Hi All,
Just posting this here because there seems to be some confusion by some about God's Law (10 commandments) and there role in the Old Covenant, New Covenant and the judgement to come. Hope this is helpful to those that love God's Word.
God's Law (10 commandments). While Christ's death ended the authority of the ceremonial law (laws of Moses), it established the Ten Commandments. Christ took away the curse of the law, thereby liberating believers from its condemnation. His doing so, however, did not mean that the law was abolished, giving us liberty to violate its principles. The abundant testimony of Scripture regarding the perpetuity of the law, refutes such a view.
Hello,
Christ's death had nothing to do with ending any laws. In 1 Peter 1:13-16, we are told to have a holy conduct for God is holy, which is a reference to Leviticus where God was giving instructions for how to have a holy conduct, also known as ceremonial laws. If the way to act in accordance with God's holiness changed with the death of Christ, then God's holiness also changed, but God's holiness is eternal and does not change. Crosses were never uses as a means of disposing of outdated laws, but rather what was written on crosses were the charges against the person being crucified (Matthew 27:37), which fits perfectly with our transgressions against God's Law being nailed to Christ's cross and with him dying in our place to pay the penalty for our our sins, but does not fit at all with Christ dying to set us free from need to obey what God has commanded. In Titus 2:14, it does not say that Christ gave himself to redeem from the Law, but to redeem us from all Lawlessness. According to Deuteronomy 30:15-20, obedience to the law brings life and a blessing, while disobedience to the law brings death and a curse, so by being set free from the curse of the law we have been set free from living in disobedience to it so that we might be free to live for God in obedience to His Law. The Law minus its condemnation remains a set of holy, righteous, and good instructions for how to walk in God's ways.
Paul described the relationship between obedience and the gospel of saving grace. Calling believers to holy living, he challenged them to present themselves "as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall have no dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace" (Rom. 6:13, 14). So Christians do not keep the law to obtain salvation—those who try to do so will only find a deeper enslavement to sin. "As long as a man is under law he remains also under the dominion of sin, for law cannot save one from either the condemnation or the power of sin. But those who are under grace receive not only release from condemnation (Rom. 8:1), but also power to overcome (Rom. 6:4). Thus sin no longer will have dominion over them."23
It is inconsistent to say that believers are called to holy living while saying that God's instructions for how to do that were ended at the cross. God never required anyone to obey His Law in order to become saved, but rather the one and only way to become saved has only ever been by grace through faith, and by the same grace through the same faith we are required to be careful to obey all of God's commands. According to Romans 4:1-8, Abraham and David were justified by faith, so this is how everyone in the OT was able to become justified, and God had no need to provide an alternative and unobtainable means of becoming justified when a perfectly good means of justification by faith was already in place.
In Romans 7:21-25, Paul said that he delighted in obeying the Mosaic Law and that he served it with his mind, but contrasted that with the law of sin that held him captive and that he served with his flesh. This is a summary of what he said previously, so it is the law of sin that came about to increases tresspasses (5:20), that stirs up sinful passions to bear fruit unto death (7:5), that held us captive (7:6), that gives sin its power (7:8), that deceived Paul through the commandment and killed him (7:11), and that caused him not to do the good that he wanted to do, while God's Law is not sin, but reveals what sin is (7:7), is holy, righteous, and good (7:12), is the good that Paul did not blame for bringing death to him (7:13), and is the good that Paul desired to do (7:13-20). In short, the law of sin is the law where sin had dominion over Paul.
Romans 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Paul specifies that the law we are not under is one where sin had dominion over him, which does not at all fit his description of God's holy, righteous, and good Law, but perfectly fits his description of the law of sin, so we are not under the law of sin when we are under grace. In Psalms 119:29, David asked God to show His grace to him by teaching him to obey His Law, so if we are under grace, then we are under the Mosaic Law. This is confirmed in Titus 2:11-14, where it describes our salvation as grace training us to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to refrain from doing what is ungodly and sinful, which is an accurate description of what the Mosaic Law was given to instruct how to do.
"Christ," Paul added, "is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes" (Rom. 10:4). Everyone, then, who believes in Christ realizes that He is the end of the law as a way of obtaining righteousness. In ourselves we are sinners, but in Jesus Christ we are righteous through His imputed righteousness.24
Romans 10:4 Christ is the
goal of the Law, which leads to righteousness for all who have faith in God.
