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Our marriage to Jesus means we crossed the border from death to life. As with Marie Antoinette, our border crossing requires a clean break from the old way. Our relationship with the law is over:

Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Rom. 10:4)

Too Simple?

Some teach that we Christians are free from the dietary rules and sacrifices of the law, but we still need the Ten Commandments. Now, let me be quick to say that I don’t advocate lying, adultery, or murder. Nor do any Christians that I know, for that matter. But the question is, once we Christians have recognized that law can’t save us, should the Ten Commandments still be our guide for daily living?

The answer, I believe, is no. A Christian should have no spiritual relationship of any kind with the Ten Commandments. Why not? First, many of us don’t know what we’re saying when we think we’re living by the Ten Commandments. If we truly were, we’d abide by the Sabbath, refraining from work Friday evening through Saturday. This is remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy—one of the Ten Commandments.

Some will say, “Well, we’re free from the Sabbath. That’s different!” My reply is, “So then it’s the Nine Commandments that we’re under?” I don’t see in Scripture where we’re told we can dice up God’s law into segments—sacrificial, dietary, moral, and Sabbath—in order to get it the way we like it. As we’ve seen, the law is an all-or-nothing proposition (James 2:10). We can’t adopt just some of it.

The apostle Paul says we’re cursed if we don’t do everything written in the law (Gal. 3:10). This is precisely why God freed us from all requirements of the law, not just some. We don’t have the right to cherry-pick, selecting the parts that are comfortable for us. Choosing to abide by part of the law, whether it’s 1 percent or 99 percent or anywhere in between, is not an option. If we take on the business of law keeping, we’re required to keep the whole law. And if we adopt the law even as part of our belief system, Jesus becomes of “no benefit” to us at all (Gal. 5:2–4 NASB).

The Big Ten Too?

But maybe this “freedom from the law” talk doesn’t apply to the Ten Commandments. Maybe this is too radical, an overreaction to legalism. After all, where does it say the Ten Commandments themselves bring condemnation and struggle? I’m glad you asked. There are two passages that are convincing to me. Here’s the first:

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, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! (2 Cor. 3:7–11)

Paul refers to the law as “the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone” (2 Cor. 3:7). That last bit about being engraved in letters on stone was true only of the Ten Commandments. The rest of the law was not written on stone—only the Ten.

First, Paul says the Ten Commandments minister death. Second, he says the Ten Commandments condemn. Third, he says the ministry of the Ten Commandments only had a fading glory. This passage is fairly convincing that we Christians shouldn’t look to the Ten Commandments as our source or guide. There’s a new ministry of the Spirit today, which has a greater glory!

But it’s not just that the Ten Commandments point out sins we already struggle with. When we place ourselves under the Big Ten, our flesh bolts into action. And the result? We end up setting world records for sin. In Romans 7, Paul reveals that the law gave sin an opportunity to be aroused (not stifled!) within him:

For while we were in