Are we under the Ten Commandments?

Are Christians Under the Ten Commandments?

MMany people today believe that Christians are required to live by the Ten Commandments. It is one of the most commonly held teachings across Christian churches worldwide. But is it actually true? Are we still under the Ten Commandments, or has God given his people a new standard to live by? The answer may surprise you.

More Than Ten Commandments

To understand the role of the Ten Commandments, we first need to understand what they were actually part of. The Ten Commandments were not a standalone set of rules. They were a small portion of a much larger body of law known as the Mosaic Law, which contained more than 600 individual commandments. As Moses himself stated:

De 4:13 "He commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone."

This is an important distinction. Understanding the Mosaic Law as a whole, what it was, who it was given to, and why, is the key to understanding where Christians should stand today.

A Covenant Made with Israel Alone

The Mosaic Law was never given to all of humanity. God made a covenant, a binding agreement, exclusively with the descendants of Jacob, the nation of Israel. Two passages settle this directly:

Ps 147:19, 20 "He declares his word to Jacob, his regulations and judgments to Israel. He has not done so with any other nation; they do not know his judgments."

De 5:1-3 "Moses then called all Israel together and said to them: 'Hear, O Israel, the regulations and the judicial decisions that I am speaking in your hearing today, and you must learn them and take care to observe them. Jehovah our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Jehovah did not make this covenant with our forefathers, but with us, all of us who are alive here today.'"

The terms of this covenant were straightforward. If Israel obeyed God, he would bless them, multiply their nation, and protect them from the surrounding nations that worshipped false gods. If they broke the covenant, which they did repeatedly, they would reap the consequences. God stated this plainly when the agreement was first established:

Ex 19:5, 6 "And now if you will strictly obey my voice and will indeed keep my covenant, then you will certainly become my special property out of all other peoples, because the whole earth belongs to me. And you yourselves will become to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."

The Mosaic Law, including the Ten Commandments, belonged to Israel alone.

The Purpose of the Law

God gave Israel this Law for a specific reason. The apostle Paul asked the question directly:

Ga 3:19 "Why, then, the Law?"

Paul answered his own question. The Law was given to make transgressions visible and to lead Israel toward something greater. He states:

Ga 3:24 "Consequently the Law has become our guardian leading to Christ, that we might be declared righteous due to faith."

The Law functioned as a guardian, disciplining and guiding the nation of Israel so that they would be prepared to recognize Jesus Christ when he arrived. Its sacrificial requirements served a second purpose. The repeated animal offerings required under the Law reminded Israel that sin carries a cost and that forgiveness requires a price:

Heb 9:22 "...and unless blood is poured out no forgiveness takes place."

He 10:1-4 makes clear that those animal sacrifices could never permanently remove sin. They pointed forward to something the Law itself could not provide.

The Mosaic Law as Foreshadow

Everything built into the Mosaic Law, its sacrifices, its priesthood, its rituals, was a foreshadow of what God intended to accomplish through Jesus Christ. The animal sacrifices were temporary and imperfect, requiring constant repetition. They pointed to one final, perfect sacrifice that would accomplish what the Law never could.

Jesus Christ was that sacrifice. As the only perfect human to live after the sin in Eden, he was the only one qualified to redeem what Adam had lost. The Law had been preparing Israel for this moment across centuries. Jesus himself addressed the relationship between his arrival and the Law:

Mat 5:17 "Do not think I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I came, not to destroy, but to fulfill."

He did not set the Law aside carelessly. He completed what it was designed to point toward, him.

The End of the Mosaic Law

Once Christ fulfilled the Law, its function was finished. The Mosaic Law, or guardian, had brought Israel to the destination. Galatians states this plainly:

Ga 3:25 "But now that the faith has arrived, we are no longer under a guardian."

Several other New Testament passages confirm this from different angles:

Ro 10:4 "For Christ is the end of the Law, so that everyone exercising faith may have righteousness."

Ro 6:14 "For sin must not be master over you, seeing that you are not under law but under undeserved kindness."

Eph 2:15 "By means of his flesh he abolished the enmity, the Law of commandments consisting in decrees."

Ro 7:6 "But now we have been discharged from the Law, because we have died to that by which we were being held fast, that we might be slaves in a new sense by the spirit, and not in the old sense by the written code."

A point worth addressing: some readers will note that Jesus cited individual commandments from the Decalogue during his ministry, such as in Mat 19:18, 19. This is accurate. But Jesus cited those commandments while he himself was still living under the Mosaic Law, before his death brought it to fulfillment. The legal framework that Jehovah had established with the Israelites changed at his death, not during his teaching ministry. The principles behind those commandments were carried forward into the new framework, the new covenant.

The moment Jesus died, God provided a dramatic and unmistakable sign that the Mosaic Law had reached its end. The curtain hanging in the temple, which separated the Most Holy place from the rest of the sanctuary, was torn in two from top to bottom:

Mat 27:51 "And look! the curtain of the sanctuary was torn in two, from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks were split."

