This post, from a study I did is for a friend who is studying the Law.

We all know about the "Ten Commandments," right? You may have heard people joke around about them even, calling them the "Ten Suggestions." There's a lot of people in the world today that believe whole-heartedly that God's Ten Commandments have no validity anymore because, "society has changed."Because of political correctness, some people even describe the Ten Commandments as "hate language."

There are even those people who will try to make an argument Biblically that Jesus abolished the application of the commandments to our lives because He established a New Covenant between God and man by His death and resurrection.The problem with that thinking is, it isn't supported by the Word. Jesus didn't claim to have abolished the Law of God. Quite the opposite in fact.

In Matthew, Chapter 5, Jesus said, "17Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished." Let's break this down a little bit and look a little closer at the historical backdrop in which Jesus words were spoken.

Some of the Pharisees, the chief religious leaders of the people of Jesus' society, and the scribes, take a lot of heat in the New Testament......but I do not believe they had a low view of God, or even necessarily an unbiblical view of Him either. Instead, they dwelt heavily on certain aspects of God's holiness, and how His holiness made Him separate from the people.

Because of the way they viewed God, they concentrated themselves of the responsibility of the people to live life up to God's standards. Can you do that? I know that I can't. In fairness, the harsh and sometimes corrupt treatment of the people was by no means perpetrated by all of the Pharisees, but for some of them, because of the position of authority that they held, they were stunned by the Savior's behavior. He by no means acted the way that they thought he should. Jesus not only claimed to know God, but declared himself to be God's Son and "equal," a claim for which the Pharisees intended to stone Him to death.

In Luke, Chapter 15, we read, "Both the Pharisees and scribes began to grumble, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."In that setting, Jesus goes on to tell the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Prodigal Son. If you're not familiar with those parables I urge you to read them. They reveal now, as they did then much about the heart of God, and that is what Jesus was telling them all about, the heart of the Father towards the people.

This is what many of the Pharisees and scribes had left out of their teaching and their treatment of the people of Jesus' day.
They had left out the immense love for all of humanity. They had left out the prodigious, for lack of a better word, luxury of God's grace, and the deep longing He has for the people of the world to be brought into a deep, close relationship with Him.
Having said that, God's commandments were a tool that many of the religious leaders of the day had used to set themselves above the general population, and the people resented it. God's Ten Commandments still had validity for the people because He said they did. Jesus said that every generation should keep the commandments until "heaven and earth disappear."

So how does that affect us, and just how do the Ten commandments apply to us now, today? Have any of us assembled online together managed to keep all of the commandments? I certainly haven't. We're called to keep God's commandments and to obey what they call us to do. Jesus told us as well, that obeying wasn't just a physical act of compliance with the Laws of God, but a "heart action" too.If our hearts are engaged in something that is contrary to God's law, we are doing wrong in our hearts.

Say we think to ourselves that it's okay to slander our neighbor, we are in effect breaking the ninth Commandment. If we think it's okay to take things from work, just because the boss has lots of money and he won't miss them, we're guilty of breaking the eighth commandment.

Paul told the Christians in Rome that, "....the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death." That doesn't mean though that the Ten Commandments no longer apply to us because we're believers. It simply means that because we're related to Christ, we are forgiven when we, through our weakness, break the commandments.

God's Commandments apply too, to the unbelieving world because ultimately, it will be the essence of the Law and the Ten Commandments by which they will be judged. Likewise, keeping God's Commandments is the way we should be living our lives. Why?

"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and disclose Myself to him." John 14:21

James told us, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in on point, he has become guilty of all." Chapter 2, verse 10.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us forgiven when we break the guidelines that God etched in stone on Mt. Sinai and onto our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

God's commandments weren't a temporary set of guidelines to be used by Moses and the Jews as they sojourned through the desert wilderness for forty years. God meant that all of us should keep them in order to have a deeper and more meaningful relationship not only with Him, but with each other.