the law of moses

Salvation by works is unattainable even for the apostles. The only way is through faith in Christ. 

One of the most confusing parts of the Old Testament is the laws. We might wonder how to understand them, whether they are relevant for us today, and if we should care about laws that seem to be obsolete. With all these questions and doubts, it can cause us to ignore Old Testament law or gloss over it without a second thought. 

But what if we are misreading what God intends? What if God’s Old Testament law could be sweet to us today (Ps 19:10)? What if it is useful for us knowing the heart of God and how to follow Him? This episode looks to help Christians understand God’s law in a way that will allow us to read it worshipfully.

PDF of Lesson Notes

The Conscience and the Law of Moses

Here we arrive to a major point that can change your relationship with God in a significant way if you understand this concept properly. The reason why God gave the Law was to bring your conscience back to a proper place, to the way that God intended it to function; back to the standard of God. The Law was an attempt to ”reset” and recalibrate the conscience. This was the purpose of the Law, namely The Ten Commandments. However, religion has missed the point and has propagated the idea that the reason God said “you shall not do this and that,” was because He wanted you to fulfill and obey all these commands, in order for you to be right with Him. But nobody can keep the Law. Nobody has ever kept the Law. That might be a radical statement to many people. Some of you may still think that God gave the Law to people so that they would keep it. It’s not true. You can never keep the Law. The Law was not given for you to keep. The Law was given to show you God’s standard of morality and perfection. If you yield to it, instantly it will cause your conscience to start functioning right, it would calibrate and tune your “internal moral monitoring system.” 

Imagine yourself for a moment as standing in quicksand and sinking and having everybody else around you in the same quicksand. If everybody is sinking at the same rate, most of those people will not notice it and the sinking rate will be relative, because everybody compares themselves with the others. However, if you have a pillar on solid ground with markers on it, even though everybody is sinking at the same rate, you can look at that pole and realize: “I am sinking, this is getting serious.” In this case, you have a fixed and immovable reference point. In the same way, the Law with the Ten Commandments was God’s immovable standard of right and wrong, and the reason God gave it was to re-activate your conscience and bring you back to where you would not have a dull, evil, and defiled conscience anymore, or a conscience that has been skewed by comparing yourself with other people. 

The Law was given to show you right and wrong, and to condemn you. The Law was not given to set you free, but to condemn you. 

2 Corinthians 3:7–9 (NKJV) 

7 But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, 

8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 

9 For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. 

The Ten Commandments were the only ones written and engraved in stones as this is mentioned in verse 7. Those Ten Commandments are called the ministry of death in verse 7 and the ministry of condemnation in verse 9. In the New Testament, Jesus came to give us life and Satan came to give us death:

John 10:10 (NKJV) 

10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. 

In the New Testament, Jesus made you free of condemnation, but the devil and your conscience continue to condemn you. The conscience is like a robot that knows only good and evil. The conscience knows only when you sinned, but it doesn’t know about the higher wisdom and righteousness of God in Christ that have already removed those sins that the conscience is condemning you with:

Romans 8:1 (NKJV) 

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 

Jesus, Who fulfilled all the Law, and Whose life was in complete unison with the Law, is not condemning you when you sin; yet the Law condemns you and it has always been a ministry of condemnation. Jesus is not the One condemning you when you sin, but your conscience fueled by the Law.

1 Corinthians 15:56 (NKJV) 

56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the Law. 

This passage tells us that sin produces death and that the strength of sin is the Law. Before I talk about sin and the Law, I would like to explain a little about what does sting of death mean. I personally didn’t understand this expression for years and I am sure that there are other Christians in the same situation. How does death sting people, including believers, through sin and what does that mean practically? When people sin, death itself stings them. It is similar to a scorpion sting or to an injection with a venom dose into their being. Once the sting happens, death begins to affect their personality, mind, thoughts, feelings, moods, and their physical body without them even realizing it, because death’s effects might not manifest immediately. How does death manifest in their lives? They will not lose their salvation if they are true believers, but death will affect the quality of their life here on earth. Sin brings condemnation and guilt that paralyze believers’ ability to serve God and people with full joy and peace, because their conscience is tainted by sin. They might begin to feel confused, depressed, discouraged, overwhelmed, or hopeless with no reason, and they will wonder why those things happened to them. Also, they will lose their peace, joy, and become weak in faith when it comes to facing various life situations. One reason for that is that death infiltrated their being through their sinful deeds and it began to affect them negatively. Similarly, the physical body is slowly affected by death. Those believers might experience certain sicknesses all of a sudden, age faster, and even die prematurely. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were stung by death, and from that moment onward, death started to work in them. Although not all the effects of death were seen immediately, slowly every part of their being was affected by it, until they finally died even physically. The rate of your sinning accelerates or slows down the manifestations of death in your life. That is one reason why we, as believers in Christ, are interested in walking in holiness, so that we would live longer, healthier, happier, and richer lives and fulfill the calling and the destiny that God has planned for us.

Now, let’s come back to the second part of the verse that we read earlier, where it talked about sin and the Law. The Law didn’t strengthen you in your battle against sin; it rather strengthened sin in its battle against you. How? Well, on one hand the Law raised the standard of right and wrong, and increased the sensitivity of your conscience. On the other hand, because of your spirit’s sinful nature inherited from Adam, when your dead spirit came in contact with a perfect and holy Law, it caused you to fail every time. As a result, it created in you the consciousness of a failing sinner in need of God. That is how the Law strengthened sin: it gave you both the conscience back, as well as a sinner-consciousness. Consciousness is a little different from conscience. Consciousness is a mindset, a w...