“If ye love Me, keep My Commandments.” John 14:15
Jesus Christ
For centuries, the Ten Commandments have stood as a central pillar in Christianity. But the Law has fallen on hard times. Some have even attested that the Law was done away with at the cross or that keeping it has no bearing on our salvation. Christians today must “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” Jude 3. Let us review what our forefathers taught regarding the unchanging, eternally binding nature of the moral Law of God.
Jesus Christ: “Whoseover therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven.” Matt. 5:19.
James the Apostle: “But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” James 1:25.
Paul: “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” Rom. 3:31.
John the Beloved: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: and His commandments are not grievous.” 1 John 5:3.
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo: “The law was given, in order that grace might be sought; grace was given in order that the law might be fulfilled. Now it was not through any fault of its own that the law was not fulfilled, but by the fault of the carnal mind; and this fault was to be demonstrated by the law and healed by grace. ‘For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.’” Rom. 8:3, 4.1
John Calvin: “We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law: for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must, therefore, be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform.”2
Martin Luther: “He was stricken for our sin—is the law thereby discarded?… Can anyone suppose that sin exists where there is no law? Whoever puts away the law must also put away sin.”3
Dwight L. Moody: “The Commandments of God given to Moses in the mount at Horeb are as binding today as ever they have been since the time when they were proclaimed in the hearing of the people.... The people must be made to understand that the Ten Commandments are still binding and that there is a penalty attached to their violation.... Paul said: ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law.’ But does this mean that the detailed precepts of the Decalogue are superseded and have become back numbers? Does a father cease to give children rules to obey because they love him? Does a nation burn its statute books because the people have become patriotic? Not at all. And yet people speak as if the Commandments do not hold for Christians because they have come to love God.”4
“The law was given, in order that grace might be sought; grace was given, in order that the law might be fulfilled.”
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo
Charles H. Spurgeon: “He [Christ] took care to revise and reform the laws of men; but the Law of God he established and confirmed.... Our King has not come to abrogate the Law, but to confirm and reassert it.... The Lord Jesus does not set up a milder law, nor will he allow any one of his servants to presume to do so. Our King fulfills the ancient Law, and his Spirit works in us to will and to do of God’s good pleasure as set forth in the immutable statutes of righteousness.”5
“The Law is one of the most sublime of God’s works. There is not a commandment too many; there is not one too few.”6
John Wesley: “In the highest rank of the enemies of the gospel of Christ, are they who...teach men to break...all the commandments at a stroke; who teach... ‘There is but one duty, which is that of believing.’... It is no other than betraying Him with a kiss, to...set light by any part of His Law under pretense of advancing His gospel.”7
“The ritual or ceremonial law, delivered by Moses to the children of Israel...our Lord did indeed come to destroy.... But the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments and enforced by the prophets, He did not take away. It was not the design of His coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken, which ‘stands fast as the faithful witness in Heaven.’... Every part of this Law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place or any other circumstance liable to change.”8
“The law is one of the most sublime of God’s works. There is not a commandment too many; there is not one too few.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
Baptist: “We believe that the Law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of His moral government; and that the inability which the Scriptures ascribe to fallen men to fulfill its precepts arises entirely from their love of sin; to deliver them from which, and to restore them through a Mediator to unfeigned obedience to the holy Law, is one great end of the Gospel and of the means of grace.”9
Lutheran: “The Son of God redeemed them for the very reason that they might meditate on the Law of God day and night and continually exercise themselves in the keeping thereof.”10
Southern Baptist: “Not only is it unchangeable with respect to places and races, to days and seasons, to conditions and circumstances, but also to ages. It has been unchangeable. It will be unchangeable. This rule is unchangeable because it is in harmony with the unchangeable nature of God.”11
“The ceremonial and ritualistic laws of the Old Testament are abrogated for the Christian, but not the Ten Commandments.”12
Schaff, Phillip, St. Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, Chapter 34, “The Law; Grace.”
Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. 2, ch. 7, sec. 15, trans. by John Allen.
Luther, Martin, “Wider die Antinomer” (Against the Antinomians) in Sammtliche Schriften, Ed. by Johann Georg Walch, Vol. 20, cols. 1613, 1614.
Moody, D. L., “Weighed and Wanting,” Addresses on the Ten Commandments, pp. 10–17.
Spurgeon, Charles H., The Gospel of the Kingdom, comment on Matthew 5:17–20, pp. 47, 48.
Spurgeon, Charles H., Sermons, 2nd series, sermon 18, p. 280.
Wesley, John, Works, Sermon 25, Vol. 5, p. 317.
Wesley, John, Sermon 25, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” Sermons on Several Occasions, vol. 1, pp. 221, 222.
“New Hampshire Confession,” article 12 [According to Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, Vol. 3, p. 746.]
“Formula of Concord,” article 6 [According to Schaff, p. 131.]
Wallace, O. C. S., What Baptists Believe, p. 81. Copyright 1934 by the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Nashville.
Hyatt, J. Philip, “God’s Decrees for Moral Living,” The Teacher, p. 57 (Oct., 1943), 5. Copyright, Sunday School Board of the So. Baptist Convention. Excerpted from the booklet Under the Law, These Last Days Lesson Series. Compiled by Ken Lebrun.
