This is a significant question for many evangelical Christians, particularly for those influenced by Dispensationalism. E.g., Charles Ryrie, a self-described “classic” Dispensationalist,1 wrote:
…Even though a dispensation ends, certain commands may be re-incorporated into a later era. Nine of the Ten Commandments are restated as part of the economy of Grace. So also is the law to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:18; cf. Rom. 13:8).
5. But some things are completely changed…. As a code of conduct and a specific revelation from God complete for its time, a dispensation ends. But some things may become part of succeeding codes in one way or another in the dispensations that follow. That is how, for example, Scripture can say that the law, and specifically the Ten Commandments, have been done away with (2 Cor 3:7–11) and yet incorporate nine of those Ten Commandments plus other commandments in the law code of the dispensation of Grace (Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (Chicago: Moody Press, 2007).
Clearly Ryrie was trying to account for the continuity and discontinuity between the New and Old Testaments broadly and specifically between the “old covenant” or the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant. He attempted this, however, without much reference to the broader, historic Christian reading of Scripture and the history of redemption. His account was certainly not that of the Protestant Reformers nor was it that of the Reformed churches.
Natural Law
He might have benefited, however, from engaging those traditions more thoroughly and carefully as he read and sought to explain Scripture. Had he done he would have learned a very important category: creational or natural law. The Apostle Paul says,
…that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse (Rom 1:19–20; NASB).
and
For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them… (Rom 2:14–15; NASB).
As Paul read and interpreted Genesis 2 he saw that God had revealed something about himself and the essence of his moral law in creation and in the human conscience. The traditional way to speak about this is natural revelation and more specifically natural law (lex naturae or lex naturalis). This is the historic Christian reading of Paul in the fathers, the medieval theologians, and in the Reformation theologians and churches. Here is a brief summary of some of the issues in the discussion of natural law.
The Moral Law
For the Protestants (Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Bucer, Calvin) the natural law was substantially the same as what Christians have historically called the moral law. This category, in turn, assumed a threefold distinction in the Mosaic law: moral, civil, and ceremonial. The latter were the religious laws governing sacrifices and ritual purity and the like. The civil or judicial laws stipulated civil and capital punishments. The moral law, however, was always regarded as distinct and permanent in a way that the civil and ceremonial laws were not. Those laws were always intended to be temporary. They were never intended to be permanent because they were completely identified with national Israel and expired when that state expired with the death of Christ.
The moral law, however, was said to be grounded in the nature of God, to reflect his character and thus to be permanent and binding. Paul assumes that we understand this distinction. This is why he distinguishes in Romans 2:12 between those who were “in the law” (ἐν νόμῳ) from those who sinned “lawlessly” (ἀνόμως). The law is the standard by which sin is judged (1 John 3:4). This is Paul’s way of speaking about the Gentiles who were outside the uniquely Israelite laws, the types and shadows (Heb 8:5; 9:24; 10:1; 1 Cor 10:6, 11; 1 Pet 3:21; Col 2:17) and the Jews, who were under them as a “schoolmaster” (Gal 3:24). The Gentiles were still under some law. If they were not under the civil and ceremonial laws, then which law were they transgressing? The moral law, that law grounded in creation and revealed in nature and impressed upon their consciences. This is why all humans are “without excuse” before God. We all know that God is. We know enough of his nature and his law to be held accountable. We do “the things of the law” by nature, by instinct. Thus, Paul says, that the Gentiles are a law unto themselves. Every nation forbids murder, theft, adultery, lying, rebellion against authority etc.
The Ten Commandments that God gave at Sinai (or Horeb) did not originate there. They are not so identified with Sinai and Moses the way that the sacrifices, ceremonies, and judicial laws were. What was given at Sinai was already substantially revealed in creation. Adam knew that he was obligated to love God with all his faculties and his neighbor as himself. This summary, of course, comes from our Lord in Matthew 22:37–40 but he was only repeating the words of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Our Lord himself imposed upon us the Old Testament summary of the moral law. Adam was obligated to love God with all faculties by obeying him in refusing to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He was to repudiate the Evil One just as our Lord did when he was tempted in the wilderness. Adam was to love his wife and all of us by rejecting the offer to become as God. The whole moral law was summarized in the commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:16–17).
This distinction between the temporary Mosaic laws (civil and ceremonial) on the one hand and the creational, moral law on the other explains better the continuity that Ryrie himself noticed but could not explain properly. He rightly saw that substance of the moral law is repeated in the New Testament. Under his explanation that continuity is presented almost as though it were arbitrary. That has been a view in the history of the church. Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) treated the moral law purely as the product of the divine will and not as grounded in the divine nature.
