This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. (Hebrews 8:10—NIV)

The Jews center their worship around the Law, mainly around the Ten Commandments. We Christians center our worship around being forgiven and going to Heaven. This is because we do not understand the proper role of the law of God in the new covenant. It is time now for us to place the eternal law of God in the center of our service to God, just as the Jewish people do.

We find in the above passages that the Ten Commandments and the rest of the statutes of the Law of Moses are obsolete.

Then we discover rather than doing away with the Law of Moses, God is putting it into our mind so we will understand it, and into our heart so we will delight to do it.

Can you think of any aspect of Divine truth more in need of being taught today in the Christian churches? We have become lawless. We do not know what sin is because sin is the breaking of the eternal moral law of God; and we have interpreted the Apostle Paul to mean that since grace and truth have come by Jesus Christ we can forget about the moral laws of God.

The Ten Commandments reflect the eternal Character of God. Of course, under the Law of Moses they were written on tablets of stone and appeared in an abridged form.

Actually the Ten Commandments, which are the new covenant just as they were the old covenant, are now presented to our mind and heart in a marvelously expanded form. For example, the ninth commandment, that we must not bear false witness, means to us Christians that we are not to gossip about another person, slander him or her, or even criticize someone else. We may believe our negative comments to be true, but usually they are not and therefore are slanderous.

Slander is vigorously condemned in the New Testament:

For I am afraid when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder. (II Corinthians 12:20—NIV)

The Christian churches are filled with gossip, slander, and criticism. All such accusations come from Satan, the accuser of the brothers. The Ten Commandments are God's judgment against Satan; in fact, they may represent the first time God has expressed Himself so clearly against Satan since the rebellion of the angels.

All aspects of human personality and conduct God deems essential for mankind are included in the ten great areas of moral behavior. No longer are they confined to stone and paper. They are being written in our mind and our heart until we can say with the Lord Jesus:

I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart. (Psalms 40:8—NIV)

To be continued.