18 Then said the Pharisees unto him, Why will ye
not receive us with our baptism, seeing we keep the whole law?
19 But Jesus said unto them, Ye keep not the law. If ye had kept the law, ye would have received me, for I am he who gave the law.
20 I receive not you with your baptism, because it profiteth you nothing
19 But Jesus said unto them, Ye keep not the law. If ye had kept the law, ye would have received me, for I am he who gave the law.
20 I receive not you with your baptism, because it profiteth you nothing
21 For when that which is new is come, the old is
ready to be put away. (JST Matt. 9:18-21)
The first
fascinating thing that I notice here is that the Phariess thought they kept the
whole law, but Jesus said they didn’t. You have to admire his straightforward
truthfulness on the matter. Also it is kind of scary to think someone could be
as deluded as the Pharisees were and be so off the mark. We wouldn’t want to be
so off ourselves.
Jesus tells
them they didn’t keep the law because they hadn’t received Him. This doesn’t
make sense if we only think of the law as a series of performances or
commandments. But if we remember that the Law of Moses was meant to point to the
Messiah who would save from sin all who believed on Him, then it becomes
obvious that to keep the commandments while not believing in Christ would
profit nothing because one would still remain in one’s sins.
So the Jews had
made the mistake of assuming they could do just as well keeping the
performances and ordinances of the law even if they didn’t believe Jesus was
the Messiah—the one who gave the law and would fulfill it to make repentance
possible. But they were wrong. To
reject the one who made the ordinances would mean their ordinances would be
worthless.
I think it is
possible to fall into the same error today even in the church, to assume we’re
alright if we’re keeping the commandments even if we don’t believe in Christ.
We might relegate the doctrine of Christ’s atonement to a lesser place and put
the commandments and ordinances in a primary place of importance. We might
assume we’re doing alright if we’ve been baptized, had our endowments, gotten
sealed in the temple, and so on. But none of those profit us if we don’t have
faith in Christ.
To look at it
in terms of mathematical formulas, it isn’t:
Commandments + Ordinances = Salvation
Where’s
Christ?
A better
formula might be:
Faith in Christ * (Commandments + Ordinances) = Salvation
since it
represents that if Faith is 0, then nothing else matters.
But then here’s
where I can’t leave well enough alone. I’m not sure I’m happy with that one
either, since it doesn’t capture how necessary Commandments and Ordinances
are. What if Commandments and
Ordinances are both 0? You get zero again. Or what about if we have only one of those but not the other?
Maybe we have
to have a formula like this:
Faith in Christ * Commandments * Ordinances = Salvation
Showing that if
any of the factors are missing, you get 0.
What do you
think?
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