The Moral Law in the New Testament
To be sure, we have always recognized temporary and typological elements in the way the moral law was given at Sinai, where the Israelite land promise was attached to the 5th commandment, “that your days may be long in the land Yahweh your God is giving you” (Ex 20:12). That land promise expired with the national people. Notice what Paul does with the 5th commandment in Ephesians 6:1–9:
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him (NASB).
He turned “that your days may be long in the land” (Canaan) into “may be well with you,” which itself is an expression drawn from Deuteronomy 5:33, 6:3, 18; 12:25; 22:7; and Jeremiah 7:23. Paul speaks this way because, as he indicated in Galatians 6:16, believers in Jesus are the “Israel of God.”
So Ryrie was right. The New Testament repeats the Ten Commandments. He stipulated “nine of the ten” commandments but this is a disputed matter. Does the New Testament express the 4th commandment explicitly? Not in exactly the same words but Hebrews 4 does quote Psalm 95. Now, the point there is probably not to reinforce the weekly Sabbath but it is instructive to note that his whole argument rests on the divine institution of the Sabbath, which did not occur at Sinai but, as Hebrews 4:3,4 remind us, at creation. The Lord created and rested. That pattern is built into the nature of things. It is not a Mosaic or Sinaitic institution Therefore, the Sabbath as a pattern of rest and work, is built into creation. It did not expire with the abrogation of the Mosaic ceremonies.
Whatever one concludes about the Christian Sabbath, what we need to see here is that Ryrie was right. The Ten Commandments are restated and repeated in the new covenant but wrong in the significance he attached to that fact. They are re-stated and repeated because they are God’s moral law.
Thus, our Lord explained the Ten Commandments in his Sermon on the Mount. He gave this preface:
Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:17–20; NASB).
From there (to v. 48) he proceeds to give the true sense of the Ten Commandments.
We know that the earliest post-Apostolic Christians read the Ten Commandments in their worship services. We have evidence of that in the letter of Pliny the Younger to the Roman Emperor Trajan (c. 112 AD), where he described the Christian worship services in Asia Minor.
Christians are not under the Ten Commandments as a schoolmaster. Jesus has satisfied the law for us and has taken away the curse of the law but we are under the law as the rule and guide of the Christian life. We are under them not because they Mosaic but because they are moral. They are God’s moral law.
NOTES
1. Considering the history of Dispensationalism it would seem that its originators, John Nelson Darby (1800–82) and C. I. Scofield (1843–1921) should be regarded as “classic” Dispensationalists, since they established the movement and the basic outlines of its theology and hermeneutic (way of interpreting texts). Ryrie more probably represented a leading voice in what has been called modified Dispensationalism. The other significant group of Dispensationalists call themselves “progressive.”
RESOURCES
- Irenaeus on the Abiding Validity of the Decalogue
- Ursinus on the Abiding Validity of the Decalogue
- The Abiding Validity of the Creational Law
- Covenant Theology Is Not Replacement Theology
- AGR With Chris Gordon On Replacement Theology
- Three Things Dispensational Apologists Should Stop Saying
- Dispensationalism’s Millennial Memorial Sacrifices: Regression to Types and Shadows
- The PCUS Report On Dispensationalism
- Berkhof Contra Dispensationalism On the Unity Of Redemptive History
- On Distinguishing the Jerusalem From Below and Above
- What The Bible Is All About
- The Israel of God
Hi Scott,
“What was given at Sinai was already substantially revealed in creation. ”
This is hitting the nail on it’s head.
Thanks,
Ginger Zagnoli
Amen. Sola Scriptura through Sole Fide by Sola Gratie. Soli deo Gloria for Solus Christus 😊
Thank you for including the link to your essay on ‘Calvin and ‘lex naturalis’’. The distinctions, established from your scholarship, between Calvin and Thomas Aquinas help unravel my confusions embedded in Medieval and Renaissance thinking. Studying with a warped mind, the warped ideas of men can solidify warped thinking. However, God is not confined by the warped ideas of men to whom He’s given great minds. And God does not abandon His people to the darkness of men’s imaginations and reasons.
I am grateful for distinctions regarding The Ten Commandments, the governing, convicting, and condemning statutes that became a delight, once He saved me from His wrath. The Truth that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, kept these laws perfectly and joyfully for us defines my identity in Him. His imputed righteousness inspires a desire to love ‘charitis’ my neighbor.
How do I love my ‘lawless neighbor’?
