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What laws from the Old
Covenant are Christians expected to keep?
Jesus
instituted the New Covenant with His
disciples the night before he died, and
brought it into effect by His death and
resurrection three days later (Jer. 31:31;
Matt. 26:28;
Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; Rom. 11:27; 1 Cor. 11:25;
2 Cor. 3:6-11; Heb. 7:22; 8-10; 12:24; 13:20;
1 Pet. 1:19; 1 Jn. 1:7).
The Mosaic Covenant had served as a
dividing wall, or partition that was meant to
separate Israel from the unbelieving
Gentiles (Eph. 2:11-15; John 4:22; 7:35; Acts 14:1, 5; 18:4;
Rom. 3:9; 3:29; 9:4, 5, 24; 1 Cor. 1:22-24). Christ
brought the Old Covenant to a complete end
by doing away with the dividing wall that
separated Israel from the other nations.
Ephesians 2:11-18 says,
“Therefore, remember that formerly you who
are Gentiles by birth and called
“uncircumcised” by those who call themselves
“the circumcision” (that done in the body by
the hands of men)— remember that at that
time you were separate from Christ, excluded
from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to
the covenants of the promise, without hope
and without God in the world. But now in
Christ Jesus you who once were far away have
been brought near through the blood of
Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has
made the two one and has destroyed the
barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by
abolishing in his flesh the law with its
commandments and regulations. His purpose
was to create in himself one new man out of
the two, thus making peace, and in this one
body to reconcile both of them to God
through the cross, by which he put to death
their hostility. He came and preached peace
to you who were far away and peace to those
who were near. For through him we both have
access to the Father by one Spirit.” (NIV)
Christ abolished the
dividing wall by fulfilling it and removing
the law’s condemnation for those who believe
(Matt. 5:17; Rom. 8:1; Heb. 9:11-14; 10:1-10). When we are in Christ, we become a
new person, part of a new human race made in
the image of Christ, the second Adam (1 Cor. 15:45, 49;
Eph. 4:24). All
of the divine promises from the previous
covenants find their fulfillment in Christ
through the New Covenant (2 Cor. 1:20; Heb. 7:20-22; 8:6; 9:15).
The New Testament points out repeatedly that
the New Covenant is the fulfillment of the
Old Covenant. By this they mean that God
brought to completion the plan of salvation
He had been working out for the human race
through the history of Israel. All of the
Old Testament prophecies and promises about
the coming messiah and the salvation He
would accomplish for us were fulfilled in
the life, death, and resurrection of the
Lord, Jesus Christ (Deut. 4:25-31;
Judges 2:13-16; 1 Kings 8:33-34; Ps. 81:7-10; 89:29-37;
Isa. 1:16-20;
Matt. 5:17-18; John 1:45; Acts 2:36-39;
Rom. 3:21-26; 2 Cor. 1:20;
Eph. 1:9-10; 3:3-9; 5:32; Heb. 1:1-3).
The Old Covenant that God made with Israel
is very different from the New Covenant that Christ
made with His Church.
The book of Hebrews says that the New
Covenant is a better covenant. It has a
better priesthood, a better sacrifice, and a
better rest (Heb. 7:20-28; 9:23; 4:1-11).
It is a better covenant in every way.
Hebrews 8:7-13 says, “For if that first
covenant had been faultless, there would
have been no occasion to look for a second.
For he finds fault with them when he says:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the
Lord, when I will establish a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house
of Judah, not like the covenant that I made
with their fathers on the day when I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the
land of Egypt. For they did not continue in
my covenant, and so I showed no concern for
them, declares the Lord. For this is the
covenant that I will make with the house of
Israel after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds, and
write them on their hearts, and I will be
their God, and they shall be my people. And
they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the
Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the
least of them to the greatest. For I will be
merciful toward their iniquities, and I will
remember their sins no more.” In speaking of
a new covenant, he makes the first one
obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and
growing old is ready to vanish away.”
