Benjamin Lyon Smith, in his two-volume abridgment of the Millennial Harbinger, hailed it as the true beginning of the Restoration movement. The Redstone Baptist Association met at Cross Creek, Virginia, on August 30, 1816. The local pastor, prejudiced against Alexander Campbell, asked another man to speak, but when he became ill, Campbell, was invited to take his place. Asking the first speaker of the day to begin, the 28 year old Campbell prepared his extemporaneous sermon, delivered under a tent to a group of one thousand, including twenty-two preachers.

Romans 8:3 was his text: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” In the sermon, he explained very clearly the little understood principle of the division between the Old Testament law and the law of Christ.

Campbell showed that the Old Testament law did not forgive sins, but the blood of Christ did. God called the apostles to preach the gospel of Christ, not the laws of Judaism. The law was temporary and local, but the gospel is universal and for all time. Many of the Baptists, clinging to their Calvinistic views, rejected Campbell and were determined to charge him with heresy, but many others were able to understand these vital distinctions. 

Christ “abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances” (Ephesians 2:15). In His death, he was “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross” (Colossians 2:14). “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second” (Hebrews 8:6-7).

The Sermon on the Law

by Bob Prichard

www.oxfordchurchofchrist.com