Not all of Christendom is agreed that the commandment given above is the second commandment. Roman Catholicism considers Exodus 20:4–6, which we know as the second commandment, to be a part of the first commandment. Lutheran churches are of the same opinion as the Roman Catholic Church. (3)

Two words should be said about the Roman Catholic and Lutheran listing of the commandments: (1) The division of the tenth commandment on coveting into two commandments is artificial and unconvincing; and (2) The inclusion of the second commandment in the first results from a failure to see the unique emphasis of the second commandment distinct from the emphasis of the first. In the first commandment we are instructed to worship and serve God alone, and in the second commandment we are instructed to worship and serve God alone only by the way in which God has commanded us to worship Him. The first commandment is concerned with the object of worship and the second commandment is concerned with the manner of worship. (3-4)

The Second Commandment in Exodus 20:4–6 is comprised of  a prohibition, a declaration of God’s perfections, and a sanction. The prohibition is twofold and the sanction is twofold. The two prohibitions are: (1) Do not make for yourselves idols and graven images, and (2) Do not worship or serve God by means of these images.
In the declaration of God’s perfections, God reveals to us that He is “the Lord your God” and that He is “a jealous God.” The sanctions include a curse and a blessing. (1) The curse: God will visit with judgment “the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and forth generations of those who hate Me.” (2) The blessing: God will show “lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

The prohibition against graven images and idols was unique in the ancient world....“By prohibiting the use of graven images, God was separating the Israelites from the surrounding cultures. It was always a mark of rebellion when the Israelites began to worship graven images.”6 North, The Sinai Strategy, 27. (6)

​The second commandment made peace treaties and alliances with pagan nations impossible for the covenant people as long as they remained faithful and avoided images. In the ancient world peace treaties were religious ceremonies conducted by the priests of the gods of each city-state or society entering into the alliance, so that the alliance was between their gods as well as their peoples. (6)

The function of an image in the ancient world and in our modern world is this: the image represents the deity, it is a point of contact between the deity and the worshipper....By the use of images and idols a person can come into contact with divine power and use it for their own purposes. When Aaron and Jeroboam, in the history of Israel, made graven images in the form of bulls, symbols of strength and fertility, their intention was not to portray the likeness of the God they sought to serve, but only to control the power of the Lord. (7)

In making a graven image or idol, man is playing the central role in establishing a point of contact between God and himself. Man himself becomes god by doing so, for he is imitating God in making an image of himself, as God made man in His image. (8)

God hates idols and graven images because they are “a means of negating the Creator-creature distinction. Men believe that they can approach God, placate God, and even control God through bowing to an idol.”13 North, The Sinai Strategy, 32. (8)

Today in religious jargon, our word for graven image and idol is icon, a mystical contact with the deity or power it represents. This is “the theology of magic” and superstition. And in the ancient world as well as today people are often and easily lured into substituting magic for Christian faith, calling magic “faith,” and a theology of magic “Christianity.” (9)

To bow down before a deity is to walk in submission to his laws and ordinances: “You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you; you shall not walk in their statutes” (Lev. 18:3). ...
"Making a graven image means to participate in the creation of a new world order. This new world order is in opposition to God’s world order. A different god is elevated to a position of sovereignty. In the Old Testament era, this meant that some demonic being became the source of health and prosperity. In modern civilization, which is the historical product of Christianity, most men no longer worship demons explicitly. They attribute sovereignty to impersonal forces of history (Marxism), or forces of the unconscious (Freudianism), or the spirit of the Volk (Nazism), or the impersonal forces of nature (Darwinism’s explanation of pre-human evolution). ...
"Satan did not tempt Adam and Eve to worship him openly; he only asked them to violate the law of God. The violation of God’s law was the equivalent of worshipping Satan....The worship of man and his works is essentially the worship of Satan. In short, man the idol-maker and idol-worshipper is man the Satan-worshipper. ...
"The construction of a world order which is opposed to the one set forth by God is therefore theologically comparable to constructing a graven image. There may be no official graven image at first. Men may not be asked to bow down to it at first.
But the substitution of the ordinances of man for the ordinances of God is the heart of idol-worship. It is an assertion of man’s autonomy, which ultimately results in the subordination of man to the ordinances of Satan. The society of Satan does not need graven images to make it operational." 18 North, The Sinai Strategy, 38–39. (11-12)

