We have come to a very familiar passage of Scripture in Deut 5, the Ten Commandments. Because it is so familiar and we can probably all recite the Ten Commandments from memory, there is a certain danger in this passage. It is easy to dismiss it because of the familiarity and easy to misunderstand how Christians are to view these commandments. I have been teaching out of large chunks of Deuteronomy up to this point. However, today I have decided to focus on a small amount of chapter 5 instead of all of it. This is firstly because I don’t think any of us need to have the Ten Commandments explained as such. But secondly, it is very important for us to understand what the law has to do with us as Christians.
ESV Deuteronomy 5:1 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. 2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. 3 Not with our fathers did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. 4 The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, 5 while I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the LORD. For you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said: 6 “‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 7 “‘You shall have no other gods before me.
The first thing to observe here is that God did not merely arbitrarily give laws to Israel. These are part of something greater. “The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.” (Note that Horeb is another name for Sinai.) A covenant is a very solemn kind of agreement or alliance between two parties. The initiator of the covenant was the LORD, not Israel. In fact, the LORD had initiated the covenant hundreds of years earlier with Abraham. This is expressed in different ways in Genesis.
The first time the covenant is mentioned to Abraham is in Genesis 15. “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites” (Gen. 15:18-21 ESV). In Genesis 17 the covenant is restated and the sign of circumcision is given. The LORD said to Abraham, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Gen. 17:4-7 ESV).
The covenant with Abraham is an everlasting covenant. Thus the covenant at Sinai (Horeb) is not totally new, but rather a continuation of the earlier covenant. It is the expression of God’s commitment to be the God of Israel. The LORD is in relationship with the nation of Israel, a relationship which he established.
The Ten Commandments are the foundation of the law given to Israel and the law is given within the confines of the covenant which the LORD made with Israel. In other words, the Ten Commandments are not a set of random rules, but part of the relationship between the LORD and his people. They exist so that the people of God can know what God requires of them within that relationship. And those laws speak about how to relate to God as God and how to relate to the people of the covenant who live in the land that God would give them.
The covenant is not something in the past. Moses said, “Not with our fathers did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today” (v. 3). Moses is not making a literal historical point here but a theological one. Many of the people standing there listening to his sermon were not even born when the covenant was made at Mt Horeb. So historically speaking it was made with their fathers. But he is not interested in history so much as the contemporary nature of the covenant. The covenant does not only apply to other people who are now dead. It applies to Israel in the present, that is, every generation of people who read Deuteronomy. Because the covenant is with people in the present, the laws which God gives are not only for the past but for the present. Obedience to the laws of God was the way in which Israel would continue to live in the land and relate to their God in a positive way.
These things relate to us as Christians as well. Our relationship with the living God is based on the covenant that God made with us. Like the Sinai covenant, the covenant we live under is a continuation of the covenant made with Abraham. Jesus Christ is the seed of Abraham through whom every nation of the earth will be blessed (Gen 12:2-3; 22:18; Gal 3:16). We usually call this the new covenant. It is different to the covenant with Moses at Sinai in several ways. It is in fact far better. The writer to the Hebrews explains it this way:
“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. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says: ‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (Heb. 8:6-10 ESV).
What we are commanded to do as Christians is therefore not based on our capacity to obey the law. Instead it is based on the new covenant made in the blood of Christ (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25). This new covenant is the foundation of our relationship with God. We are right with God because he has accepted the blood of his Son on our behalf.
The second thing to observe about the preamble to the Ten Commandments is that Moses acted as the mediator of the covenant between the LORD and the people. He writes: “The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the LORD. For you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain” (vv 4-5). Moses acted as a mediator because the people could not come directly to God. The LORD is utterly holy and transcendent. But Moses was appointed to stand between the people and the LORD. He received the law on the mountain and there God gave him the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone.
