It is assumed by most people that Christians are obligated to obey the Ten Commandments. Is this true? The question shouldn’t really be about whether Christians must obey the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments were part of the Mosaic covenant and therefore part of the law:
“And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone.” (Deut. 4:13 ESV)
Therefore, the question should be, “Are Christians required to obey the law of Moses?” This is a question that has resulted in confusion for centuries. There was confusion about it in the earliest days of the church and there has been confusion ever since.
We can see in the New Testament that Christians continued to observe certain Old Covenant commands. Yet, the authors of the New Testament are silent about other Mosaic laws. This leaves us wondering how we are to know which laws from the old covenant Christians are required to obey.
The Ten Commandments were part of the Mosaic covenant
Are Christians under the old covenant? If so, not only are we supposed to obey the Ten Commandments but the other 603 laws as well! By the count of Jewish scholars, there were 613 laws which every person under the Mosaic covenant were required to keep. If Christians are participants in the Mosaic covenant, here is just a small sampling of laws we should be obeying:
- Do not wear clothing made of mixed wool and linen (Lev 19:19).
- A wife suspected of adultery may be subject to a test to determine her guilt or innocence by drinking tainted water (Num 5).
- We cannot use lethal force against a home intruder in self defense during daylight (Ex 22:2-3).
- Those caught in adultery must be put to death (Lev 20:10).
- A man must marry his brother’s widow and produce a male child to be his brother’s legal heir if the deceased had no male offspring (Deut 25:5-10).
Are the Old Testament laws mandatory for Christians? If so, which ones? All of them, some of them, none of them? Some of the Old Testament laws are impossible to obey without a temple and Jewish priests (neither of which exists today). What about the ones that are possible to obey?
How can we tell which, if any, of the laws are applicable to Christians?
A very popular approach is to divide the 613 commandments into the categories of moral laws, civil laws, and ceremonial laws. Since ancient Israel was a theocracy, some people assume that the civil laws regulated how their government worked, the ceremonial laws guided their religious observances, and the moral laws shaped their society’s ethics and conduct.
Since we are not ancient Jews living under the old covenant’s theocracy, the civil aspects of the law evidently do not apply to anyone living today. Likewise, since Christ’s sacrifice did away with the need for the temple and its rituals, the ceremonial laws are equally non-applicable. With the other two categories eliminated only the moral laws are left. The moral laws are assumed to be timeless and universal, so any of the 613 laws which guide morals and ethics must still binding on God’s followers today.
This sounds really good. It appears to be a tidy and logical way to determine which of the laws from the Old Testament Christians must observe. As always, the devil is in the details. There are two problems with this approach.
Moral, civil, ceremonial: an unbiblical approach
First of all, it isn’t biblical. There is no indication in the Old Testament that either God or the Jews ever recognized different categories of the law. There is not a clue that they considered the law to be anything other than one monolithic system of laws which served as the terms of the covenant which defined ancient Jewish society.
Likewise, there is no indication that the apostles and prophets of the first century church used this method to determine which laws were binding on Christians. In Acts 15 the apostles and elders met in Jerusalem to debate how the Mosaic law impacted the church (Acts 15:6-18). They heard testimony about God’s actions among the Gentiles and they interpreted passages of Scripture from the Old Testament prophets. Never did they appeal to various categories of laws attempting to determine which ones were timeless and universal.
Moral, civil, ceremonial: Impossible to classify
The second problem with this approach is that the laws don’t fit neatly into individual categories. For example, would murder fall under the civil or moral category? Was the command forbidding adultery a civil law or a moral one? Was the prohibition against idolatry a moral law, ceremonial law, or civil law?
Then there are those commandments which seem to defy classification. What category would these laws fit into?
“You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” (Ex. 23:19 ESV)
“If you come across a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young.” (Deut. 22:6 ESV)
Do you see the problem with the “moral, civil, ceremonial” approach? If we cannot make a clear distinction of how the 613 laws were (presumably) categorized, we have no valid means of deciding which laws are applicable today. The fact of the matter is that the Bible never even hints that these categories existed.
The biblical answer regarding the Ten Commandments (and the other laws)
The answer to this dilemma is simple and comes straight from the New Testament, but for some reason it seems to go unnoticed.
“By saying a new covenant, he has declared that the first is obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old is about to pass away.” (Heb. 8:13 CSB)
“he then says, See, I have come to do your will. He takes away the first to establish the second.” (Heb. 10:9 CSB)
It doesn’t get much plainer than this. The Old Covenant is obsolete and has been replaced by a new covenant. The Mosaic covenant, along with its laws, is no longer in force for anyone. When Jesus died on the cross, the New Covenant took effect.
15 And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. 16 For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. (Heb. 9:15–16 NKJV)
In effect, what the author of Hebrews is saying is that Jesus ushered in the New Covenant at His death. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus’s covenant to the last will and testament of a dying man which does not go into effect until the person dies. The Old Covenant is gone and has been replaced by the New Covenant. It’s really just that simple.
How does this knowledge help us know which of the Old Testament laws we follow?
The good news is, we don’t have to figure it out. The authors of the New Testament Scriptures have done this for us. It’s very simple. If we see an Old Testament law reiterated in the New Testament, God expects Christians to obey it. This means that nine of the Ten Commandments are still in force.
As you can see in the table, the New Testament echoes all of the Ten Commandments except for one. The New Testament does not command Christians to cease all labor on the Sabbath day (Saturday).
Practically speaking, that’s all there is to it. If the New Testament reiterates a law from the Old Testament, we must obey it. If the New Testament says nothing about a particular Old Testament law, or says it has been annulled (e.g. dietary restrictions, Rom 14:20; 1 Tim 4:4-5), then the New Covenant does not obligate us to obey it.
Theologically speaking, the division of the covenants is probably more nuanced than this. Practically speaking, this approach is more than sufficient to permit us to know what the terms of our covenant are.
Conclusion
We obey the dictates of the New Testament Scriptures. Whatever commandments we obey from the Old Testament are required of us not because they are in the Old Testament, but because they are carried over into the New Testament.
Christians living today were never a party to the Mosaic covenant. We have entered into Jesus’s New Covenant and are bound by the terms of our covenant with Him.