You have much to say about the New Covenant, and we share your enthusiasm for its new life in the Spirit. What we can’t understand is why you feel the New Covenant does away with God’s Law—not as a method of salvation (which would be legalism) but as the test of fully devoted discipleship?
2 Corinthians 3 condemns not God’s Law itself but the futility of having it written on tables of stone, as in the Old Covenant. In the New Covenant, that same Law is “written on the fleshly tables of the heart” (verse 3). It’s not the message that is different but the place where it is written—tables of the heart instead of tables of stone.
If you disagree with that, please tell us which of the Ten Commandments that God’s Spirit of grace won’t write on your heart? The one that forbids disrespecting parents (5th)? Murdering (6th)? Adultery (7th)? Stealing (8th)? Lying (9th)? How about coveting (10th)? Of course not. Then what about putting false gods before the real God (1st), debasing His image (2nd) or taking His name in vain (3rd)? Certainly not. You’re good with all of those commandments. So where is the problem?
I wonder if it’s that Sabbath commandment, which just won’t go away. So do you throw away the whole Law of God just to get rid of one inconvenient truth? What a pity, since it’s the Sabbath commandment that keeps us from being legalists when honoring the other nine. The Sabbath means rest, remember? Resting in Christ’s finished works? How can you possibly have a problem with that?
My friends at Life Assurance want me to give them evidence that the 10 Commandments are written in the heart under the New Covenant. I think we just I just did! If I didn’t, please do tell me which one of the 10 you don’t want anymore? Only the one that specifically calls us to rest in Christ.
This seems so strange, I can't understand it. You fulfill the other nine commandments while resting in Jesus, while you reject the one commandment that calls us to rest in Christ’s finished works of Creation and Salvation. What kind of sense does this make?
And it gets even worse when our friends at Life Assurance Ministries deny the clear statement of Romans 8:4 that “the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in us.” It doesn’t say that the righteousness of the Spirit is written in our hearts; it says that the Spirit writes the righteousness of the Law in our hearts.
Of course this doesn’t happen in a legalistic way by trying to be good enough before God. It only happens when we rest in Christ, which empowers us to live in the Spirit. So that’s how God’s Law is written in our hearts—by His Spirit, who leads us to Gospel rest (which is what the seventh-day Sabbath is all about!).
Dale Ratzlaff speaks of Christ’s two great commandments of Jesus: to love the Lord with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves. Fine. Now which of God’s 10 Commandments do Christ’s two commandments overthrow? Please tell us.
Actually, we already have Christ’s own explanation: “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40). The Message Bible puts it this ways; “These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.” So there we have it: Christ’s two commandments support God’s Law instead of negating it.
The apostle Paul puts it this way: “Do we then make void the Law through faith?” Yes, according to Life Assurance Ministries. But the Bible says, “God forbid, we establish the Law” (Romans 3:31). Which brings us back to 1 Corinthians 7:19: “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters.”
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