In What Sense Does the Mosaic Law Speak Today?

Question 01166

To ask in what sense the Mosaic law still speaks to Christians today is to ask one of the most practical questions in the whole of biblical theology, because the answer shapes how we read more than half of our Bibles. The short reply is that the believer is not under the Mosaic law as a binding covenant in any of its parts, and yet the Mosaic law still speaks with real force as inspired Scripture that reveals the character of God, exposes sin, and points us to Jesus. Holding both halves of that answer together is where most confusion is either created or cleared away.

Many sincere believers feel a quiet unease here. If we are not under the law, are we then free to live as we please? And if we are still under it, why do we eat bacon and wear mixed fabrics? The way through is to understand what the Mosaic law actually was, why it was given, and what God has done with it in the coming of His Son.

What the Mosaic law actually was

The Mosaic law was given to Israel at Sinai as the covenantal constitution of a theocratic nation. It was not a loose collection of religious tips but a complete and indivisible covenant, the founding document of one people in one era of redemptive history. That is why the common habit of slicing the law into moral, civil, and ceremonial parts, keeping the moral and discarding the rest, does not match the way Scripture itself handles it. The Mosaic law came as a single covenantal package, and Scripture treats it as a single covenantal package.

We can see this national character running all through it. The law carried civil sanctions, national blessings, and national curses, set out at length in Deuteronomy 28. It governed the courts, the harvests, the priesthood, the festivals, and the care of the poor within a particular land. The Mosaic law was the constitution of Israel as a covenant nation, and that is something the Church has never been. The Church is the New Covenant people of God, gathered in Jesus, indwelt by the Spirit, taught by the apostles and led by the elders He has appointed.

This is why the distinction between Israel and the Church matters so much for reading the law rightly. When we forget that the Mosaic law belonged to a specific covenant with a specific nation, we start lifting commands out of their setting and applying them to ourselves in ways the text never intended. The dispensational framework keeps the wires from crossing.

Why the believer is not under the Mosaic law

The New Testament states plainly that the era of the Mosaic law as a binding covenant has come to an end for the believer. Paul writes that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. He says the law was a tutor or guardian until Christ came, and that now faith has come we are no longer under that guardian. He describes the ministry engraved on stones, the very Ten Commandments, as a glory now surpassed by the ministry of the Spirit, and the writer to the Hebrews says the first covenant is obsolete and ageing.

Notice that this includes the Ten Commandments themselves. The Decalogue was the covenantal summary of the Mosaic law, the central document of that covenant, not a timeless code quarried out of the rest and left standing when everything else fell. To say the believer is free from the law and then to smuggle the Ten Commandments back in as still binding in their Sinai form is to miss what Paul actually argues. The law came as a covenantal whole and it ends as a covenantal whole. You can see this worked out further in the related question of whether Christians are still under the Mosaic law.

The Sabbath makes the point sharply. It was given as the sign of the Mosaic covenant in Exodus 31, and a sign ends with the covenant it belongs to, just as circumcision as a covenant obligation has ended. The New Testament releases believers from binding Sabbath keeping in Colossians 2 and Romans 14, and Hebrews 4 reframes Sabbath rest as the settled rest we have in Jesus. The first day of the week became the gathering day of the Church by apostolic pattern, not by transferring the Sabbath onto Sunday.

So in what sense does the Mosaic law still speak?

Here is where we must not overcorrect. To say the believer is not under the Mosaic law is not to say the law is now silent or useless to us. Paul, writing to a church he had just freed from law keeping, still insists that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. The Mosaic law is part of that Scripture. It still speaks, though it speaks as revelation and instruction rather than as a covenant binding our conscience.

It speaks, in the first place, by revealing the holiness and character of God. Every command, even the ones that no longer apply to us directly, tells us something about what God loves and what He hates, about His concern for justice, purity, honesty, and mercy. The God who gave the Mosaic law is the same God we worship, and His moral character has not altered. Reading the law devotionally, we keep meeting the God whose nature stands behind it.

It speaks, secondly, by exposing sin and driving us to Jesus. The law was never able to make anyone righteous. Its work was to show us our need, to act as the tutor that leads us to the Saviour. When we read the searching demands of the Mosaic law and feel how far short we fall, the law is doing exactly what it was always meant to do, sending us out of ourselves and into the arms of the One who kept it perfectly on our behalf.

It speaks, thirdly, by being taken up and fulfilled in the law of Christ. Nine of the Ten Commandments reappear in the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, often with greater depth than Sinai required, so that the believer who walks by the Spirit ends up honouring the moral substance of the law without being placed back under its covenant. This continuing standard is explored in the question of the relationship between law and grace.

Not under law, yet not lawless

The believer who is free from the Mosaic law is not therefore left without any moral compass. What continues is not a residual slice of the old code but the moral character of God Himself, which predates Sinai and outlasts it. There was moral accountability long before Moses, in the days of Cain, Noah, and Abraham, and Paul says the Gentile who never had the law still has its work written on his conscience. God did not begin to be holy at Sinai.

For the believer that same moral character is now expressed in a richer way. It comes to us through Jesus, through the apostolic teaching of the New Testament, and through the indwelling Spirit who writes God’s character on the heart in fulfilment of the promise of Jeremiah 31. The New Testament calls this standard the law of Christ, the royal law, the law of liberty, the law of the Spirit of life. It is not a fresh external rulebook but the holiness of God applied inwardly by the Spirit, and you can follow this thread in the question of the law of the Spirit.