First, to try to capture the Lord God in an image is to misunderstand HIS SPIRITUALITY. Mankind is forbidden to make graven images of God because “God is Spirit,” uncreated, personal, infinite, nonphysical and nonmaterial (John 4:24) who lives eternally “in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. (12)

The foundation of Christian worship of God is the truth that “God is Spirit.” He is a living, personal God, who speaks, acts, plans and loves, who possesses self-consciousness and self-determination. Being uncreated, immaterial and non-physical, He does not have a body like human beings. He is a living, intelligent, invisible, active, tri-personal God, without a created form of any kind. God is His perfections. As Spirit, He is infinite, immense and omnipresent. (13-14)

[Second] To try to capture the Lord God in an image is to misunderstand HIS FREEDOM AND SOVEREIGNTY. A graven image is man’s attempt to make the Incomprehensible comprehensible. (14)

A clear illustration of man’s failure to understand the freedom and sovereignty of God is found in 1 Samuel 4. Israel had suffered a heavy defeat by the Philistines....The ark is brought....But, instead of being victorious in the next battle, Israel suffered a second serious defeat, and the ark itself was captured by the Philistines. (15)

[Third] To try to capture the Lord God in an image is to misunderstand HIS MAJESTY. “His majesty is reduced to a travesty when we attempt to represent him by any visible image.”22 John Calvin, John Calvin’s Sermons on the Ten Commandments, ed. and trans. by Benjamin W. Farley (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1980), 66. (16)

[Fourth] To try to capture the Lord God in an image is to misunderstand HIS COVENANT. (20)

The Lord is not tangible to His people, as idols are to those who worship them, and yet, there is no god as close to his worshippers as the Lord is to those who love and worship Him. (20)

The concern of the second commandment is with the worship of God, or more specifically, the manner in which God is to be worshipped. The first commandment instructs us to worship the Lord God alone and no one or nothing else. And now the second commandment instructs us in the way God is pleased to be worshipped, i.e., only in the way He has revealed in His Word and in no other way, for God rejects all manner of worship that originates in the mind of man. (20-21)

So then, in forbidding the most extreme corruption of the homage and worship we give the one true God, i.e., image-worship, God is forbidding all manner of worship of Him that is inconsistent with His character and His revealed will, i.e., not in spirit and in truth. (21)

This principle, “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23), bears directly upon the manner of our worship. “If worship must be consonant with the nature of God, it must be in accord with what God has revealed himself to be and regulated as to content and mode by the revelation God has given in holy Scripture.” 31. John Murray, “The Worship of God in the Four Gospels,” The Biblical Doctrine of Worship: A Symposium, 93. (22)

If God is to be worshipped at all, HE MUST BE worshipped in spirit and truth (John 4:24)....“Must” is dei in Greek, denoting the element of necessity in ethical and religious obligations, backed by Divinely revealed statutes (Lev. 5:17). It is not only all men’s DUTY to worship God in spirit and truth, it is the ONLY WAY man may worship God! (22)

The point of the second commandment is that because the one true God desires true worshippers (John 4:22–24), the regulating principle for the worship of that God is His own “desires.” The only way to worship Him truly is to do so according to His
desire and in the manner He desires. It must be in accord with His revealed character and therefore not merely in externally correct forms, but sincerely from the heart with our whole person. (23)

The second commandment is the regulative principle for man’ worship of God. It states this principle in the imperative as Deuteronomy 12:32 states it in the indicative: “Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it.” (24)

The point of this Biblical principle by which we are to regulate all our worship of God is this:
Whatever is commanded is required.
Whatever is forbidden is prohibited.
WHATEVER IS NOT COMMANDED IS FORBIDDEN.

We are able to determine from the Bible what God has commanded us to do in our worship of Him by:
Express Commands
Approved Examples
Necessary Inferences

​(25-26)

      Racheal

​Titus 3:1-8
"But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things--that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.
Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded, in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you."