It makes no sense to translate "telos" as ending the law for righteousness when the Law was never given for righteousness in the first place. In Romans 9:30 - Romans 10:10, Israel did not fail to obtain righteousness because they did what God told them to and God gave them faulty instructions, but because they misunderstood the purpose of the law and thought that obeying it was about establishing their own righteousness. They had a zeal for God, but it wasn't based on knowledge because they didn't submit to God's righteousness. Rather, the purpose of obeying the Law is to grow in a relationship with Christ for righteousness for everyone who has faith. Our faith says that God's Law is not too difficult, but that it is near us, it is in our mouth, and in our heart, and this is what it means to submit to Christ as Lord. In Philippians 3:8, Paul counted it as rubbish to obey the Law without focusing on growing in a relationship with Christ because that was missing the entire point.
Yet being under grace does not give believers the license to "continue in sin that grace may abound" (Rom. 6:1). Rather, grace supplies the power that makes obedience and victory over sin possible. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Rom. 8:1).
Christ's death magnified the law, upholding its universal authority. If the Decalogue could have been changed, He would not have had to die. But because this law is absolute and immutable, a death was required to pay the penalty it imposed. This requirement Christ fully satisfied by His death on the cross, making eternal life available to all who accept His magnificent sacrifice.
God's Law was given to reveal what sin is, which is much more than just 10 commands and God's grace does not permit us to sin by breaking those other commands, but rather we can have victory over sin by living in obedience to those commands. According to Psalms 119:160, all of God's righteous laws are eternal, not just ten of them.
People cannot earn salvation by their good works. Obedience is the fruitage of salvation in Christ. Through His amazing grace, especially displayed at the cross, God has liberated His people from the penalty and curse of sin.
Though they were sinners, Christ gave His life to provide them with the gift of eternal life. God's abundant love awakens in the repentant sinner a response that manifests itself in loving obedience through the power of the grace so abundantly bestowed. Believers who understand that Christ values the law and who understand the blessings of obedience will be strongly motivated to live Christlike lives.
According to Matthew 11:28-30 and Jeremiah 6:16-19, the Mosaic Law is the good way where we will find rest for our souls, but if obeying the Law were about earning our salvation, then it would rob our souls of the rest that it was intended to give because we would never know if what we had done was good enough. So trying to become saved by obeying Law has always been a fundamental misunderstanding of the Law and of God's character because it makes it out to be that what God primarily wanted for us was our obedience when since the beginning with God walking with Adam in the Garden what God has primarily wanted from us is an intimate relationship with Him, and the Law is His instructions for how to do that. It was never about what we need to do in order to become saved, but about what we are therefore required to do by grace through faith because we have been saved. We have been saved by grace through faith, not be doing good works, but for the purpose of doing good works (Ephesians 2:8-10). They way to live Christ-like lives is to do what is holy, righteous, and good like he did by walking in obedience to the Mosaic Law, and we are told that those who are in Christ ought to walk in the same way he did (1 John 2:3-6) and to follow his example (1 Peter 2:21-22).
Christ had the highest regard for the ten-commandment law. As the great "I AM," He Himself proclaimed the Father's moral law from Sinai (John 8:58; Ex. 3:14; see chapter 4 of this book). Part of His mission on earth was to "magnify the law and make it honorable" (Isa. 42:21). A passage from the Psalms that the New Testament applies to Christ makes clear His attitude toward the law: "I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart" (Ps. 40:8; cf. Heb. 10:5, 7).
His gospel produced a faith that firmly upheld the validity of the Decalogue. Said Paul, Do we "make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law" (Rom. 3:31).
So Christ came not only to redeem man but to vindicate the authority and holiness of the law of God, presenting its magnificence and glory before the people and giving them an example of how to relate to it. As His followers, Christians are called to magnify God's law in their lives. Having lived a life of loving obedience Himself, Christ stressed that His followers ought to be commandment keepers. When asked about the requirements for eternal life, He replied, "If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matt. 19:17). He also warned against the violation of this principle, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." Lawbreakers will be refused entrance (Matt. 7:21-23).
None of these verses specify that they are talking about just the the Ten Commandments. There is no grounds to say that only ten of God's commands in His will while all of His other commands are not in accordance with His will. Morality is based off of God's character and all of God's laws are there to instruct us how to act in God's image and to reflect His character to the world, so all of God's laws are moral laws and it is always immoral to disobey any of God's commands. Morality is in regard to what we ought to do and we ought to obey God, so again all of God's laws are inherently moral laws, not just ten of them. David said that he delighted in God's Law a number of times throughout the Psalms, which Paul also did (Romans 7:22), and again there is nothing that specifies that they delighted in only obeying ten of God's commands.