CP,
We love our neighbors as Christ loved us. We love our enemies as Christ loved his enemies. 1 Peter 2:19–25:
“With the Sabbath our Christianity and our country stand or fall. A republic cannot endure without morality, nor morality without religion, nor religion without the Sabbath, nor the Sabbath without law.”
Wilbur F. Crafts, The Manifold Worth of the Sabbath, 1891,
I think the man said it nicely.
William,
This approach confuses a few things, which I have been trying to untangle in the series, The USA Is Not Old Testament Israel.
God’s moral law is certainly the abiding standard of Christian morality. Further, it is, in its 2nd use (the civil or political use) in the 2nd table, the norm for civil life. We even say, in the WCF that the general equity (the natural law) of the Israelite civil laws still informs civil law but to tie Christianity with any nation and the Sabbath to any nation, is confusing and confused. No post-canonical state has the same status as OT Israel. Even the modern state of Israel is just another secular state with no special status before the Lord.
Christians ought to be keeping the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath, not as a national or patriotic act but as citizens of the transcendent heavenly kingdom, the Kingdom of God, the city whose builder and maker is God.
A healthy believer will no longer be crushed under the law but delight in it!
Chris,
Caveat: See Heidelberg Catechism 114-115. The law continues to have an elenctic function even in the 3rd use for the Christian.
See also:
Are Believers Under the Law As a Schoolmaster
I suppose you could look at the third use of the law as, in creation, God made Adam perfectly good, in the image of God, capable of the perfect obedience God demanded of him for glorified life with God, yet mysteriously Adam chose to rebel, and thereby he brought the death curse on all of humanity. The second Adam, Christ the first born of many brothers whom God foreknew, and predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, reverses the death curse, and the Holy Spirit, Lord and giver of life produces a new creation of people in the image of the Son, fit for everlasting life in glory with God because they have a like character. The evidence that this is true of them is that they begin to strive to obey God’s Holy Law. Total submission to the Father, and complete obedience are the characteristics that are being reproduced in God’s new creation, through the pattern of the Ten Commandments. They inform us of what God intends for us to be. Rom. 8: 29
Thank you for this article affirming the abiding validity of the Ten Commandments. We cannot claim to love God without loving God’s moral law because the moral law reveals His holy and righteous character. The law is the key to acceptance with God. In Christ’s perfect obedience and His sacrificial death to satisfy the wrath of God for our covenant breaking, imputed to us, we are justified by grace through faith in His perfect keeping of the law. Then, through the indwelling Holy Spirit in sanctification , God is regenerating us to be conformed to the image of Christ, our elder brother, to become fully like Him in character at the resurrection, as perfect doers of God’s Holy Law. God’s moral law is central to understating Scripture, revealing God to us, and revealing what He wills His people to become, perfect doers of the Law, through Christ alone in justification, and then practically, gradually through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit in sanctification, until we are conformed to the image of Christ, the perfect doer of the law! ” Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man will see God.” Heb. 12:14 God’s central purpose is to call out a people, who will worship Him in obedience to His moral laws, out of love and gratitude to the Savior, who can say with David, “oh, how I love your law!” Ps. 119: 97. An understanding of what the moral law is, and how important it is in ALL of Scripture, is crucial to our faith.
Thank you for writing a summation of God’s abiding love for us in the Ten Commandments. His Plan to cause His people to delight in and to meditate on His moral law shows His Goodness. His Hesed amazes me. Once I opposed His Law. Now I treasure. Sanctification is a spiritual blessing I treasure and an assurance that He’s chosen and planted me by a stream of water to trust and depend on His Spirit in me to conform me to Christ.
Now this reveals my desire to obey Him by loving my ‘lawless’ neighbors who know His Law because it is written on ‘every man’s heart’.
But how do I love my neighbor when he does not do what he ‘ought’ to do?
Great question, how do I love my lawless neighbor? In this life, never exactly as I should! That is why this life is one of repentance. I think that is what Paul describes in Romans 7. Our failures to do exactly what the law requires, continue to drive us to seek our righteousness in Christ, and in gratitude for salvation to love God more and more. As Heidelberg 115 so eloquently says, “that as long as we live we may learn more and more to know our sinful nature, and so the more earnestly seek forgiveness of sins and righteousness in Christ, secondly, that without ceasing we diligently ask God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, that we be renewed more and more after the image of God, until we attain the goal of perfection after this life.”
Amen & Amen. Thank you for responding. The instruction and guidance are clear. Scripture alone through Faith Alone by Grace Alone are the keys to loving my neighbor, for it is also certain that neither perfection nor correction has worked.