What Laws Are We Supposed to Obey?

July 16th, 2024
by Jacob Tanner

Stop me if you think you have heard this one before: “You Christians are such hypocrites. You pick and choose which parts of the Bible you like. If you were a serious Christian, you would make sure not to eat pork or shellfish, just like Leviticus says!”

Many who desire to dismantle or disprove Christianity try to attack God’s Laws and the Christian’s ability to keep those Laws. Even some Christians have been swayed by these “gotcha!” arguments so that they have no idea what they should think of God’s Law anymore, either. After all, there are commandments that the Christian today is no longer required to keep, but they do not have the foggiest idea why that would be. Others, because they are so rebellious and antagonistic against God’s Word and Law, actively look for ways to be disobedient.

There are three basic groups of people, then, when it comes to God’s Law. The legalists, the antinomians, and the obedient. The legalists add to God’s Law by elevating their own man-made traditions and commandments over and above God’s Law, or by keeping commandments that the New Covenant no longer requires. The antinomians are opposed to God’s Laws and insist that, because sinners are saved through faith according to God’s Grace, no obedience is necessary. Then, we have the obedient. While not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, the obedient have been saved by Christ and now seek to faithfully keep His commandments.

My prayer for each person reading this is that you become obedient to God, first by trusting in Jesus through faith and being saved by Grace. But in order to be obedient to God’s Law, we need to understand the sinful hearts of men, the difference between traditions and laws, and which laws are still active under the New Covenant.

The Depraved Heart of Rebellion

In the 2022 State of Theology Survey put out by Ligonier Ministries, people were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with various statements. One statement was this: “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.”

14 percent strongly disagreed, 14 percent somewhat disagreed, 6 percent said they were not sure, 39 percent somewhat agreed, and 27 percent strongly agreed.

What does this tell us? That most people, and even many evangelicals, believe that people are fundamentally good. They refrain from calling people depraved sinners and prefer to say “People sometimes sin, but they’re all basically good.” In fact, the common consensus seems to be summarized rather well by Luke Bryan in his song from a few years back, I Believe Most People are Good:

I believe most people are good / And most mamas ought to qualify for sainthood / I believe most Friday nights look better under neon or stadium lights / I believe you love who you love / Ain't nothing you should ever be ashamed of / I believe this world ain't half as bad as it looks / I believe most people are good.

Man has always been good, ever since the Fall, at elevating himself to great heights. But the Bible paints a different picture. Jeremiah 17:9-10 explains that “the heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can know it?” Likewise, Romans 3:10 says, “as it is written: ‘There is none righteous, not even one.’”

Man is not fundamentally good, but fundamentally evil, wicked, and rebellious against God and His Word apart from Christ. This is the root issue when it comes to understanding God’s Law: sinners do not have the desire to understand God’s Law, nor do they have the capacity for such understanding. But the one who is saved by Jesus and indwelled by the Holy Spirit must come to understand the Law.

Traditions Are Not Laws

Traditions are often very good. Who dislikes Christmas or Thanksgiving? But even good things can become bad things when they are elevated above the commandments of God. Consider the time the Pharisees tried to call out Jesus and His disciples for not having washed their hands before eating, while simultaneously breaking God’s laws in favor of their traditions.

Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” And He answered and said to them, “Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever you might benefit from me is given to God,” he need not honor his father.’ And by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition (Matt. 15:1-6).

Here, then, is the difference between being legalistic and obedient to God. Many people think that caring about keeping and obeying God’s Law makes you a legalist. However, that is not the case. A legalist is one who, like the Pharisees that Jesus is rebuking here, elevates their own traditions and commandments over and above the Law of God. This, in turn, is the equivalent of idolatry.

Is it bad to wash our hands before eating? Of course not! By all means, wash your hands. Feel free to use soap while you are at it. But recognize that, as much as you wash your hands physically, you simply cannot wash yourself spiritually. No amount of hand washing will save your soul. No tradition-keeping will ever save you.