Christ Himself fulfilled the law, not by destroying it but through a life of obedience. "Remember," He said, "that as long as heaven and earth last, not the least point nor the smallest detail of the Law will be done away with" (Matt. 5:18, TEV). Christ strongly emphasized that the grand object of God's law must always be kept in mind: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:37, 38). However, He wanted His followers not to love one another as the world interprets love—selfishly or sentimentally. To explain the love He spoke of, Christ gave a "new commandment" (John 13:34). This new commandment was not to take the place of the Decalogue, but to provide believers with "an example of what true unselfish love really is, such love as had never before been witnessed on the earth. In this sense His commandment might be described as new. It charged them, not simply 'that ye love one another,' but 'that ye love one another, as I have loved you' (John 15:12).
Strictly speaking, we have here simply one more evidence of how Christ magnified His Father's laws."25
Pleroo: to fulfil, i.e. to cause God's will (as made known in the law) to be obeyed as it should be
In Matthew 5:17-19, Jesus said he came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it, he said not the least part would disappear from the Law until heaven and earth passed away and all is accomplished (both of which have not happened yet), and he warned that those who relax the least of the commands and teach others to do the same would be called least in the Kingdom, while those who obeyed them and taught others to do the same would be called great in the Kingdom. He then proceed to fulfill the law six times throughout the rest of the chapter by causing God's will as made known in the Law to be obeyed as it should be, and this included more than just the Ten Commandments. By only teaching obedience to ten commands, you are relaxing far more than he least of the laws. In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus said that all of the Law and the Prophets hang on the greatest two commands, so there is again no room whatsoever to say that he was only speaking about ten commands. They are all God's instructions for how to love Him and our neighbor, and there is nothing brand new about the command to love our neighbor (Leviticus 19:18), but what is new is the quality of the example by which we are to love our neighbor.
Obedience reveals such love. Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15). "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love" (John 15:10). Similarly, if we love God's people we love God and "keep His commandments" (1 John 2:3).
Jesus said that he teaching was not his own, but that of the Father, so his commandments were the same as the Father (John 14:23-24). And if he had commanded nothing, then he still would have taught obedience to more than just the Ten Commandments by example.
Only through abiding in Christ can we render heartfelt obedience.
"As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine," He said, "neither can you, unless you abide in Me. . . . He who abides in Me, and I in Him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:4, 5). To abide in Christ we must be crucified with Him and experience what Paul wrote of: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). For those in this condition Christ can fulfill His new covenant promise: "I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Heb. 8:10).
I hate to sound like a broken record, but Hebrews 8:10 does not specify just the Ten Commandments.
. Obedience develops Christian character and produces a sense of well-being, causing the believers to grow up as "newborn babes" and to be transformed into Christ's image (see 1 Peter 2:2; 2 Cor. 3:18). This transformation from sinner to God's child witnesses effectively to Christ's power.
Scripture pronounces "blessed" all "who walk in the law of the Lord" (Ps. 119:1), whose "delight is in the law of the Lord" and who meditate "in His law. . . day and night" (Ps. 1:2). The blessings of obedience are many: (1) insight and wisdom (Ps. 119:98, 99); (2) peace (Ps. 119:165; Isa. 48:18); (3) righteousness (Deut. 6:25; Isa. 48:18); (4) a pure and moral life (Prov. 7:1-5); (5) knowledge of the truth (John 7:17); (6) protection against disease (Ex. 15:26); (7) longevity (Prov. 3:1, 2; 4:10, 22); and (8) the assurance that one's prayers will be answered (1 John 3:22; cf. Ps. 66:18).
Inviting us to obedience, God promises abundant blessings (Lev. 26:3-10; Deut. 28:1-12). When we respond positively, we become His "special treasure"—a "kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex. 19:5, 6; cf. 1 Peter 2:5, 9), elevated "above all nations of the earth," "the head and not the tail" (Deut. 28:1, 13).
Again, no grounds whatsoever to say that these verses were only referring to ten of God's commands.
Salvation is not in keeping God's Law (10 commandments) it is by faith alone in God's Word to do what it says it will do. If you believe God's Word he will write his Law of Love in our hearts and it is Love which is the fulfilling of the Law in us who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit (Rom 8:4).
Jesus summarized all of the Law and the Prophets as being about how to love God and our neighbor, so love fulfills the law because it is obeying the law as it should be obeyed. And if we correctly understand the principle of love, then it will lead us to do things that are examples of that principle.
