Someone asks, “What is our relationship to the Law of Moses?” Most denominations today persist largely on not knowing the correct, biblical answer to this question. Therefore, this questions is both timely and extremely important.
Typically denominational doctrine consists of pulling portions of the Old Testament from the respective contexts of the Bible books that comprise that testament and likewise extracting pieces of the New Testament from their contexts, too. Then, personal opinions and human desires intertwine with the extractions from both testaments to produce distinctive, manmade (rather than divine) doctrines. Hence, each denomination, going through the same procedure with its own concoction of snippets from biblical text in both testaments with the admixture of human ideology, comes up with a different denominational doctrine from other denominations. More importantly, that procedure also results in manmade religions that differ from the church that Jesus Christ died to establish and about which we can read in the New Testament.
The Old Testament or the Law of Moses is not the law of God to which Christians must turn today to ascertain divine instruction. The Old Testament or the Law of Moses has been replaced with the New Testament (2 Corinthians 3:6-11; Ephesians 2:15; Colossians 2:14). Specifically, Romans 7:6-7 inform us that the Law of Moses is no longer effective for people living today. “But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet’” (Romans 7:6-7 NKJV).
Resorting to the Old Testament or the Law of Moses after the inauguration of Christianity amounts to throwing away the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross to make human redemption possible. “I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain” (Galatians 2:21). “You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4).
Yet, the Old Testament is a source of information rather than the divine instruction to which people living today must appeal (Romans 15:4). Further, the Old Testament is the foundation on which the New Testament rests. The New Testament is the natural progression of the Old Testament. Without the Old Testament, a large portion of the New Testament would be unintelligible.
Everyone now living or who shall ever live must turn exclusively to the New Testament for divine instruction. In the New Testament alone one can find how God wants to be worshipped today, how to enact Christian living, what God expects of His followers respecting Christian service, Christian doctrine and how to take care of the human sin problem in a God-approved way. In the New Testament, one finds blessings reserved for Christians in this life and eternally, plus prohibitions, too.
The Old Testament must not be discarded, but it is not the law of God now binding upon people living today. We need to study the Old Testament to learn about God, but in the New Testament one will find instructions about how to effect Christianity in his or her life. We must turn to the New Testament rather than to the Old Testament, and certainly not to the doctrines of men, in our effort to prepare to meet God in Judgment (Amos 4:12) and to appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10).