The only way to be saved is through obedience to the Law of God. The problem is, of course, that we cannot keep God’s Law in and of ourselves. What we need is a Savior to come and fulfill the Law on our behalf. We need a Savior to earn our salvation and righteousness before God.

Thankfully, that is exactly what we have in Jesus. The question becomes, then, once we have been saved, do we need to keep any laws?

The Three-Fold Division of the Law

One of the keys to understanding the Law of God as a whole, and why we keep some laws and not others, is to understand how the Law is to be divided. Typically, theologians use a three-fold division and framework, wherein the Law is divided into the Ceremonial Law, the Civil Law, and the Moral Law.

The Ceremonial Law consists of those laws relating to dietary restrictions and those ceremonies that separated the Old Covenant Jews from other nations. Jesus fulfilled these laws in such a way that we no longer need to keep these laws. The prime example of this being spelled out in Scripture is Acts 10:9-16:

And on the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat. And while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the sky. And a voice came to him, “Rise up, Peter, slaughter and eat!” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything defiled and unclean.” Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider defiled.” And this happened three times and immediately the object was taken up into heaven.

This is an example of the fulfillment of the Ceremonial Law. Likewise, in Hebrews 7:27, we learn that Jesus, “does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.” This is why we no longer need to offer daily ceremonial sacrifices, either.

The Civil Law consists of those laws that were peculiar to the nation of Israel. It is typically understood that these laws are no longer enforceable since Jerusalem fell to the Romans in 70 A.D. There are, however, principles of general equity wherein these laws do have some bearing on Christians today. For example, Exodus 21:28 commands, “If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall go unpunished.” The general equity principle would say, “Well, if we have a vicious animal today, we ought to either put it down or get rid of it to protect others, according to God’s Law.”

The Moral Law, on the other hand, is best summarized within the Ten Commandments. These laws are still active and binding upon the Christian today and are repeated throughout the New Testament as still being binding.

Both the Westminster Confession and the Second London Baptist Confession recognize this three-fold division, as well as the general equity principle:

III. Beside this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly, holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament.

IV. To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

V. The moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that, not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator, who gave it. Neither doth Christ, in the gospel, any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation (Westminster Confession of Faith, 19.3-5).

So, the Ceremonial Law has been fulfilled, the Civil Law has general equity principles we may apply today, and the Moral Law binds us forever. With that in mind, we are able to answer the scoffer at the start of this article and say, “We eat pork and shellfish now because Jesus fulfilled the Ceremonial Law on our behalf. Furthermore, I am now clothed in His righteousness since He satisfied the entirety of the Law for me. Repent of your sins, trust in Jesus, and you, too, can be saved in this way!”

As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The Puritan Thomas Brooks once put it like this:

Through Christ we are as righteous as if we had satisfied the Law in our own persons. The end of the Law is to justify and save those which fulfill it. Christ subjected Himself thereto: He perfectly fulfilled it for us, and His perfect righteousness is imputed to us. Christ fulfilled the moral Law, not for Himself, but for us. Therefore Christ doing it for believers, they fulfill the Law in Christ. And so Christ by doing, and they believing in Him that doth it, do fulfill the Law.

Or Christ may be said to be the end of the Law because the end of the Law is perfect righteousness, that a man may be justified thereby, which end we cannot attain of ourselves through the frailty of our flesh. But by Christ we attain it, Who hath fulfilled the Law for us.

Yes, Jesus satisfied the Law on our behalf. It is right and good to be obedient to God’s Law, but hypocritical to elevate our own man-made laws and traditions over and above God’s Law. Our rebellious and depraved hearts will always rebel. But through the power of Christ within us, we are made able and willing to obey the Law.

About The Author

JACOB TANNER
1689 Federalism | Post Millennialism
Jacob Tanner serves as the pastor of Christ Keystone Church located in Middleburg, PA. He lives with his wife, Kayla, and they are parents to two sons, Josiah and Owen. Jacob earned his M.Div from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2023 and has also authored several books.