Why Study the Ten Commandments - Part Six

Last time, we made the point that the Ten Commandments were given to us by a God who was setting us free, not enslaving us. Most unregenerate men won't ever realize this. They will scoff at the idea. What the world always says about Christianity is this,

"Oh, you are all so straight-laced. You Christians Can't ever have any fun."

And they think that we are enslaved by the Law given by God.

"Your God is always saying, 'Don't, don't, don't! And you can't ever do anything fun. All the Bible is is a book filled with 'Dos' and Don'ts.'"

Instead of free men, they think we are the slaves.

Interestingly, Doug Wilson comments that all the freedom the world wants could be done in a six by eight foot prison cell. You can read pornography is a prison cell. You can smoke dope in a prison cell. You can be immoral in a prison cell. So, who is the slave here? It's not us in bondage, but them; because Christ has set us free. What they are doing is enslaving people in their own lusts - enslaving them in sin - all the while calling us slaves. And too many Christians buy that lie. They envy the world its sin.

We are the free ones. God freed us from the bondage of sin. That's what Romans chapter Six is all about. Romans 6:6 says,

"Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin."

We used to be slaves. Now we are emancipated.

Then Romans 6:16-18 says:

"Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that ones slave whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness."

God's law frees us. It frees us to live righteously. James even calls it the law of liberty in James 1:25,

"But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the the work, this one will be blessed in what he does."

Don't get hung up that New Testament repeatedly says we are not under law but under grace. That doesn't mean we are lawless. On the contrary, As Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 9:21, we are "not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ." We aren't bound by the Old Testament ceremonial or sacrificial law. Christ came to fulfill the law and be our once and final sacrifice. But God certainly expects us to keep the moral commands of God that, yes, were repeated in the New Testament.