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Deuteronomy 31:24-26 says, “When Moses
had finished writing the words of this law
in a book to the very end, 25 Moses
commanded the Levites who carried the ark of
the covenant of the LORD, 26 “Take this Book
of the Law and put it by the side of the ark
of the covenant of the LORD your God, that
it may be there for a witness against you.”
The book of the
Law was one of the titles given to the
Pentateuch in the rest of the Old Testament
(Deut. 31:24-26; Josh. 1:8; 8:34). It was to
be placed beside the ark, not in it. Only
the Ten Commandments were placed inside the
ark because they were the actual words of
the covenant (Ex. 25:16; 31:18; 1 Kings 8:9). Moses made arrangements to make sure
the people did not forget their covenant
obligations. First, he commanded the priests
and leaders to make sure that the entire law
was read publicly every seven years (Deut. 31:9-15). He also put his own written record
of the law beside the ark as a witness
against Israel for when they would turn away
from the covenant. It contained all of the
613 laws of the covenant including the Ten
Commandments. It was the legal code that
governed every aspect of Hebrew life (Deut. 31:24-29). It had two complete copies of the
Ten Commandments to be read to the people
every seven years (Ex. 20:2-17; Deut. 5:6-21).
The
Covenant between God and Israel:
The Mosaic Law (the Old
Covenant) was given specifically to the
nation of Israel (Ex. 19; Lev. 26:46; Rom. 9:4). It was made up of three
parts: the Ten Commandments, the ordinances,
and the system of worship, which included
the priesthood, the tabernacle, the
offerings, and the festivals (Ex. 20-40;
Lev. 1-7; 23).
The Ten
Commandments form the basis for the rest of
the laws in the Old Covenant (Ex. 34:28;
Deut. 4:13). As part of the Old Covenant,
the people agreed to obey all the laws in
Exodus 20-23. God gave Israel additional
laws and regulations regarding how they
should conduct themselves in the Promised
land in the book of Deuteronomy, but those
laws were still considered part of the same
covenantal agreement God made with Israel on
Mount Sinai. Some people believe that these
laws constituted a second covenant, but they
are still the same covenant God made with
Israel in the beginning. In fact, the name
‘Deuteronomy’ is derived from the Greek and
it means a ‘copy,’ or a ‘repetition’ of the
law, rather than it being a second law
(Deut. 4:44-49; 5:1-5; 6:20-25).
“Deuteronomy 31:9 says, Moses wrote down
this law and gave it to the priests. Ancient
treaties specified that a copy of the treaty
was to be placed before the gods at the
religious centers of the nations involved.
For Israel, that meant to place it in the
ark of the covenant (see: Deut. 31:26; 33:9;
Ex. 16:34; 31:18).” [see: The NIV
Study Bible: Deuteronomy 31:24].
The
Sabbath was placed in the middle of the
legal document as a witness for the parties
involved as a covenant sign.
“It was
customary among the peoples of the ancient
Near East that when an overlord made a
covenant or contract with those he
conquered, a copy of the written agreement
was kept in the sanctuary of the ruling
party and another in the sanctuary of the
ruled party. A typical feature of such
covenants was that the seal, or sign, was
placed at or near the center of the treaty
document. This is similar to contracts of
today. If one acquires a loan from a bank or
makes some kind of other financial deal with
another, it is common that the parties
involved receive a copy of the agreement
stipulating the benefits, obligations, and
penalties if the contract is broken. These
contracts, or agreements, come into effect
once the appropriate signatures are in
place. But in the case of the covenant made
between God and Israel, both copies (the two
tablets) were placed in one sanctuary, since
God was both the ruling party and Israel's
God. And the signature of this contract was
observance of the Sabbath command, which was
placed near the center of tablets of the
covenant.” [see: Meredith G. Kline, The
Structure of Biblical Authority. Grand
Rapids, Mich. Eerdmans; 1975, 1972; p. 18,
59].
The Ten Commandments are
specifically referred to as the ‘words of
the covenant.’
Exodus 34:27-28 says,
“And the LORD said to Moses, “Write these
words, for in accordance with these words I
have made a covenant with you and with
Israel.” 28 So he was there with the LORD
forty days and forty nights. He neither ate
bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the
tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten
Commandments."
Deuteronomy 4:13 says,
“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.”
The Ten
Commandments were never separate from the
rest of the covenant, they served as the
framework or outline for the rest of the 613
laws of the covenant.
