The Mosaic Ten Commandments Compared to Their Restatements in the New Testament -- By: Roy L. Aldrich
Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 118:471 (Jul 1961)
Article: The Mosaic Ten Commandments Compared to Their Restatements in the New Testament
Author: Roy L. Aldrich
BSac 118:471 (Jul 61) p. 251
The Mosaic Ten Commandments Compared to Their Restatements in the New Testament
[Roy L. Aldrich is President of Detroit Bible College, Detroit, Michigan.]
Is the Christian under the Ten Commandments? Those who answer this question in the affirmative point out that all of the Ten Commandments except the fourth, are restated in the New Testament and therefore must apply to the Christian. But this position involves the false assumption that the moral law of God is identical with the Ten Commandments. The moral law is the basis of the Mosaic law, but the two should not be confused. Christians and all of God’s intelligent creatures are under His eternal moral law, but only Israel was ever under the Mosaic pattern of the moral law (Deut 6:4–6).
The simplest way to demonstrate this conclusion is to examine the Mosaic Ten Commandments and compare them with their restatement in the epistles of the New Testament:
1. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3). The penalty for violation of this law was death. “He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed” (Exod 22:20; cf. Deut 6:13–15).
This commandment is not repeated in the New Testament but the principle involved is emphatically affirmed. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). See also Acts 14:15 and James 2:19. But nowhere in the New Testament is the Mosaic penalty of physical death for violation of this law either affirmed or implied. Therefore, the first commandment as Mosaic law has been annulled but the moral principle that only the true God should be worshipped and served abides forever.
2. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exod 20:4).
The penalty for violation of the second commandment was death (Deut 27:15). After the sin of worshipping the golden
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calf the nation was saved from death by the intercession of Moses, but three thousand were slain who refused to give up their idolatry (Exod 32:26–28
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