This curtain was not torn from the bottom up, as a man would tear it. It was torn from the top down, signifying that God himself had ended what that curtain represented. Under the Mosaic Law, only the high priest could pass beyond that curtain, and only once a year, to appear before God on behalf of the people.

Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, access to God was no longer restricted to one nation through a priestly system. It was now open to all people, on the basis of faith.

Heb 10:19, 20 "Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, which he opened up for us as a new and living way through the curtain, that is, his flesh."

The New Covenant

The end of the Mosaic Law was not left as a gap. God had announced through the prophet Jeremiah that a new covenant was coming, one that would be fundamentally different from the one made at Sinai:

Jer 31:31-33 "Look! There are days coming," is the utterance of Jehovah, "and I will conclude with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah a new covenant; not one like the covenant that I concluded with their forefathers in the day of my taking hold of their hand to bring them forth out of the land of Egypt. For this is the covenant that I shall conclude with the house of Israel after those days," is the utterance of Jehovah. "I will put my law within them, and in their heart I shall write it. And I will become their God, and they themselves will become my people."

The difference is significant. The Mosaic Law was external, written on stone tablets and enforced by a written code. The new covenant would be internal, written on the heart by God's spirit. Paul cited this same prophecy and drew the direct conclusion:

Heb 8:13 "In his saying 'a new covenant' he has made the former one obsolete. Now that which is made obsolete and growing old is near to vanishing away."

The apostles in Jerusalem confirmed this in practice. When the question arose whether believers needed to follow the Mosaic Law, the apostles and elders ruled they did not:

Ac 15:28, 29 "For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you except these necessary things: to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper."

A Circumcision of the Heart

Under the Mosaic Law, physical circumcision was the sign that set Israel apart as God's covenant people. Gentile nations were excluded. The death of Jesus Christ changed that. His sacrifice opened the possibility of a relationship with God to all people, not only the descendants of Jacob. The sign of that relationship is no longer physical. It is a transformation of the inner person:

Ro 2:28, 29 "For he is not a Jew who is one on the outside, nor is circumcision that which is on the outside upon the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one on the inside, and his circumcision is that of the heart by spirit, and not by a written code. The praise of that one comes, not from men, but from God."

When a person is baptized as a Christian, they are making a commitment of the heart to live by God's standards. That commitment is not driven by a written code. It comes from an internal change produced by God's spirit.

What Law Are We Under?

When a Pharisee tested Jesus by asking which commandment in the Law was greatest, his answer reframed the entire question by citing a scripture from Deuteronomy 6:5:

Mat 22:37-40 "You must love Jehovah your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second, like it, is this: You must love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole Law hangs, and the Prophets."

More than 600 commandments were reduced to two.

Those two are not arbitrary simplifications. They are the principle underlying everything the Law required. A person who genuinely loves God will not worship other gods, will not misuse his name, and will not treat what belongs to him with contempt. A person who genuinely loves their neighbor will not steal from them, lie to them, commit adultery against them, or covet what is theirs:

Ro 13:10 "Love does not work evil to one's neighbor; therefore love is the law's fulfillment."

This is confirmed by Jesus himself, who called it a new commandment:

Jn 13:34, 35 "I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves."

This is the Law of the Christ, what God has given to those who follow his Son. Just as God gave the Mosaic Law to Moses to pass on to Israel, he gave the Law of the Christ to his Son to pass on to his followers:

Ga 6:2 "Go on carrying the burdens of one another, and thus fulfill the law of the Christ."

1Co 9:21 "...to those without law I became as without law, although I am not without law toward God but under law toward Christ, in order to gain those without law."

What About the Sabbath?

The Sabbath is worth addressing specifically because it is one of the Ten Commandments themselves, making it a direct test case for this entire discussion. Many still feel that Christians are required to worship on a particular day of the week. But the Sabbath was part of the Mosaic Law, and the Mosaic Law has been fulfilled in Christ. No specific day of worship is required under the Law of the Christ. Every day is an opportunity to draw close to God and receive his blessings:

Col 2:16, 17 "Therefore let no man judge you in eating and drinking or in respect of a festival or of an observance of the new moon or of a sabbath, for those things are a shadow of the things to come, but the reality belongs to the Christ."

Conclusion

The scriptures present a clear and consistent picture. The Mosaic Law, including the Ten Commandments, was a covenant made exclusively with the nation of Israel, designed to guide them until the arrival of Jesus Christ. When Christ fulfilled that Law through his sacrifice, a new covenant took its place, one written not on stone tablets but on the hearts of those who love God.

As a true Christian, you are not under the Mosaic Law. You are under the Law of the Christ, the law of love. Love for God with your whole heart, soul, and mind. Love for your neighbor as yourself. These are the two commandments on which everything else hangs. And when that love is genuine, it changes not just what you do, but who you are.

The Law of the Christ is not a burden. It is the natural expression of a heart that has been changed by God's spirit. May God bless your efforts in drawing close to him, and in putting on the new personality formed in his image. Through Jesus Christ, our redeemer and King, may we as his followers always be motivated by love for God and our fellowman, just as he was.