The Ten Commandments and Christians

A starting point to your questions is that the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5) are part of the Mosaic Law that God gave to his Old Testament people of Israel. The Mosaic Law had limited purpose and duration. Its obligations ended when Jesus Christ came into our world as the fulfilment of all the prophecies of the Messiah.

We can see from the Mosaic Law wording of the third commandment (“Sabbath day”) and the fourth commandment (reference to the Promised Land) that not all the content of the Ten Commandments applies to New Testament followers of the Lord.

So, how do Christians view the Ten Commandments? We rightly regard them as a summary of God’s moral law: his will for all people of all time. We do see Jesus (Luke 18:20) and the apostle Paul (Romans 13:9) restating some of the commandments in a different order from the Old Testament listing. (I am thinking this was your reference to the apostle Paul.) Presenting the commandments in that way illustrates how we, as New Testament Christians, are free from the Mosaic Law wording of the Ten Commandments and yet look to the Ten Commandments as a summary of God’s will for our lives.

As a mirror, the Ten Commandments show us God’s demands for holy living and our failure to live up to those demands. As a rule or guide, the Ten Commandments lay out for us tangible ways in which we can express our gratitude to God for our forgiveness of sins. Jesus kept the law perfectly for us (Romans 5:19; 10:4; Galatians 4:4-5) and paid the penalty we deserved for not keeping God’s law perfectly (Isaiah 53:6; Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 2:24).

“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).