There was a
controversy in the early church over whether
or not the Gentile converts had to keep the
laws of the Mosaic Covenant so a council was
convened in Jerusalem to decide the matter
in A.D. 49/50.
Acts 15:1-5
says, “But some men came down from Judea and
were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are
circumcised according to the custom of
Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul
and Barnabas had no small dissension and
debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some
of the others were appointed to go up to
Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders
about this question. So, being sent on their
way by the church, they passed through both
Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail
the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought
great joy to all the brothers. When they
came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the
church and the apostles and the elders, and
they declared all that God had done with
them. But some believers who belonged to the
party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It
is necessary to circumcise them and to order
them to keep the law of Moses.”
The issue at the Jerusalem
Council was whether or not the Gentiles
needed to become Jews and follow all of the
Old Covenant ceremonial laws in order to
join the Church. Under the terms of the Old
Covenant, a male Gentile had to be
circumcised and become a Jew to be a part of
the covenant community. Circumcision was one
of the signs of the covenant that God
established to show that a man was a
follower of the God of Abraham and Israel
(Gen. 17:9-14; Lev. 12:1-3). The
Pharisees were thinking in terms of the Old
Covenant requirements to join the community.
But when Christ gave us His New Covenant, He
replaced the Old Covenant laws and
regulations with the New Covenant, law of
Christ (Mark 12:28-31; Gal. 6:2; 1 Cor. 9:19-23).
The
Apostles taught that trying to keep the law
of Moses was too hard for a person to bear.
Acts 15:6-11 says, “The apostles and the
elders were gathered together to consider
this matter. And after there had been much
debate, Peter stood up and said to them,
“Brothers, you know that in the early days
God made a choice among you, that by my
mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of
the gospel and believe. And God, who knows
the heart, bore witness to them, by giving
them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us,
and he made no distinction between us and
them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.
Now, therefore, why are you putting God to
the test by placing a yoke on the neck of
the disciples that neither our fathers nor
we have been able to bear? But we believe
that we will be saved through the grace of
the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
The Council’s decision.
Acts 15:28-29 says, “For it has seemed
good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on
you no greater burden than these
requirements: that you abstain from what has
been sacrificed to idols, and from blood,
and from what has been strangled, and from
sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves
from these, you will do well. Farewell.”
Notice that it was the Holy Spirit that made
these requirements, and the Apostles were
careful to say that “no greater burden” was
to be laid upon the Gentiles than these four
requirements. The Church leaders made it
clear to all the churches that they would
never place the burden of keeping the Mosaic
Law upon the new converts. The four
requirements were: 1) that you abstain from
what has been sacrificed to idols; 2) from
blood, 3) from what has been strangled, and
4) from sexual immorality. Those were the
only restrictions placed upon the new
converts. Nothing is said about keeping the
Sabbath, or the dietary restrictions from
the Law of Moses. It is also important to
note that the controversy in Acts 15 seems
to be concerned with Jews and Gentiles
coming together for fellowship and meals.
These questions continued to be
debated in Paul’s churches.
Were the new Gentile converts expected to
keep the Law of Moses? Are the unclean meats
from Leviticus 11 still forbidden today? Did
the new converts have to keep the Sabbath
and the other Holy days of the Mosaic
Covenant?
Paul dealt with these same issues in the
books of Colossians, Galatians, and Romans.
Colossians 2:13-17 says, “When you were
dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision
of your sinful nature, God made you alive
with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,
having canceled the written code, with its
regulations, that was against us and that
stood opposed to us; he took it away,
nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed
the powers and authorities, he made a public
spectacle of them, triumphing over them by
the cross. Therefore do not let anyone judge
you by what you eat or drink, or with regard
to a religious festival, a New Moon
celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a
shadow of the things that were to come; the
reality, however, is found in Christ.” (NIV)
And Galatians 4:9-11 says, “But now that
you have come to know God, or rather to be
known by God, how can you turn back again to
the weak and worthless elementary principles
of the world, whose slaves you want to be
once more? You observe days and months and
seasons and years! I am afraid I may have
labored over you in vain.”