Even the matter of giving follows this pattern. The Mosaic tithe was a covenant arrangement for supporting the priesthood, the festivals, and the poor of a theocratic state, and the New Testament does not simply reissue it. What it does reissue, and deepen, is the call to give generously and gladly as each has decided in his heart, a principle taken up in the question of whether Christians should tithe. The tithe makes a useful benchmark, but it is not a binding chain.

Reading the law well today

How then should a believer actually read Leviticus or Deuteronomy on a Tuesday morning? Not as a list of rules to keep, and not as dead history to skip, but as the living word of God that shows us His character, deepens our sense of sin, and magnifies the work of Jesus who fulfilled it all. The Mosaic law still speaks every time it drives us to worship the God it reveals and to treasure the Saviour it foreshadows.

This protects us from two opposite errors. It guards against the legalism that drags believers back under a covenant Jesus has ended, loading consciences with Sabbaths and food laws and feast days that were always shadows of things to come. It guards equally against the lawlessness that imagines freedom from the Mosaic law means freedom from God’s moral character, when in fact the law of Christ presses that character on us more deeply than Sinai ever did. The purposes of the law are considered further in the question of what the purposes of the Mosaic law were.

The purposes the Mosaic law was given to serve

It helps to ask why the Mosaic law was given in the first place, because a command read without its purpose is easily misapplied. The law was given to set Israel apart from the surrounding nations as a holy people, to restrain and expose sin within the covenant community, to regulate the worship of the tabernacle and temple, and to point forward through its sacrifices to the atonement still to come. Each of these purposes belonged to a particular nation in a particular era, and each tells us something true about the God who gave the Mosaic law.

What the Mosaic law was never given to do was to make anyone righteous before God. Paul is blunt about this when he says that by works of the law no human being will be justified in God’s sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. The law was a mirror that showed Israel its guilt, not a ladder by which anyone could climb to heaven. When we grasp that the Mosaic law was designed to diagnose the disease rather than to cure it, we stop expecting from it something it was never meant to give.

Shadows in the Mosaic law fulfilled in Jesus

A great deal of the Mosaic law consisted of shadows cast ahead of time by Jesus. The sacrifices, the priesthood, the temple, and the festivals were pictures, and Paul says plainly that these are a shadow of the things to come, while the substance belongs to Christ. The Day of Atonement pointed to the cross, the Passover lamb pointed to the Lamb of God, and the whole priestly system pointed to the One who is now our great High Priest. Read this way, even the parts of the law we no longer keep are full of Jesus.

This is why a believer can read Leviticus and meet the gospel. When the Mosaic law describes the blood that must be shed and the holiness God requires, it is preparing us to understand what Jesus accomplished once for all. The shadows were never the point in themselves. They existed to make us long for the substance, and now that the substance has come we read the shadows with gratitude rather than obligation.

Seeing the law as shadow also keeps us from the strange position of trying to rebuild what God Himself has set aside. To return to the ceremonial requirements of the Mosaic law after Jesus has fulfilled them would be like clutching a photograph when the person himself has walked into the room. The law has done its preparatory work, and it now serves us best by sending us again and again to the Saviour it always foreshadowed.

Loving the Mosaic law without being bound by it

The believer can hold a warm affection for the Mosaic law while standing entirely free from it as a covenant. The psalmist could write that he loved God’s law and meditated on it all the day, and we can share that delight, because the law reveals the mind and heart of the God we adore. Loving the Scriptures and being bound by the old covenant are two different things, and the Christian is free to do the first without the second.

This affectionate freedom is the healthiest place to land. We are not anxious law keepers fearing that a missed regulation has cost us God’s favour, nor are we careless readers who skip the harder books. We come to the Mosaic law as people who are accepted in Jesus, eager to learn more of the God who gave it, and ready to be searched and shaped by every part of His word.

In the end the Mosaic law still speaks because God still speaks through every part of His inspired word. It is not a covenant to bind the conscience of the Church but a revelation given to teach us, a steady witness to the holiness of God, a faithful finger pointing to our deep need, and a long shadow thrown forward by the cross of Jesus. The believer who comes to the Mosaic law in the light of the Saviour will never find its pages silent or its message spent.

So, now what?

Start reading the older parts of your Bible with fresh eyes. When you reach a command in the Mosaic law, ask what it tells you about the God who gave it, how it shows up your own heart, and how it is answered in Jesus. That turns chapters many believers skip into rich devotional ground rather than a tangle of rules to argue about.

Then rest in your freedom without abusing it. You are not under the Mosaic law, so you need not fear that you have failed God by working on a Saturday or eating the wrong food. At the same time, you belong to the holy God that law reveals, and His character now presses on you through the Spirit. Walk by the Spirit, and you will find yourself living out the very righteousness the law always pointed toward.

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Romans 10:4

For Further Study

Readers wanting to go further will find Charles Ryrie’s work on dispensationalism helpful on the place of the Mosaic law in the unfolding of God’s programme, along with the treatments in Lewis Sperry Chafer’s Systematic Theology and the writings of John Walvoord and Arnold Fruchtenbaum on the distinction between Israel and the Church. Each shows why the believer can honour the law as the inspired word of God while standing free from it as a covenant, living instead under the law of Christ applied by the Spirit.