Nehemiah 10:29
says, ... "to walk in God’s Law that was
given by Moses the servant of God, and to
observe and do all the commandments of the
LORD our Lord and his rules and his
statutes.”
2 Chronicles 34:31 says,
“And the king stood in his place and made a
covenant before the LORD, to walk after the
LORD and to keep his commandments and his
testimonies and his statutes, with all his
heart and all his soul, to perform the words
of the covenant that were written in this
book.”
All of the laws of the Torah
were given to set Israel apart from the
other nations, including the Ten
Commandments (Ex. 19:5).
There is
no difference between the ‘Law of God’ and
the ‘Law of Moses’. They were the same law.
In Nehemiah 8, Nehemiah was reading to
the people from the Law that they had not
heard their entire lifetimes because of
their captivity. Nehemiah wanted to restore
the people to a lifestyle of keeping the
Covenant. Notice, the passage uses the terms
interchangeably, leaving no doubt about what
the Covenant can be called. The terms used
are: “The book of the Law of Moses” i.e. the
Mosaic Covenant; “the Law”; “The book of the
law”; the book, from the “Law of God”; and,
he read from the book of the “law of God”
daily. If there is a distinction between the
moral and ceremonial laws then why are those
phrases all used interchangeably?
The
Old Testament used different terms to
describe the 613 laws of the Mosaic
Covenant. It is called "the law " (Hebrew
"Torah" Deut. 17:18-19; 27:3, 8; Ne. 8:14-18), “the Law of Moses” (1 Kings 2:3;
2 Kings 23:25; Ezra 3:2), “the Law of God”
(Ne. 8:8-9). As a written code it is called
the "book of the law of Moses" (2 Kings 14:6; Isa. 8:20; Ne. 8:3), and the "book of
the law of God" (Josh. 24:26; Ne. 8:1). The
Bible tells us that God gave the Law of
Moses (Ezra 7:6; Ne. 8:1), and Moses gave
the Law of God (Ne. 10:29; 2 Chron. 34:14).
All those expressions were simply different
ways of describing the very same law.
The covenant that God made with
Israel was a legal contract containing 613
laws represented by the Ten Commandments,
written on stone tablets, and placed inside
the ark of the covenant. The Mosaic Covenant
served as Israel’s national constitution
with God as their ruler and King.
The
New Testament says the obsolete Old Covenant
included the ten words, written on stone
tablets.
2 Corinthians 3:6-11 says,
“who has made us sufficient to be ministers
of a new covenant, not of the letter but of
the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the
Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the ministry of
death, carved in letters on stone, came with
such glory that the Israelites could not
gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory,
which was being brought to an end, 8 will
not the ministry of the Spirit have even
more glory? 9 For if there was glory in the
ministry of condemnation, the ministry of
righteousness must far exceed it in glory.
10 Indeed, in this case, what once had glory
has come to have no glory at all, because of
the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if what
was being brought to an end came with glory,
much more will what is permanent have
glory.”
Hebrews 8:6-7 says, “But as
it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that
is as much more excellent than the old as
the covenant he mediates is better, since it
is enacted on better promises. 7 For if that
first covenant had been faultless, there
would have been no occasion to look for a
second.”
The Ten Commandments are the
obsolete covenant.
Hebrews 8:13-9:4
says, “When He said, "A new covenant," He
has made the first obsolete. But whatever is
becoming obsolete and growing old is ready
to disappear. 1 Now even the first covenant
had regulations for worship and an earthly
place of holiness. 2 For a tent was
prepared, the first section, in which were
the lampstand and the table and the bread of
the Presence. It is called the Holy Place. 3
Behind the second curtain was a second
section called the Most Holy Place, 4 having
the golden altar of incense and the ark of
the covenant covered on all sides with gold,
in which was a golden urn holding the manna,
and Aaron’s staff that budded, and the
tablets of the covenant.”
All of the
commandments, statutes, and ordinances, were
made obsolete because we live under a
totally different covenant than Israel lived
under.
The Jews never refer to the
Ten Commandments in the Torah. They call
them the Ten sayings, the Ten statements,
the Ten declarations, the Ten words, or even
the Ten things, but they are never referred
to as the Ten Commandments (Ex. 34:28,
Deut. 4:13; 10:4). For the Jews, the
Ten sayings are the categories for the
entire Law which are mixed in with the rest
of the laws given to the nation of Israel at
Mount Sinai.
