the covenant and then added the ‘second greatest commandment of all’ (Lev. 19:18). It is self-contradictory to ask, “If a son of Adam perfectly kept the Ten Commandments, would he not still have his original sin?” The question involves an oxymoron. If the person perfectly kept the law it would prove that he did not have original sin in the first place. It is impossible for any son of Adam to perfectly obey the law and earn the life it promised simply because every son of Adam has a sinful nature inherited from his father Adam that keeps him from perfect obedience. The fact that all men have a sinful nature absolutely precludes the first situation; that of a son of Adam perfectly obeying the Ten Commandments, from ever being a possibility. No sinner can earn righteousness by obeying the tablets of stone simply because no sinner can obey them.
However, the tablets of the covenant still offer life and righteousness just as surely as they threaten death and damnation. The problem that prevents anyone from earning righteousness by keeping the Old Covenant is in the nature of the sinner and not in the nature of the covenant. Our Lord perfectly kept that covenant and earned the righteousness that it promised. As long as the covenant in the ark of the covenant was in force it closed off any approach to God. It said, ‘Stay Away!’ No one could meet the terms of that covenant. The ‘words of the covenant,’ or Ten Commandments, clearly demanded perfect obedience. No one could give the perfect obedience that the covenant justly demanded and thereby earn the righteousness that it promised. Once the covenant had been broken, an acceptable sacrifice had to be offered to take away its curse. The sinner could no more bring an acceptable sacrifice than he could bring a sinless life.
The ministry of the priesthood revolved around the sins against that covenant document in the ark. The blood sprinkled on the mercy seat in the Most Holy Place made the Israelite ceremonially clean for one year but it could not ‘cleanse the conscience’ (Heb. 9:15; 10:2, 22). Aaron could present neither a holy sinless life of his own to the covenant nor a blood sacrifice that was sufficient to truly atone and deliver from the curse of the broken covenant. The purpose and function of Aaron’s ministry was a constant reminder of sin against the covenant document in the ark of the covenant. Everything was designed to remind people of their guilt. Those in whom the covenant wrought true repentance were given hope in a coming deliverer. However, even they had to live their day-by-day life under the threat of the Old Covenant.
The Lord Jesus Christ, our surety of the covenant, was born under the very law covenant housed in the ark of the covenant. He fulfilled every one of its demands and earned the righteousness that it promised. He then died under the curse of that law covenant (Gal. 3:13), thus forever removing its curse from his people. His endurance of that covenant’s curse unto death established the New Covenant, and, through fulfillment, annulled the Old Covenant (the Ten Commandments), and everything that attended it. The proof of this was that God rent the veil from top to bottom. The sign that said ‘Stay Out’ was changed to ‘Enter Boldly’. This change was possible because the terms of the Old Covenant had been fully met. The tables of stone, as a covenant document, were finished and the New Covenant was established forever in the blood and righteousness of Christ.
The priesthood, services, and sacrifices were all necessitated by the terms of the Covenant document in the box. Everything began and ended together.
It is difficult to understand the biblical teaching on the change of covenants that is so clearly set forth in the book of Hebrews unless we see the connection between the ministry of the priesthood and the tables of stone. This is the message of Hebrews chapters 8-10. Notice this section:
Now the first covenant had regulations for worship [Do not confuse the actual covenant document, the Ten Commandments, with all of the ‘regulations’] and also an earthly sanctuary. A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lamp stand, the table and the consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the stone tables of the covenant [Remember, those tablets had the Ten Commandments written on them]. (Heb. 9:1-4)
The purpose for the existence of the priesthood and sacrificial system was to administer the Old Covenant:
For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. (Heb. 9:15)
Everything that pertained to Israel’s special national relationship to God, including the tablets of the covenant (Ten Commandments), ended when Christ, by his obedient life and death, met every claim and demand of the Old Covenant. Deliverance from the just claims of that covenant was necessary before the true Israel of God could be created and established under the New Covenant. In order to set those under the law ‘free from the sins committed under the first covenant’, Christ, acting as a surety, had to be ‘born under the law’ covenant in which he was acting as a surety (Gal. 4:1-7). The tables of the covenant under which he lived and died are now as obsolete as both the ark that housed them and the priestly ministry that sprinkled animal blood on the lid of that ark.
