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IN THE UNITED STATES, SOME CHRISTIANS FIGHT FOR THE TEN Commandments to be posted on our public buildings. We say that we don’t want our society to lose its Christian roots.
But Christianity was never rooted in the law, not even in the Ten Commandments.
LAW BREEDS SIN
The commandments aren’t intended to supervise Christians. They don’t curb sinful desires. In fact, the law causes more sinning:
While we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.
ROMANS 7:5 NASB, italics added
But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.
ROMANS 7:8, italics added
Will living by the Ten Commandments result in a godly life? Paul leads us to the opposite conclusion. Theologians debate about whether Paul is speaking of his saved or his lost condition in Romans 7, but regardless, the main point is that, saved or lost, human beings cannot keep the law. The law continually excites sin.
The law continually
excites sin.
The law arouses sinful passions. Sin gains opportunity through the law. This is what Romans 7 explains. So does a Christian life that involves trying to perfectly live by the Ten Commandments sound promising? Paul discovered what every human realizes when they truly give law their best shot: the law kills. Just as God intended, Moses introduced a ministry of condemnation.
Recently, a popular humor book documented the journey of a man who attempted to live by the regulations in the Old Testament for one solid year. * He detailed for us what this kind of life would look like in modern-day America. He altered his diet to exclude certain meats and seafood. He excluded from his wardrobe anything spun of more than one kind of material. And he even engaged in animal sacrifices of sorts! In the end, he candidly and humorously concluded that he could not adhere to even a majority of the regulations in the Old Testament. He also documents the convoluted reasoning of some of his fellow Jewish people, who have decided that things are somehow different today and that they don’t have to adhere to all of the law’s restrictions—just to some of them.
THE TEN
Many agree that the ceremonial law, restricting everything from diet to wardrobe, is not for Christians today. Indeed, few Christians attempt to follow those regulations. But should Christians still look to the Ten Commandments as their moral guide?
When Paul talks about the law arousing sinful passions, he uses coveting as his example. Paul reveals that one of the Ten Commandments excited sin in his life. Sin used “You shall not covet” to compel Paul to exert human effort to stop coveting. And the natural result occurred—coveting. When fleshly effort tries to overcome sin, sin wins every time. So Paul ended up struggling with coveting of every kind.
I find it amusing that a fervent religious leader couldn’t stop craving other people’s stuff! Sure, Saul of Tarsus could polish his exterior. But inside he was guilty of wanting others’ possessions.
Paul’s mantra might as well have been, “I fought the law, and the law won.”
In 2 Corinthians, we see evidence that the Ten Commandments bring nothing but condemnation and death:
Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!
2 CORINTHIANS 3:7-9, italics added
How do we know that Paul is referring to the Ten Commandments and not to some ceremonial regulations? He specifically mentions that this ministry “was engraved in letters on stone.” This was true only of the commandments. So it was a ministry designed to condemn.
If we live under the law, sin will dominate us. If we live free from law (under grace), sin won’t overpower us: “Sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14).
The freedom from sin’s power that we all desire is right under our noses. The obstacle to experiencing victory over temptation is the way in which we’ve gone about the battle. When we arm ourselves with the law, we set ourselves up for failure every time.
We may call it self-discipline or accountability —or plug in some other inventive term. But when it’s anything but dependency on Christ within us, it’ll inevitably put the wheels of human effort in motion. Perspective is everything in our battle against sin.
When we arm
ourselves with the
law, we set ourselves
up for failure.
But, you may ask, doesn’t God help us keep the law?
If we take this to its ultimate conclusion, then wouldn’t the Holy Spirit motivate us to avoid pork, wear clothing woven with only linen, isolate friends and family members who have skin diseases, and refrain from working Friday night through Saturday night? This would mean canceling barbecues, throwing out nylon stockings, terminating Friday night emails, and skipping Saturday yard work. Is this the intention of the Spirit of God in your life?
Think about it.
CHIHUAHUA
“Hold on just a minute!” one of them shouted at me. “You’re taking things to an extreme. I agree that the Holy Spirit doesn’t want to help us live under the whole book of Leviticus, but we should still follow the Ten Commandments. And we should ask for the Spirit’s help to do so!”
I was in the midst of conducting a two-day seminar for pastors, seminary students, and church leaders in Chihuahua, Mexico. It was day two, and our attendance had grown from forty on the first day to about two hundred on the second day. Excitement was growing, and it seemed that people were being set free from the oppression of religiosity.
We were taking a break, and I was sipping my coffee. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by four leaders who were angrier than hornets. After several minutes of absorbing heated comments, I realized that what angered them the most was my insistence that Christians are even free from the Ten Commandments.
“But Sabbath observance is included in the Ten Commandments, and you don’t adhere to the Friday night till Saturday night Jewish Sabbath, do you?” I asked.
“Well, no.”
“So then, it’s the Big Nine that you’re under, excluding the Sabbath?”
At that point, the break ended, and we ended our discussion. “Just something to consider,” I remarked as we went back to the seminar room.
POOR SUBSTITUTE
God never gave us permission to divide the law into our favorite pieces so that we could select how much we’re under. He delivered us from the entirety of the law by fulfilling it through Jesus Christ. Now we don’t have to fulfill any of the law.
But how do we live upright lives if we don’t use the Ten Commandments as our guide? After hearing that believers have no need for the law, this is a natural question. The short answer is this: The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us when we believe, and he is enough! The fruit that comes from the Holy Spirit within us is enough. And “against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:23).
The law is a poor
substitute for the
counsel of the
Holy Spirit.
The New Testament teaches that those who are led by the Spirit are not under the law. The law is a poor substitute for the counsel of the Holy Spirit. We may think that placing ourselves under the Ten Commandments is a good way to clean house. But law-directed living has the opposite effect. The only sensible choice is to allow Christ to be himself through us. This is God’s way of impacting our lives and placing his life on display.
Some say, “I don’t live under the law of Moses. I know I’m free from those commandments. Instead, I live by ‘Christian principles.’” This is a fine-sounding variation on what is still a law-based approach. And it’s an obstacle to enjoying the dependency-based life. We know that living a “good life” by moral standards is an obstacle to understanding salvation. But choosing “morality” can even prevent a Christian from depending solely on Christ. For Christians, a hidden hindrance to the grace life is a “great” life.
THE ALLURE OF RULES
Principles, rules, and standards—no matter how “Christian” we believe they are—are poor substitutes for a life animated by God himself. In Colossians, we read about rules and their lack of value for Christians:
Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
COLOSSIANS 2:20-23, italics adde d
Paul recognizes the allure of principles, commands, and regulations as the means to self-improvement. But he dismisses these as powerless to bring about any real change in our lives. Notice that he’s not talking about the means to salvation here. He’s referring to our approach to life after we’ve died with Christ.
How will true worship take place? What brings about real humility? What brings actual victory over sin in our lives? Paul is addressing the daily life of a believer. And he emphatically states that rules and regulations are not the way to go.
Some might say, “I know that living by rules doesn’t save me. But now that I’m saved, I need rules to guide me.” That is exactly what the Galatians were saying, compelling Paul to write the following:
I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?
GALATIANS 3:2-3
Paul is speaking here to Christians who have already received the Spirit but are returning to the law as a means of self-improvement. They received the Spirit through faith, and he exhorts them not to finish with human effort!
This and similar passages throughout the New Testament address the issue of daily living. Paul dispels the myth that God is pleased with rule-based approaches to “perfecting” ourselves. Paul would ask us the same thing today: “Isn’t the presence of the resurrected Christ inside of you enough?”