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Originally Posted by blhowes  I do have one question for starters that I've sometimes wondered about. Some people say that the 10 commandments are valid (for lack of a better word) today to the extent that they're repeated somewhere in the NT. I was just wondering where that idea came from. Is there some biblical support for that kind of thinking?
I'm thinking God said "Thou shalt not..." once, that's enough. Unless He says differently in the NT, the commandment stands. | Those who say that that the commandments are valid only if repeated in the NT are missing something. There is more in the OT than the Mosaic/Sinaitic/Old Covenant made specifically with Israel. There is also pre-Mosaic instruction given to all men such as the death penalty for murder (Gen. 9:6). These instructions have never been revoked by God and remain valid today. Included in these instructions are the moral law written on the hearts of all men and women from Adam down to the latest newborn.
But if God says "Thou shalt not..." in a Sinaitic stipulation the case is a little more complicated. That covenant was made between God and Israel not God and all men. It reiterated the moral law as the decalogue, and contained ceremonial and civil stipulations as well. When that covenant was superseded by the new, it ended, and is no longer covenantally obliging on any today.
Yet although the ceremonial laws have been "abrogated" in Christ's new covenant fulfillment, the substance of the decalogue and some of the civil laws remain obligatory for different reasons than covenant obligation. The decalogue remains obligatory by virtue of the fact that it is the moral law given to all men pre-Sinai and never revoked, and some of the civil stipulations will remain obligatory because they remain just despite the change in covenants.
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In Christ's love and service
Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC
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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon
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