God’s People Privileged with a Two Fold System of Law

We have assumed for years that statutes and judgments are either another name for the Ten Commandments or somehow related to the ceremonial law. What is the evidence from scripture and Ellen White?

“The minds of the people, blinded and debased by slavery and heathenism, were not prepared to appreciate fully the far-reaching principles of God's ten precepts. That the obligations of the Decalogue might be more fully understood and enforced, additional precepts were given, illustrating and applying the principles of the Ten Commandments. These laws were called judgments, both because they were framed in infinite wisdom and equity and because the magistrates were to give judgment according to them. Unlike the Ten Commandments, they were delivered privately to Moses, who was to communicate them to the people. {PP 310.1}

A Guard protects someone or something else. Look what Statutes and Judgments guard. “If man had kept the law of God, as given to Adam after his fall, preserved in the ark by Noah, and observed by Abraham, there would have been no necessity for the ordinance of circumcision. And if the descendants of Abraham had kept the covenant, of which circumcision was a token or pledge, they would never have gone into idolatry, nor been suffered to go down into Egypt; and there would have been no necessity for God to proclaim his law from Sinai, engraving it upon tables of stone, or guard it by definite directions in the judgments and statutes given to Moses. {ST, June 17, 1880 par. 2}

So statutes and judgments guard, illustrate and apply the principles of the ten “precepts,” “the Decalogue,” or the “Ten Commandments.” They are not themselves the Ten Commandments.

How long were they in effect?

“Precepts Given to Guard Decalogue.—“In consequence of continual transgression, the moral law was repeated in awful grandeur from Sinai. Christ gave to Moses religious precepts which were to govern everyday life. These statutes were explicitly given to guard the ten commandments. They were not shadowy types to pass away with the death of Christ. They were to be binding upon men in every age as long as time should last. These commands were enforced by the power of the moral law, and they clearly and definitely explained that law (The Law of God, May 6, 1875). {1BC 1104.6}

“The statutes and judgments specifying the duty of man to his fellow-men, were full of important instruction, defining and simplifying the principles of the moral law, for the purpose of increasing religious knowledge, and of preserving God's chosen people distinct and separate from idolatrous nations.” {RH, May 6, 1875 par. 5}