Adventists have been taught that, wherever the Bible uses the word “commandments”, the word applies to the Decalogue. The Ten Commandments, they argue, are eternal, and what God gave to Israel is also for us today. In fact, Adventists further argue that Jesus came to show us how to keep the law. It is through law-keeping, enabled by power from Jesus and the Holy Spirit, they say, that we can know God and become righteous.
The Bible, though, reveals something different.
Words of the Covenant
Most Adventists don’t realize that Exodus 34:28 explains the Ten Commandments. Here is Exodus 34:27, 28:
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:27-28).
Notice that this passage identifies the Ten Commandments as the actual words of the old covenant. They are not a stand-alone document that apply to all people for all time. Rather, they are the words God gave Israel on the tablets of stone. They cannot be separated from all of the 613 laws contained in the Old Covenant.
In fact, the Decalogue may be thought of as the “abstract”, or the summary statement, of the entire old covenant. It outlines the framework of God’s expectations for His people, and the rest of the laws explain how to enforce and support the Ten. Moreover, the old covenant describes the consequences for breaking any one of the commandments: death. The Ten cannot be separated from the death sentence that is the consequence for breaking any command within it.
To be sure, the Ten Commandments are in God’s eternal word and are part of His revelation for humanity forever, yet this fact does not mean that on this side of the cross, we observe the Ten Commandments as Israel did.
To be sure, the Ten Commandments are in God’s eternal word and are part of His revelation for humanity forever, yet this fact does not mean that on this side of the cross, we observe the Ten Commandments as Israel did.
We now have the risen Lord Jesus as our moral Head. He fulfilled all the shadows of the law (see Col. 2:16, 17, Heb. 1:10), and we now answer to Him. All the commands of the New Testament are for us when we are born again, and His Spirit leads us and guides us and teaches us to grow in trust and obedience to HIM.
Not Like the Old Covenant
Jeremiah delivered to Israel an amazing promise: He was going to give them a NEW covenant that would not be like the covenant He gave at Sinai. Here is what Jeremiah said:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jer. 31:31-33).
Did you notice what he said? This new covenant would NOT be like the old one. Instead of an external law, God would put His law within them and on their hearts!
Adventists say that, of course, this law God would write on their hearts is the Decalogue—but that is not what the passage says. For one thing, the law God gave Israel was not just Ten Commandments. It consisted of every command God gave Israel, including not mixing fabrics and not cooking a calf in its mother’s milk. These so-called “ceremonial laws” cannot be detached from the Ten Commandments because they were part of the unified law God delivered at Sinai.
The law God would write on their hearts would be NEW. He would place Himself in their hearts, and they would answer directly to Him. In fact, the New Testament would contain many more commands for believers than the law contained for Israel.
New Commandments
Jesus introduced one of the central new commands of the new covenant when He told His disciples,
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34).
Jesus Himself stated that He, the One who was inaugurating the new covenant, was giving His disciples a NEW commandment. This passage alone is enough to disprove the Adventists’ belief that the word must mean the Ten Commandments.
This commandment was not part of the old covenant; the Lord Jesus had not yet come, fulfilled the law, and died and risen from death!
When Jesus said to love one another as He loved them, He was referring to His sacrificial love that included taking our imputed sin and dying in our place in order to give us life. He was saying that, as His born-again believers, we are to love each other with His love—love that makes us willing to give our lives to Him for the purpose of carrying His gospel to those who need salvation. We are to love one another with sacrificial love that cares and protects and delivers hope and reconciliation through belief in Him.
Why New Commandments?
Ephesians 2:14–16 reveals why Jesus gave us new commandments in the new covenant. In Him He has created a completely new thing: one new man! Here is how Paul says it:
For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. (Eph. 2:14-16).
When Jesus took our sins in His body on the cross and took God’s wrath for our sin, He created a completely new creation: born again people who are alive in Him! We are no longer dead in sin but have been made spiritually alive through Jesus’ blood. We have passed from death to life, as Jesus said.
We are no longer sinners who need to be made aware of our sin and reminded that we are under a death sentence because we have been made eternally alive.
We do not need to take those old covenant commands and apply them to those who have already passed from death to life. The death sentence has been taken care of; we are released from it and given eternal life already!
Now we live under a new law: the law of Christ. He holds us who have been born again to a much higher standard than that to which He held Israel.
Now we live under a new law: the law of Christ. He holds us who have been born again to a much higher standard than that to which He held Israel. We now have God Himself—the indwelling Holy Spirit—residing in and sealing us, and we answer not to the written law with its shadows and ceremonies but to our Savior Himself! We now live by His life, by His eternal righteousness imputed to us.
He teaches us to say no to the temptations of our still-mortal flesh, and He convicts us when we sin and brings us to repentance to restore our fellowship with Him.
Yet our commandments are new. Even though they reflect the same morality that the old covenant commandments articulated, the administration is new. God’s righteous requirements of the law have been met in Him, and He applies His personal righteousness to us who believe (Phil. 3:9). He gives us His wisdom to know and to do His will.
Just remember this: in the Bible and down through time, there have been many covenants given to many different people with different words. The commandments connected with each covenant have context in those covenants. The new covenant is based on Jesus’ shed blood and finished atonement for our sin, and in Him, we live under a completely new administration with a completely new set of commandments—commandments that would not have been possible for anyone to observe in the old covenant. †
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