What is the role of the law for Christians today?

Question 11089

The law of Christ is the phrase Paul uses when he wants to say that a believer released from the Mosaic covenant is not therefore released from moral obligation. It appears in Galatians 6:2 and again, in a slightly different form, in 1 Corinthians 9:21, where Paul describes himself as not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ.

That phrase does most of the work in answering this question. Christians are not under the Mosaic Law in any part, and Christians are not lawless. Holding both at once is what most of the confusion in this area fails to do.

What the Mosaic Law Was

The law given at Sinai was the covenantal constitution of a theocratic nation. It regulated worship, diet, agriculture, criminal justice, land tenure and national festivals, and it came with national blessings and national curses attached (Deuteronomy 28). It was given to Israel, not to humanity in general.

It served several purposes. It revealed God’s character, it governed a people, it separated them from the nations around them, and it exposed sin by naming it. Paul says the law was our guardian until Christ came, using paidagogos, the household slave who escorted a child to school and supervised his conduct until he came of age (Galatians 3:24).

What it never was is a means of salvation. By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20). Its diagnostic function was real and its saving function never existed.

Why the Threefold Division Does Not Hold

The common approach divides the law into moral, civil and ceremonial parts, discards the last two and retains the first. It is a tidy scheme and I do not think it survives the text. Scripture treats the law as a unit. James says whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it (James 2:10), which is only intelligible if it is indivisible.

Paul argues the same way. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Romans 10:4). The era of the law as guardian has ceased (Galatians 3:23-26). The ministry engraved on stones, which is the Decalogue specifically, has given way to the ministry of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:7-11). The first covenant is obsolete (Hebrews 8:13).

The law came as a covenantal package and it ends as a covenantal package. That includes the Ten Commandments, which were the covenantal summary of the Mosaic Law rather than a timeless code extracted from it. The believer moves not from law to lawlessness but from one covenant to another.

What the Law of Christ Actually Is

It is not a new external code with a fresh set of clauses. The law of Christ is the moral character of God expressed in Jesus, taught by the apostles and written by the Spirit on the believer’s heart in fulfilment of Jeremiah 31:33. It is internal in its operation and personal in its standard.

The New Testament describes it under several names. It is the royal law according to Scripture, you shall love your neighbour as yourself (James 2:8). It is the law of liberty (James 1:25). It is the law of the Spirit of life (Romans 8:2). Paul sums it up by saying that love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:10).

In substance it covers nine of the Decalogue’s provisions, frequently going further than Sinai required. Do not murder becomes do not hate. Do not commit adultery becomes do not look with lustful intent. The law of Christ is not a relaxation of the standard; it is an intensification of it applied inwardly.

The One Commandment Not Reissued

The Sabbath is the exception, and it is worth being clear about why. It was given specifically as a sign of the Mosaic covenant (Exodus 31:13), and signs end with the covenants to which they belong, just as circumcision does as a covenantal obligation.

The New Testament releases believers explicitly. Let no one pass judgement on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath (Colossians 2:16). One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike; each one should be fully convinced in his own mind (Romans 14:5). Hebrews 4 reframes Sabbath rest as the believer’s settled rest in Jesus.

The first day of the week became the gathering day of the church by apostolic pattern (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2), not by transfer of the Sabbath. Calling Sunday the Christian Sabbath imports a category the New Testament does not use, and I have found that it creates pastoral confusion the text never required. See my answer on Saturday or Sunday worship.

The Law’s Continuing Accusing Function

Although the believer is not under the law, the law still does something in the world. It stops every mouth and holds the whole world accountable to God (Romans 3:19). It functions as a mirror that shows people what they are, and that function has not lapsed.

This is why the law still has evangelistic use. Paul says he would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet (Romans 7:7). Preaching that never confronts people with God’s standard tends to produce converts who cannot say what they were saved from.

What must not happen is the reintroduction of the law as a rule of life for those already in Jesus. That is precisely what Galatians was written to prevent, and Paul’s language about it is startlingly severe.

Neither Legalism Nor Licence

Two errors sit on either side of the law of Christ. Legalism reintroduces the code, whether the Mosaic one or a modern set of church rules, and makes standing depend on performance. It produces either pride or despair, and usually both in rotation. See my answer on legalism.

Antinomianism takes freedom from the law as freedom from obligation. Paul anticipates the argument and rejects it flatly: are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means (Romans 6:1-2). Grace teaches us to renounce ungodliness rather than excusing it (Titus 2:11-12).

The law of Christ avoids both because it is relational rather than contractual. If you love me, you will keep my commandments (John 14:15). Obedience flows from a person rather than from a statute, which changes both its motive and its character.

How the Old Testament Still Speaks

None of this means the Old Testament is now irrelevant. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable (2 Timothy 3:16), and Paul says the things written in former days were written for our instruction (Romans 15:4). The law still teaches me about God, about sin, about holiness and about the need for a sacrifice.

What changes is how it applies. I read the food laws and learn about separation and about a God who claims the ordinary details of life. I read the sacrificial system and understand what the cross accomplished. I read the case laws and see principles of justice and care for the vulnerable that inform how I think, without binding me as legislation.

That is a rich use of the Old Testament rather than a dismissive one, and it is available only to someone who has stopped trying to keep it as a code. See my fuller answer on how the Mosaic Law still speaks.

Motivation Under the Law of Christ

The deepest difference is not in the content of the standard but in why anyone keeps it. Under a code, obedience secures standing. Under the law of Christ, obedience flows from a standing already secured, which changes the whole emotional character of the Christian life.

Paul makes the point with the language of adoption. You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father (Romans 8:15). A son obeys differently from a servant, and the difference is not laxity but love.

That is why I resist attempts to put believers back under Sinai for their own good. It does not produce more holiness; it produces anxious people measuring themselves. The law of Christ asks for more and supplies the Spirit to make it possible.

So, now what?

Stop asking which commandments still apply and start asking what the character of God looks like in your situation. The law of Christ is not a shorter list; it is a person to whom you are answerable and by whose Spirit you are being remade.

Then read the Sermon on the Mount slowly this week, and notice that Jesus asks for more than Sinai did, not less. If you find that the New Testament standard is easier than the Mosaic one, you have misread something. What would change if you took the law of Christ as seriously as some take the Ten Commandments?

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2, ESV