The relationship of the law covenant (the stone tablets in the ark) to the mercy seat (the lid of the ark) is one of the clearest pictures of the gospel in the Old Testament Scriptures. It also sets forth the biblical relationship of law and grace. The tablets of the covenant (Ten Commandments) in the ark represent the just demands of the law covenant. There you see the ‘just, holy, and good law’ of God. The lid of the ark covers the broken covenant of law inside the ark with the blood of atonement. There you see the free gospel of sovereign grace. There is not an ounce of grace or gospel in the law covenant document in the box. It is pure law, demanding perfect obedience as the condition of blessing and death as the consequence of disobedience. The blood on the mercy seat covers and hides the broken covenant and the sins against that covenant. That is pure grace!
It was indeed very gracious of God to give the law covenant to convict of sin, and it was even more gracious to provide a payment to cover the sin. But there was no grace in the terms of the covenant document in the box. John Newton had it right: “It was grace (using the law in the box) that taught my heart to fear; and grace (through the blood on the mercy seat) my fears relieved.” Many people want to go straight to the grace part without ever experiencing the fear part. Others seem to have a morbid desire to stay under the fear part and never arrive at heartfelt gospel relief from fear. Newton saw both and in the right order.
Some theologians will challenge the truth that the Ten Commandments offered life and righteousness for perfect obedience. Their theology forces them to deny this biblical fact because it simply cannot acknowledge the validity of any kind of a covenant of works after Genesis 3:15. My response to such a view is this: If the tables of the covenant, or Ten Commandments, are not a legal/works covenant document that can award life and righteousness then we as believers have no righteousness. Our righteousness is an earned righteousness. Christ kept some law covenant that had the authority to award obedience with life and righteousness, and thereby earned what it promised. What other law covenant, besides the legal covenant at Sinai, could Christ have possibly been born under to earn this righteousness for us? Did our surety of the covenant endure the curse of a covenant of grace or a legal covenant of works when he died on the Cross? Let each reader find the answers to these questions in his own theological system if he can.
Some writers try to force passages like Galatians 3:24, 25 and Colossians 2:14 to teach that Christ’s blood atonement delivered us from the bondage and rigors of the ‘ceremonial law’. How can anyone believe that the Father would put his Son to death on the Cross just so his people could be allowed eat pork and avoid circumcision? The very idea is ludicrous. Those who hold this view attempt to prove that the law dismissed in Galatians 3:24, 25 is the ‘ceremonial’ law and cannot possibly be the Ten Commandments.[1] Such a dismissal of the Ten Commandments is not possible according their system of theology. This is an example of a theological system driving the interpretation of a text, rather than allowing the context to inform one’s understanding. The law dismissed in Galatians 3:24, 25 is the very same law under which our Lord was cursed in Galatians 3:13. If Galatians 3:10-13 does not teach that Jesus died under the curse of the ceremonial law, why would Paul, a few verses later—Galatians 3:24, 25—be saying exactly the opposite? Is Paul teaching that the curse for not continuing to do everything written in the book of the law only pertains to ceremonies? When Paul writes, “It is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law’”, he is quoting Deuteronomy 27:26. The curses presented in Deuteronomy 27:15-26 include a wide variety of infractions, none of which are ceremonial in nature. There is no indication anywhere in the entire third chapter of Galatians that Paul is limiting his use of the term law to that portion only that pertains to ceremonies. In fact, his use of Deuteronomy 27:15-26 indicates just the opposite; he is using the term in a much more comprehensive sense.
The believer under the New Covenant has constant and immediate access into the presence of God (Heb. 10:17-23) because passages like Galatians 3:24, 25 and Colossians 2:14 do refer to the whole Old Covenant—including the tables of stone. The law covenant has been dismissed as the Pedagogue over the conscience of God’s people. Regardless of his calling, every saint under the New Covenant enjoys a privilege that even godly Aaron could not enjoy. The function of the tables of the covenant (Ten Commandments) inside the ark is just as finished as the ark that held them. They are both finished. The ‘doing and dying’ of our substitute has removed the yoke on the conscience that kept sinners from entering God’s presence. We must neither allow anyone to re-establish that yoke, nor permit anyone to re-hang the veil. We must see the law dismissed forever as a covenant. Its sword was wiped clean in our substitute’s blood and was forever sheathed that day at Calvary.