The false two-law
theory:
The Seventh-day Adventist
Church, along with some of the other
Sabbatarian groups falsely teach the "two
law" theory. They say there was two separate
laws, or covenants that God gave to Moses
for the nation of Israel to keep. They say
the Ten Commandments and the ceremonial laws
were two separate and distinct laws, or
covenant agreements.
Romans 7:1-7
says, “Or do you not know, brothers—for I am
speaking to those who know the law—that the
law is binding on a person only as long as
he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by
law to her husband while he lives, but if
her husband dies she is released from the
law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be
called an adulteress if she lives with
another man while her husband is alive. But
if her husband dies, she is free from that
law, and if she marries another man she is
not an adulteress. 4 Likewise, my brothers,
you also have died to the law through the
body of Christ, so that you may belong to
another, to him who has been raised from the
dead, in order that we may bear fruit for
God. 5 For while we were living in the
flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the
law, were at work in our members to bear
fruit for death. 6 But now we are released
from the law, having died to that which held
us captive, so that we serve in the new way
of the Spirit and not in the old way of the
written code. 7 What then shall we say? That
the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had
not been for the law, I would not have known
sin. For I would not have known what it is
to covet if the law had not said, “You shall
not covet.’”
What law was Paul
talking about in Romans 7 when he said the
written code was made obsolete by the New
Covenant? Romans 7:6 seems perfectly clear,
“we are released from the law, having died
to that which held us captive, so that we
can serve in the new way of the Spirit and
not in the old way of the written code.”
Romans 7:7 goes on to say that it was the
law of the Ten Commandments that says, “You
shall not covet” from Exodus 20:17 and
Deuteronomy 5:21. There can be no mistaking
that the law Christians have to die to, “the
law of the written code” is the Ten
Commandments along with all of the other
laws of the Old Covenant (2 Cor. 3:2-11; Acts 15:1-28; Gal. 2:19; 3:24).
Our slavery to the Law has come to
an end.
Galatians 3:19 says, “Why
then the law? It was added because of
transgressions, until the offspring should
come to whom the promise had been made, and
it was put in place through angels by an
intermediary.
Galatians 3:23-25
says, “Now before faith came, we were held
captive under the law, imprisoned until the
coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then,
the law was our guardian until Christ came,
in order that we might be justified by
faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we
are no longer under a guardian,”
And
Galatians 4:4-7 says, “But when the fullness
of time had come, God sent forth his Son,
born of woman, born under the law, 5 to
redeem those who were under the law, so that
we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And
because you are sons, God has sent the
Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying,
“Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a
slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir
through God.”
The purpose for
giving the law in the first place was to demonstrate our
inability to fulfill God's standards of
righteousness (see: Rom. 3:20; 5:20; 7:7; Gal. 3:19; 3:24; 1 Tim. 1:9).
Galatians 4:10-11 says, “You observe days
and months and seasons and years! I am
afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”
Seventh-day
Adventists are like the Galatians who Paul
had to warn about the dangers of legalism. Keeping
certain days has nothing to do with our
salvation, including the weekly Sabbath. In
fact, Paul says those people who teach that
we must keep the Sabbath and the Holy days
of Judaism, "labor in vain".
The
Apostle Paul could have just as well been
speaking to our Seventh-day Adventist
friends today. The Sabbath has become an
idol for them. For them, the gospel is all
about keeping the Sabbath, and not eating
flesh meats. They are focused on keeping Old
Covenant requirements that the New Covenant
says were made obsolete.
Those
people who make an artificial distinction
between the Law of God (the Ten
Commandments) and the Law of Moses are
simply wrong. They are one and the same law!
They were the Old "Mosaic" Covenant that was
made obsolete by the New Covenant of Jesus
Christ.
The New Testament makes many
changes from the Old Covenant. It is a “New
Covenant”. We have a new legal contract that
is based on the Law of Christ! Jesus
fulfilled and brought the Old Covenant to an
end. The New Covenant is the covenant that
all God’s children live under today.
Trying to
keep the Old Covenant law is an impossible
standard to try to live by.
Deuteronomy 27:26, “Cursed is the man who
does not uphold the words of this law by
carrying them out." Then all the people
shall say, "Amen!” (NIV)
Leviticus 18:4-5, “You must obey my laws and be
careful to follow my decrees. I am the LORD
your God. 5 Keep my decrees and laws, for
the man who obeys them will live by them. I
am the LORD.” (NIV)
James 2:10, “For
whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one
point has become accountable for all of it.”