As Christians we do not simply have a better covenant, but also a better mediator of the covenant. Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. The blood of bulls and goats served to sanctify people under the old covenant. So, says Hebrews 9:14-15, “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.” Jesus is a far better and more exalted mediator than Moses because it was by his own blood that the covenant was made and by his blood that we are completely cleansed from all sin.
With this established, let us venture as far as the first commandment because this demonstrates the appropriate understanding of salvation and law. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (vv 6-7). Before any commands were given, the powerful redemptive act of God accomplished freedom for Israel from their bondage in Egypt. It was because of what God had already done for the people that he laid the obligations of the law upon them. The LORD did not give his law to Israel while they were in Egypt so that they could work hard to obey it and then perhaps he would deliver them. That is not how the story of the exodus goes. Redemption comes before law. Thus even in the giving of the Ten Commandments the gospel is proclaimed before the law.
It is no different for us now. No one becomes a Christian by obedience to God’s commands, except the command to believe in God’s one and only Son. The redemption that comes through the cross came long before any of us believed God and obeyed him. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6-8 ESV). This is the repeated pattern of the New Testament. God’s redemptive actions in Christ always precede any commands.
Now we are ready to consider the way in which Christians are to relate to the law. The epistle to the Romans explores the law and the gospel in great depth. I will consider only some of this to give an overview of how we relate to the law. Firstly, the law highlights the truth that we are sinners. Paul argues like this: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no-one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Rom 3:19-20). The law serves to make us aware of our own hearts and the wickedness within them. When we read the Ten Commandments, it is impossible to get through these without realising that we have in fact broken these. Even if it were possible to say that I have kept some of them, James 2:10 tells us that “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” The result of hearing the law can only ever be consciousness of our own sinfulness and never righteousness, because we fail to obey it. The problem is not with the law—it is holy, righteous and good (Rom 7:12). The problem is in us (Rom 7:14).
We must never assume that obedience to the law is the means of gaining salvation. Paul hammers home this point in Romans 4:13-16. “It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression. Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.” The promise to Abraham, fulfilled in Christ, is always the basis of our salvation.
This does not mean that Christians are not meant to obey the Ten Commandments. On the contrary, we are not exempted from obedience to God’s law. “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” (Rom. 6:14-15 ESV). We have been freed from the bondage of the law in order to live in righteousness. Our freedom is not a licence to sin but rather a freedom that leads to obedience to the will of God. And we know that God’s will is expressed in the Ten Commandments.
The reason that I am now able to be obedient to God is not that I try harder than before, when I was not a Christian. Rather it is because God has made this possible through the work of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:3-4). Jesus has transformed his people by his Spirit so that we are able and willing to obey the law. This is the nature of grace. Now we have a debt to God lived out in obedience to him (Rom 8:12).
Unfortunately, we are often tempted to believe that we are saved by faith and yet gain favour in our lives by obedience to commandments. This was the error of the Galatians. So Paul asked them the pointed question, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal 3:3 ESV). No one is saying that we should not obey the Ten Commandments. God’s law is good and these commandments still stand, albeit sometimes in slightly transformed forms, (particularly the command to obey the Sabbath, the day of which has been changed to the day of the resurrection). But the question we must ask ourselves with regard to the Ten Commandments is this: have we strayed into the flesh as a means of sanctification? Have we foolishly acted as if God gives us his favour only when we obey these perfectly? Does he only answer prayer on the days when I do everything right? Am I led by the Holy Spirit only when I try very hard to obey the law of God? Do I think of myself as a Christian only on the days when I seem to be doing okay with regards to the Ten Commandments?
In conclusion, the primary law that must be obeyed is the gospel, not the Ten Commandments. Stated positively, God has not merely given us a set of rules to obey. Such rules would not make us fit to be part of the kingdom of God at all since we would naturally fail to keep them. Our entrance to the Kingdom of God is always because of the grace of God revealed in the gospel of Christ. Faith in the gospel is the means by which we are saved (1 Cor 15:1-2) and we have trusted in Christ because we know that the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16 ESV).