The following are questions and responses related to the 2024 second quarter Sabbath School Study Guide.

Do we still need to keep the Ten Commandments? Is it still a sin to break the Ten Commandments? What does keeping them really mean, and what happens if we don’t?

Were the Ten Commandments done away with, and if not, does keeping them save you?

In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus said that the essence of the Ten Commandments is to love God with all our heart and love others as ourselves. For sinful, fallen humans who are vastly lacking in love and full of pride, self-centeredness, and shortsightedness, what does that really look like? For that, God gave us the Ten Commandments to say, if you are loving, these are things you will be doing and things you must do. Some say that after Christ’s death, the Ten Commandments were done away with and the statement of Christ in Matthew 22 replaced them, because the Ten Commandments were “nailed to the cross” with the ceremonial laws governing animal sacrifices and the like. But how could this be?

The animal sacrifices pointed forward to Jesus dying on the cross as the means of forgiveness of sins (we were never saved through our own merits), so after Jesus came and died, they had to be done away with because they were no longer necessary. The real thing had arrived (Hebrews 10:8-12), so the types and symbols pointing forward to Him had to cease. The ceremonial laws governing the sacrificial rituals were part of the Mosaic law (i.e., laws written down by Moses), which also included many other laws governing Jewish day-to-day life, including those for crime and punishment, that were meant to preserve the Jews as the chosen people through whom Christ would come. However, once Christ did come, these laws were not as applicable and could be thought of as “nailed to the cross.” One such example was the laws concerning fasting. As recorded in Matthew 9:14-17, Mark 2:18-22, and Luke 5:33-39, Jesus was asked why His disciples did not fast. In verses 16–17 of Matthew 9, Jesus responds by explaining that you can’t make old ways fit new realities. He says:

“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Unlike the Mosaic law, the Ten Commandments were given to everyone before there was even an Israelite nation. For instance, the 4th commandment regarding resting on the Sabbath was instituted by God in Genesis 2:2-3 on the 7th day of creation week. All the commandments must have been around in some form since creation because they are required for living in a good, loving relationship with God and each other. Moreover, they were written by God Himself on stone and had no implicit or explicit expiration time. No record or reason for their expiration is found in Scripture; therefore, it must be that they remain fully valid and that nothing about them as a standard of expected obedience has changed.

The Ten Commandments are a distillation of something bigger and more fundamental. That thing is deep, abiding, unconditional love (Matthew 22:36-40). As further spelled out in Matthew 5:27-48, the commandments distill this pure and lofty ideal into concrete, bite-size pieces for a fallen human race that is sinful in nature. Therefore, in looking at them, we must recognize this distillation and see that it encompasses more than just the letter of the law. Otherwise, we totally miss the mark by superficially focusing only on the letter of the law and missing the spirit of it. This was the case in Matthew 23:27-28, where Jesus called the Pharisees and teachers of the law “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” Or, as we see in Matthew 19:16-22, though the rich young ruler lived up to the letter of the law, he was still missing the mark.

For His children to better understand and embrace the lofty ideals of the law, God needed to write them on their hearts, as stated in Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 8:10. This was done most notably through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit, which helped us to more deeply know the heart of God and draw closer to Him. To know God is to love Him and want to serve Him, and as such, we are transformed from the inside out with a focus on the love behind the law instead of just the letter of the law. We see the distinction between these in how Jesus magnified the law in Matthew 5:21-48 as He explains what it really means to live by the spirit of the law and not just its letter. This does not negate the importance of the letter of the law, which provides concrete markers that, even as baby Christians, help us identify right from wrong.

In seeing how Jesus reinforced and magnified the Ten Commandments in Matthew 5:21-48, we see we could never be saved by keeping them since, being fallen, we could never have kept them perfectly without one sin all our lives in both letter and spirit. However, one of the most wonderful things that Christ’s death does (and has always done even before He died) is to free us from the condemnation of the law because He paid the price for those sins (or would pay from the perspective of Old Testament times). But being free from the condemnation of the law does not equate with doing away with it. Instead, it means that someone else pays the price for us. Instead of doing away with the law, Jesus further established it by satisfying its condemnation of humanity at the cost of His life. If He could have done away with it, there would have been no need to die. Moreover, through the same sacrifice, He also writes both the spirit and the letter of the law on our hearts, as we saw in Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 8:10 (what incredible efficiency). Why do that if it was done away with and if we were not meant to keep it?

So, why keep the Commandments?

Revelation 3:20 says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” The more we invite Christ into our lives, the more we understand and love Him, and the more we want to please Him and keep His commandments. John 14:15 says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” We will want to know His word and keep it. Just as a plant has to grow if it has life, so we will want to keep God’s word if He dwells within us.

Jesus goes further in saying why we need to keep the commandments. In John 14:21, 23 (NKJV), He makes it clear that it is the only way to grow. It says:

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”

Basically, as we keep His commandments, God will come and make His home with us, which will no doubt grow us to become more like Him, which will make us want to keep His commandments even more. Christian growth is an iterative process. The more we grow in Him, the more we keep His commandments. And the more we keep His commandments, the more we grow. In the meantime, we are not condemned for imperfectly keeping them as we grow. At no time are we saved by keeping them, nor are we condemned by not keeping them, but we must be growing in our relationship with Him. And how do we know that this is the case? According to 1 John 2:3-6, we know we are growing in closeness to Him by how much we are growing in keeping His commandments. Likewise, the converse is also true. If we are not growing in the keeping of His commandments, then we do not have His indwelling Spirit and are in danger of being lost. 1 John 2:3-6 says:

“Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.”

We can therefore see that it makes no sense to say we no longer need to keep the commandments because we are no longer under law but under grace. In fact, we have always been under law and have always been under grace. The amazing fact that Jesus made a way so that both law and grace can be applied does not give us license to break the former so that we can have the latter (Romans 6:1-9). Instead, it means we are not condemned if God dwells within us. And His dwelling within us means we will grow more and more into conformity with His commandments and into His likeness.

 

Author: Devon McIntosh