Paul’s appeal to the Galatians should be tattooed on our minds and hearts:
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (Gal. 5:1 NIV)
To what yoke does Paul refer? It is clearly a reference to law, but what specific law? The defenders of Covenant Theology in its various forms will say, “Paul is talking about the ceremonial law. That is the law that was dismissed and the yoke from which we are set free. Paul could not possibly be talking about the ‘moral law.’” We must ask a few questions of such a view. Of what, precisely, does the ceremonial law consist? Even if Paul is talking about ceremonial law here, how is that defined? Once we have arrived at a working definition of this term, we must ask another question. How can the ‘ceremonial law’ be such a terrible yoke of bondage? Our Lord lived his entire life under every ceremonial law in the Old Testament Scriptures. Is circumcision and abstinence from ‘unclean food’ such a terrible burden? The orthodox Jews to this day, as well as the Seventh-day Adventists follow the food laws of the Old Covenant with ease and enjoyment. The yoke to which Paul refers is a yoke that is impossible to bear; but many have born the so-called ceremonial law without ever considering it as bondage. As I observe the back-to-nature people in our generation, I notice that they follow many of the ‘ceremonial’ laws of the Old Covenant almost to the letter and never complain of bondage. Their constant cry is the joy and freedom they have found. And these people do not even profess to be doing this out of love to God.
No, this yoke clearly is connected to the blood atonement of Christ. It has to do with something far more serious than mere ceremonies and kinds of food. John Stott has the best comments that I ever read on this passage of Scripture. The italics are in the original, the emphasis in bold type is mine.
As the New English Bible puts it, ‘Christ set us free, to be free men’. Our former state is portrayed as a slavery, Jesus Christ as a liberator, conversion as an act of emancipation and the Christian life as a life of freedom. This freedom, as the whole Epistle and this context make plain, is not primarily a freedom from sin, but rather from the law. What Christ has done in liberating us, according to Paul’s emphasis here, is not so much to set our will free from the bondage of sin as to set our conscience free from the guilt of sin. The Christian freedom he describes is freedom of conscience, freedom from the tyranny of the LAW, the dreadful struggle to keep the law, with a view to winning the favor of God. It is the freedom of acceptance with God and of access to God through Christ.[2]
In a parallel passage, Acts 15, the Holy Spirit clearly defines this yoke of bondage. It is nothing less than the demand that a sinner must earn his own righteousness. This yoke imposes the tablets of stone on the conscience as the ‘accuser and excuser’. To make the Ten Commandments to be the doorkeeper guarding God’s throne of grace is a yoke on the conscience that no one can bear. That would be to resurrect the ministry of the ark of the covenant in the tabernacle and to put it into the church. The subject discussed at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 was not primarily the rule of life for a Christian, but the requirements for salvation of a sinner. Verses 1, 5, and 11 establish the content of the discussion. Some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees insisted that the Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, not to be sanctified, but to be saved!
In verses 8-11, Peter declares that the hearts of the believing Gentiles have been “purified by faith.” They, like the believing Jews, had been saved by faith alone without the law. His conclusion is simple and clear. “…Why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” (Acts 15:10). What yoke is this? Whatever it is, the gospel does not deliver men into its bondage. Paul warns against this yoke in Galatians 5:1. It is the yoke the men in Acts 15:1, 5 were trying to impose on the Gentiles. And exactly what were they trying to impose? They were distinctly saying that a sinner had to obey the law to be saved! They were putting the law between the sinner and the Savior. They were making the Mosaic covenant to be part of the gospel. They were adding the law to the gospel of grace. The yoke in Acts 15 cannot be ceremonial law, but has to do with a conscience that strives to find acceptance by works. Later in this same chapter (Acts 15:24-29), the council binds some laws that we would categorize as ceremonial (mixed together with laws that we would call moral in nature, without any distinction between the two) on the Gentiles out of respect to the Jewish conscience.