Galatians 3:10-12, “For all who rely on
works of the law are under a curse; for it
is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not
abide by all things written in the Book of
the Law, and do them.” 11 Now it is evident
that no one is justified before God by the
law, for “The righteous shall live by
faith.” 12 But the law is not of faith,
rather “The one who does them shall live by
them.”
The law was a unit. The Mosaic
Covenant was made up of 613 laws that
covered every area of Hebrew life. If you
broke one command you broke the whole
covenant. Both Paul and James quoted from
Deuteronomy 27:26 to show that everyone who
tries to keep the law comes under the curse.
Paul and James were in complete agreement
that breaking even one of the commandments
brings a person under the law’s
condemnation, and since everyone has broken
the law, everyone is under the curse (Rom. 3:23; 6:23).
We have to understand
that salvation is by grace, through faith,
in Jesus Christ alone!
Galatians 4:4-5, “But when the fullness of time had
come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman,
born under the law, 5 to redeem those who
were under the law, so that we might receive
adoption as sons.”
John 1:17, “For
the law was given through Moses; grace and
truth came through Jesus Christ.”
John 1:12-13, “But to all who did receive
Him, who believed in His name, He gave the
right to become children of God, 13 who were
born, not of blood nor of the will of the
flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
John 3:16, “For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have
eternal life.”
John 14:6-7, “Jesus
said to him, “I am the way, and the truth,
and the life. 7 No one comes to the Father
except through Me.”
People who
believe in the two-law theory will often
ask, “If the Ten Commandments are obsolete,
is it okay to commit murder, or steal”?
If you have to ask those questions it’s
pretty clear that you haven’t read the terms
of the New Covenant to get your answers.
We are under the New Covenant today, not
the old. Nine of the Ten Commandments are
included in, and even enlarged upon in the
New Covenant. They apply to Christians, not
because they were in the Old Covenant, but
because they are commanded of us in the new!
The only
commandment from the Decalogue that was not
repeated in the New Covenant was the Sabbath
command (Ex. 20:8-11; Deut. 5:12-15). The
New Covenant explicitly teaches us that the
Sabbath command was not made a requirement
for the Christian Church (Col. 2:13-17; Gal. 4:10-11; Eph. 2:11-16; Rom. 14:5-12).
The New Covenant is not
without any law! In fact, we live by a
higher law, the law of Christ. The moral
obligations of the New Covenant are superior
to the Old Covenant in every way.
1 John 3:15 says, “Everyone who hates his
brother is a murderer, and you know that no
murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
John’s teachings agree with Jesus’
teaching in Matthew 5:22-28 that outward
conformity to God’s commandment “You shall
not murder” in Exodus 20:13 is not nearly
enough. What matters is our hearts! When you
hate someone it violates the command not to
murder just as if you had already committed
murder.
How
do we know which of the Old Covenant laws
apply to us today?
The Old Covenant
was a legal agreement made with Israel
alone. The New Covenant is a “new” legal
agreement made with everyone who follows
Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Converts to Christianity were expected
to follow the moral teachings of Christ and
His apostles, but if the Sabbath was a New
Covenant requirement then we would expect to
find some mention of our obligation to keep
it in the New Testament, but there is none.
For the authors of the New Testament
epistles to leave out something as important
as the command to keep the weekly Sabbath
would have been unimaginable. The Sabbath
commandment was not repeated because it was
not meant for the Church. It was for Israel
alone and served as a ceremonial sign for
the Mosaic Covenant.
The only laws
Christians are required to keep are the laws
given in the New Covenant, not an admixture
of laws from the Old and the New Covenants
like our Sabbatarian friends falsely teach.
No
one is saying there is no covenant anymore;
what we are saying is that we are under a
totally new and different covenant from the
covenant that Israel was required to keep.
The New Covenant tells us exactly
how Christians are supposed to live their
lives, all we have to do is take the time to
read it.
"Such is the confidence
that we have through Christ toward God. 5
Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to
claim anything as coming from us, but our
sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us
sufficient to be ministers of a new
covenant, not of the letter but of the
Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit
gives life." (2 Cor. 3:4-6).
We have been set
free from the condemnation of the Law to
live by Christ’s Spirit (Rom. 8:1-4). It’s
time we enjoy the freedom Christ has given
us.
For further reading:
One
Law:
The End of the Law:
Matthew 5: The Old Covenant was Fulfilled:
The People of God in History:
Jesus was a Jew: &
Is the Sabbath Still Required for Christians?
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