Do we still have to obey the Ten Commandments?

Pursuit of Holiness, , ,

“Do we still have to obey the Ten Commandments?”
A not uncommon question.

A not uncommon answer is: “We are not saved by the law, so we are no longer under any obligation to keep it. All we have to do now is love one another”, usually referencing (but misapplying) Rom 13:8, James 2:8.
Or, as that famous coleopteran once put it: “All you need is love”.

The inconsistency of this answer is evident.

For one thing, the expression “no longer” (above) implies that those in the Old Testament were under obligation to keep the law if they were to be saved. But since the Fall, that was never the case. All who were ever saved back then, from Abel onwards, were counted righteous with God through faith in God’s provision in Christ to come. (Heb 11:4 etc.)
By way of illustration, the Ten Commandments were given, not in order to free from slavery those who kept the commandments perfectly, but to instruct those who were already redeemed (Exod 20:2) on how to live.

Secondly, “have to” and “obliged to” mean the same thing. To “have to” love one another means the same as being “under obligation” to love one another.
But we are not saved on the basis of loving one another, any more than we are saved on the basis of keeping the law; we are saved only in the basis of the work of Christ on the cross. Therefore we are under no more “obligation” to love one another, if by that you mean an “obligation” that secures salvation, than we are to keep the law.

And thirdly, neither Paul in Romans 13:8-10 nor James in ch 2:8-13 of his epistle, say the law is done away with by love. On the contrary they both reference the Ten Commandments as still binding, but say we can only truly perform what is required by them when we do so out of love for one another.

Salvation by grace alone

None are saved by keeping the law of God.
Those in the Old Testament, along with all since, are saved by grace alone, on the basis of the work of Christ for us on the cross.

Though we speak of “justification by faith”, it is not the “work of faith” (John 6:28-29), or even “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6) that saves us. It is only the work of Christ for us on the cross that saves. Faith is merely the hand that takes hold of Christ who saves.
But the evidence of the genuineness of such faith is seen in its works, as James is at pains to tell us in his epistle, Jas 2:14-26. This is what Paul also refers to in Gal 5:6.

In one sense, we are under obligation to obey God’s commandments – not to secure our salvation, but simply because God commands it. And because we love God we want to do what pleases Him.

In order to unpack this idea of “obligation”, ask yourself a few questions:

  • Am I obliged to respect your life, i.e. not harm or kill you?
  • Am I, as a husband, obliged to love my wife (Eph5:25)? Am I obliged to treat her with respect? Am I obliged not to engage in domestic violence?
  • Am I obliged not to engage in child sexual abuse?
  • Am I obliged to respect your ownership of possessions, i.e. not steal them from you?
  • Am I obliged to speak respectfully to you?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then you cannot say we are under no obligation to keep the law of God in these areas. Love does not remove this obligation; rather love is the grand motivation for fulfilling one’s obligation to these and other commandments.

The Law of Liberty

James emphasises the importance of love in keeping the law. He refers to it as “the royal law: You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Jas 2:8).
But he also refers to God’s law more generally as “the law of liberty” (Jas 1:25, 2:12). What does he mean by this?

I found the following comments by J. A. Motyer very helpful:

The law of God is not a new bondage, but is given to mark the end of the old bondage and the beginning of true freedom. We must now seek to understand how this is so.

All around us today we see the social rules and conventions, which used to be respected, being broken or discarded. It is very easy to lament over the spirit of rebelliousness which this seems to represent, but the true explanation lies deeper.
What people are really seeking is freedom. We look around us at a whole array of inherited laws and customs, find them a real restriction and bondage, and cast them on one side, saying that we want to be ourselves, free of the cramping restrictions of former people and earlier days.

The easiest and in many ways the best illustration is marriage and sex.
Why should something as hopefully exciting and satisfying as sexual intercourse be reserved for marriage and restricted to the married?
The adult generation replied: It has always been so; that is the way we were brought up. The young replied: But we are not yesterday; we are today; we don’t see it like that; we want to be ourselves.
The church said: It has always been church teaching and tradition; and the young replied: But we don’t belong to your church; we want to be ourselves. And since neither Christian nor non-Christian marriages seemed to be a great commendation for the adult and church viewpoint, a generation of experimenters grew up, trying to find a life-style which would ‘enable us to be ourselves’ – in other words, to be free.

But what does it mean to ‘be ourselves’? What is true human nature?
What seems to enable us to ‘be ourselves’ so often leads only to a new bondage. We see it in the sex-scene and the drugs-scene all around us. Liberty was promised; bondage followed.

We must first know what we are before we can arrive at ‘being ourselves’ and truly free.
The Bible has the answer: Man is made in the image of God. Our true freedom depends on discovering how we can give expression to our true nature. How can we live so as to be like him?

James answers this crucial question by his startling expression, the law of liberty, bringing together the two things which people think of as opposites, law and liberty!
But, as we have seen, the law is the nature of God expressed in commandments. When we obey his commands, then we are living like him. We are in the image of God; the law is in the image of God.
When we bring these two together, we are ‘being ourselves’; we are truly free. God’s law describes the life of true freedom; obedience opens the door into the free life.

It is for this reason that we as Christians never need hesitate to point anyone to the law of God as the true way of life, for it spells out the image of God for the benefit of those who were created in the image of God. It is the true way of life for all.
We shall be accused, of course, of seeking to impose ‘our standards’ on those who do not share our convictions, but this is not so. The patient does not refuse the doctor’s prescription, saying, ‘I am not a doctor; he has no right to force his ideas on me.’ With the Bible in our hands we happen to know what human nature truly is, and also the way of life that brings true human nature to full development. In a word, we have on offer what the world wants: real freedom.

But for ourselves there is another whole dimension. Acts 5:32 says that God gives his Holy Spirit to those who obey him. In other words, the very act of obeying is a key to power. The law of God does more than describe the life of liberty; obedience liberates.
Hebrews 10:16–17 (quoting Jer. 31:33) explains this by saying that through the saving work of Christ we have been given by God a heart that matches the requirements of his law.
James might put it in his own way: we were brought to new birth by the word our Father spoke (1:18). His word of truth in all its aspects resides in our new nature, and waits to be triggered off by the precepts of his law. We are called to obey and, because the law corresponds to the wishes and capacities of the new heart, we can.[1]

The Westminster Confession

The Westminster Confession sums up so well what our attitude to God’s law is to be. The Confession recognises that not all laws in the Bible are still binding by distinguishing between Moral Law, Ceremonial Laws and Civil Laws.

Moral Law is summed up in, but not restricted to, what “was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai in ten commandments, and written in two tables; the first four commandments containing our duty toward God, and the other six our duty to man.” (WCF ch 19, § 2)

Ceremonial Laws: “Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the New Testament” (WCF ch 19, § 3)

Civil Laws: “To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require.” (WCF ch 19, § 4)

It goes on:

“The moral law does forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who gave it. Neither does Christ in the gospel any way dissolve, but much strengthen, this obligation.” (WCF ch 19, § 5)

It then concludes by showing how useful the law is in the believer’s life:

“Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life,
.   – informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly;
.   – discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and lives; so as, examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against sin; together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of His obedience.
“It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin, and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve, and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law.
“The promises of it, in like manner, show them God’s approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof; although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works: so as a man’s doing good, and refraining from evil, because the law encourages to the one, and deters from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law, and not under grace.” (WCF ch 19, § 6)

“Neither are the forementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel, but do sweetly comply with it: the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, requires to be done.” (WCF ch 19, § 7)

[1] Motyer, J. A. (1985). The message of James: the tests of faith (pp. 100–102). Inter-Varsity Press.