None of the so-called ceremonial laws was a ‘yoke of bondage’ in and of themselves. Paul instructs believers to sometimes bear the yoke of food restrictions in order to keep a weak brother from stumbling (Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8-10). He acknowledges that the observance of special days is practiced by some believers, and considers the decision to do so a matter of liberty. This contrasts sharply with his admonition in Galatians 5:1 to not be burdened by a yoke of slavery. The yoke about which Paul writes in Galatians 5:1, and Peter in Acts 15:10 is the same yoke the writer of Hebrews addresses in Hebrews 9:15. It is beyond question a yoke that cannot be born by anyone. It is nothing less than the law as a covenant laid on the conscience, which results in men wrongly striving to keep the law in order to gain assurance of salvation. The yoke is the awful realization that we have neither the righteous life that the covenant justly demands nor an acceptable sacrifice to give to God to atone for our guilt. We put this yoke on the conscience whenever we use the Ten Commandment as if they were still in the ark of the covenant and not done away in Christ. In doing this, we allow the written code, or Ten Commandments, to once more ‘stand against us’ (Col. 2:14), instead of seeing the covenant terms written on the tablets of stone forever fulfilled in Christ. The written code, which can only refer to the tables of stone, stood against those under it because they could not meet its just and holy terms. When our surety met those terms, he canceled the ‘written code’ on the tablets of the covenant. It can never again be against anyone.
We must never allow a Judaizer to use the law covenant against us. The preaching of the law to the conscience with the threat of life and death is a yoke that only a self-righteous Pharisee can pretend to wear. And who has ever met a joyous and victorious Pharisee? As mentioned earlier, people today who make no claim to salvation observe circumcision and the clean food lists, and they do not feel the least burdened. However, the preaching of the law to the conscience with the threat of life and death is a yoke that no one is able to bear.
If we correctly understand the law, we will realize that it can neither bless nor curse us. It cannot curse us because Christ, in our place, perfectly met all of its claims. It cannot bless us because our surety has already earned every blessing it promised. The child of God in Christ is beyond the reach of the law in every sense. I repeat; the law can neither bless us nor curse us. It is not that we are altogether without any law; we are under a higher and more spiritual law—the law of our Lord and Savior.
I could not possibly close this chapter any better than with John Bunyan’s classic statement on law and grace. Bunyan taught me the truth that the believer’s conscience is set free from the law. The emphasis is mine.
Therefore whenever thou who believest in Jesus, dost hear the law in its thundering and lightening fits, as if it would burn up heaven and earth; then say thou, I am freed from this law, these thunderings have nothing to do with my soul; nay even this law, while it thus thunders and roareth, it doth allow and approve of my righteousness. I know that Hagar would sometimes be domineering and high, even in Sarah’s house and against her; but this she must not be suffered to do, nay though Sarah herself be barren; wherefore serve it [the law] also as Sarah served her, and expel her from thy house. My meaning is this, when this law with its thundering threatenings doth attempt to lay hold on thy conscience, shut it out with a promise of grace; cry, the inn is took up already, the Lord Jesus is here entertained, and there is no room for the law. Indeed if it will be content with being my informer, and so lovingly leave off to judge me; I will be content, it shall be in my sight, I will also delight therein; but otherwise, I being now upright without it, and that too with that righteousness, with which this law speaks well of and approveth; I may not, will not, cannot, dare not, make it my Saviour and Judge, nor suffer it to set up its government in my conscience; for so doing I fall from grace, and Christ doth profit me nothing.[3]
I have used the above quotation by Bunyan on more than one occasion. The usual cry is, “You misrepresent Bunyan’s real views.” In no way am I suggesting that Bunyan believed everything I believe about New Covenant Theology. Bunyan, like the rest of us, changed his view as he grew in understanding. However, the above is a lengthy quotation from an article specifically written on the subject of the Christian’s relationship to the law. With all the cries of ‘misrepresenting,’ I have yet to have one person try to explain what Bunyan meant by, “I may not, will not, cannot, dare not, make it [the law] my Saviour and Judge, nor suffer it to set up its government in my conscience; for so doing I fall from grace, and Christ doth profit me nothing.” You may not like or agree with what Bunyan said, but the above quotation is exactly what he said and exactly what he meant. It is also exactly what I believe on the subject of law and grace. You cannot enshrine both Moses and Christ in the conscience of a believer. Only one tenant can occupy the inn of conscience. Bunyan not only states that fact clearly, he repeats himself to make sure you get his message.
My meaning is this, when this law with its thundering threatenings doth attempt to lay hold on thy conscience, shut it out with a promise of grace; cry, the inn is took up already, the Lord Jesus is here entertained, and there is no room for the law.