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For a Jewish person to abandon the old way of the law and adopt God’s new way was a challenge. We see evidence of that struggle in Hebrews, for example. Hebrews contains thousands of words urging the Jews to jettison the old and hang on tightly to the new. But for most of us, that’s not our situation. We’re Gentiles. We were never offered the law. Today, we Gentiles are offered one covenant—the new. Breaking free from the old shouldn’t really be necessary, since the old was never really ours to begin with!

Have you ever thought about that? You, your heritage, your family line—none of it had anything to do with the law if you’re a Gentile. And it was the same for the Greeks back then. They had no relationship with the Jewish law. So did Paul march into Galatia or Corinth with the law of Moses under his arm to fix them up? Of course not! If he had, many would have reacted with “Moses who?”

Bringing the law into the picture was the very thing that made Paul angry. Judaizers were following on Paul’s heels with a message of “Jesus plus the law.” That’s exactly what we still hear today: Jesus for salvation and the law for daily living. But the truth is that Gentiles (that’s most of us!) were never even offered the law. For us, it’s the new covenant or nothing at all.

Multiple Choice

Saying that rules, the law, and especially the Ten Commandments have nothing to do with the Christian life appears to be a radical statement these days. Make no mistake—I’m very aware of that. Of all the messages I deliver, this is the one that raises the most eyebrows.

Many of us are still undecided regarding the role of the law in our lives. Before we continue, maybe you should consider where you currently fall in your beliefs about Christians and the law. Consider this statement and check all that apply.

Christians should look to the law . . .

for salvation

as a moral compass

to define sin

for growth in Christ

for none of the above

Now that you’ve considered the possibilities, let’s examine each one. The first one—that we’re saved by law—is easy to dismiss. Many passages tell us that no one will be made right with God through the law (Acts 13:39; Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:16; 3:11). Our initial step into Christ Jesus is unrelated to the law. We’re saved by faith, not by observing the law (Gal. 3:24). But the other statements aren’t as easy to address. Shouldn’t the law be our moral compass that helps us define sin or grow in Christ?

Rewriting Scripture

Some say Christians should have no relationship with the law for salvation, but we should look to the law as a compass to define sin and keep us on track. Is this right? Let’s begin with what we’ve already seen:

We’re dead to the law (Gal. 2:19; Rom. 7:4).

We’re not under the law (Rom. 6:14).

We’re free from the law (Rom. 6:7).

We’re not supervised by the law (Gal. 3:25).

We don’t serve in the old way of the law (Rom. 7:6).

We can live in the newness and freedom of the Spirit (Rom. 7:6; Gal. 5:13).

Apparently we don’t need the law for dealing with sin or for living uprightly. If we Christians think we need the law to define sin, we forget that the law defines sin in more than six hundred ways. Eating pork is sin. Eating shellfish is sin. Saturday mowing is sin—and that’s one of the Big Ten. Should we just pick a few that we prefer as our moral guide? There again, we’re dicing up God’s law to get it the way we like it. We’re deciding that an arbitrarily selected portion of the Mosaic law should be our source for defining sin and guiding us toward godliness.

So one popular view is that the law, or a select part of it, is needed as a moral guide for the Christian’s daily life. The other view is that the Christian should have no relationship with the law after salvation. Only one of these two views can possibly be scriptural. The other view shouldn’t find support and should require a virtual rewriting of Scripture.

As I see it, to claim the law guides a Christian’s daily life requires a rewriting of Scripture. It means taking the passages we just