From these two passages, it is
obvious that new converts were being
pressured to observe Jewish dietary laws and
holy days from the Mosaic Covenant. Paul
and the other apostles taught that Christ’s followers have been
freed from practicing the customs that
Israel was required to keep under the Old
Covenant Law.
The phrase, “a
festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day”
from Colossians 2, and the phrase, “days and
months and seasons and years” from Galatians 4,
both refer to the annual, monthly, and
weekly cycle of holy days from the Jewish
calendar. The Old Testament prophets used
the same way of illustrating the yearly
cycle of worship required under the Mosaic
Covenant that Paul was using in Colossians 2
and Galatians 4 (see: 1 Chron. 23:31; 2 Chron. 2:4; 31:3; Ezek. 45:17; Hosea 2:11).
The weekly
seventh day
Sabbath is clearly included in both of these passages.
In Colossians 2:16, Paul had already
mentioned the ceremonial festivals and new
moon celebrations and would have no reason
to repeat himself. And in Galatians 4, Paul
had to rebuke the Galatians for thinking God
expected them to observe special holy days,
including the weekly seventh day Sabbath
as if they were required by God and
necessary for salvation under the New
Covenant. Any insistence on the observance
of the Old Covenant ceremonies is a failure
to recognize that their fulfillment has
already taken place. The yearly cycle of
Jewish Holy days pointed forward to the work
of the messiah and would only end when the
messiah came.
False teachers
in Galatia were teaching the heresy of works-righteousness.
Galatians 1:6-9 says, “I am astonished that
you are so quickly deserting him who called
you in the grace of Christ and are turning
to a different gospel—not that there is
another one, but there are some who trouble
you and want to distort the gospel of
Christ. But even if we or an angel from
heaven should preach to you a gospel
contrary to the one we preached to you, let
him be accursed. As we have said before, so
now I say again: If anyone is preaching to
you a gospel contrary to the one you
received, let him be accursed.”
When someone tells you to keep the
Old Covenant law they are teaching you a
false gospel.
Acts 15:10
says, “Now, therefore, why are you putting
God to the test by placing a yoke on the
neck of the disciples that neither our
fathers nor we have been able to bear?” And
Galatians 5:1-4 says, “For freedom Christ
has set us free; stand firm therefore, and
do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept
circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage
to you. I testify again to every man who
accepts circumcision that he is obligated to
keep the whole law. You are severed from
Christ, you who would be justified by the
law; you have fallen away from grace.”
A yoke was used on domesticated animals
to control their movements. The New
Testament tells us that trying to keep the
Old Covenant law was like struggling against
a yoke that was too hard
for anyone to bear. Christ has set us free
from our bondage to the Law to be justified
by grace.
The New Covenant does not
require us to keep any day of the week holy.
Christians are free to worship together on
any day they choose (Rom. 14:1-12). The day
you go to church is a matter of personal
conviction. Whether you set apart the
seventh day of the week, the first day of
the week, or any other day of the week for
corporate worship, each person needs to be
fully convinced in his own mind.
The
Jews living under the New Covenant had to
come to understand that the Mosaic Covenant
was no longer binding on anyone. We have
been freed from our bondage to the Old
Covenant law of sin and death by the law of
Christ. At the same time, Christians
shouldn’t let their freedom cause another
person to stumble and fall. Love, not
law-keeping, should be the focus of our
lives because, “Love is the fulfillment of
the law” (Rom. 13:8-13).
Anyone who tells you that Christians
have to keep the Old Covenant ceremonies and
Holy Days are teaching the same false gospel
of legalism that Paul dealt with in the book
of Galatians (Gal. 1:6-9; 3:1-14; 5:1-15).
This is
an excerpt from:
The Law of Moses & the New Covenant.
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