MOSES OR JESUS CHRIST

By Curtis Pugh

            Some professing Christians desire to put themselves under the Old Testament law of Moses. To attempt to please God and achieve righteousness by trying to keep Moses' law is, according to Paul, to fall from grace. His words in Galatians 5:4 are these: “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” Grace provides eternal life. In 2 Corinthians 3:9 Paul calls the law “...the ministration of condemnation.” In Romans 8:2 he calls the law “...the law of sin and death.” In the next verse in that chapter Paul wrote: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Christ accomplished “what the law could not do,” as that last verse says.

            John 1:17 tells us “...the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” There no grace to be found in Moses' law! Not only that, but the law was added because of sins and was only temporary. In Galatians 3:19 God says, “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made...”  That “seed” was Jesus the Messiah. He came. With His coming and the attendant ministry of John the Baptist the law of Moses ended. Jesus said in Luke 16:16 “The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached...” And in Romans 10:4 Paul wrote: “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”

            Again we are told of the temporariness of Moses' law in Hebrews 9:10 which says that the law: “...stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation.” That “reformation” was the work accomplished by Jesus Christ. Paul made this clear in Ephesians 2:15 where he wrote that Jesus Christ, “Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances...”

            So it is that Paul sums up the matter of the Christian's relationship to the Old Testament law of Moses. He wrote in Galatians  5:18, “But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.”