      Racheal

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
​~~ Deuteronomy 6: 6-9

      Racheal

The Westminster divines took great care in detailing the ways in which the first commandment may be broken. They did this, not because they were legalists, or because they were more concerned with external conformity to God’s Law than internal love for that Law. They were so detailed at this point for several reasons: (1) They loved the Law of God and sought to honor it to the best of their ability. (2) They loved their congregations and wanted their obedience to be entire and exact and therefore pleasing to God and graciously blessed by God. (3) They understood Jesus, that our standing in His kingdom is inseparable from our regard for the specifics of God’s revealed Law (Matt. 5:17–19)....(4) They knew that to whom much is given much is required. (5) They knew that “whoever keeps the whole law and yet
stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.… So speak and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty” (James 2:10–12). (6) They wanted their readers to see clearly the full demands of every one of the commandments so that those readers, enabled by the Holy Spirit, would be convicted of how far short they
have fallen from the Law of God and be driven to Christ that they might be saved from their sins and from the Law’s curse through faith in Christ alone (Gal. 3:24). (779)

[1] It is far easier to believe in God than to make oneself believe that God does not exist, for He has clearly revealed Himself to us in all of creation and in us, and in our very constitution and conscience as men and women in the image of God.
Atheism is not the consequence of an inner struggle with honest questions about God resulting from the obscurity of His reality....Atheists make their atheistic confession of faith, not because of honest intellectual problems with the existence of God, but because “they are corrupt” and “have committed abominable deeds” (14:1). (780)

People are atheists, or anti-theists, because they want to be, because they suppress the revelation of God in sinful self-deception. They make themselves believe that they do not believe in the God who really is there, making another god in their own image. (781-782)

What about the person who says that he is not an atheist, he just does not know whether or not God is? Is this attitude a transgression of the first commandment? Yes, for the following reason....He is saying that God’s revelation of Himself in his creation is obscure and unconvincing, that He is not able or willing to communicate Himself so that man knows it is God speaking. (783)

[2] Some people, who are not philosophically atheistic are practically atheistic in their behavior and general approach to everyday life. When, because of laziness, God remains a mere name to us, we choose to be ignorant about the perfections of God, or we hold conceptions of God that are beneath Him and not in accord with His self-revelation in the Bible, we are guilty of practical atheism. If our views of God are not in accord with God’s views of Himself as revealed in the Bible, our god is a god that does not exist. (784-785)

When we hold unbiblical doctrines and dangerous heresies that are subversive of the basic tenets of Christianity and are contradictory of the glorious perfections of God, we are practical atheists. (785)

When we murmur and complain and grow bitter at God’s providential dealings with us, pretending to find fault or injustice or unholiness in the way He deals with us; or when we demand that God meet our expectations, or when we presume to tell Him what to do, or when we judge Him by our standards and then complain because He does not meet them, we are acting like atheists....Furthermore, to think and behave in the daily course of our lives as though we were not accountable to Him, not responsible to obey Him, and had no reason to be afraid of His judgments, we are living like atheists. (785-786)

"It is certain that the best of God’s people are sanctified but in part, and therefore are prone to commit those sins which seem to involve a denial, at least, a neglect, of that regard which we ought to have for the divine perfections, and especially when
we are followed not only with vain but with blasphemous thoughts, which give great disturbance to us when engaged in holy duties....He may have a due regard to God, as to what respects the course and tenor of his actions; and yet, in many instances, be chargeable with forgetfulness of him. He may have a love to him, and yet sometimes be guilty of indiscreet zeal, on the one hand, or of lukewarmness and deadness of heart, on the other.…
And as it is not in our own power to govern our hearts or affections, or restrain the breakings forth of corruption; it is necessary for us to commit our souls into Christ’s hands, with earnest supplications to him that he would sanctify, regulate and cleanse our thoughts.…" 103. Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 2:320–21. (786-787)

God takes all idolatry seriously! In fact, God hates idolatry! He destroys all idols and all those who worship them, unless they repent, because He “will not share His glory with another.” (788)

People may worship nature, money, mankind, power, history, or social and political systems instead of the God who created them all. The New Testament writers, in particular, recognized that the relationship need not be explicitly one of cultic worship; a man can place anyone or anything at the top of his pyramid of values, and that is ultimately what he serves. (788-789)

Although true believers hate the very thought of giving worship and honor to the creature rather than to the glorious Creator, if we look into our inner lives, we will see that we have reason to charge ourselves with that which the Bible considers
idolatry, whenever we put anything in the place of God and love and desire it more than Him. (790)

[1] SELF. Self-love always turns away the heart from God, and therefore we can call the worship of self “heart idolatry.” We are guilty of heart idolatry when we refuse to be open to and believe any of the great truths of the Bible, unless we are able to fit them together satisfactorily in our minds, i.e., “unless we are able to comprehend them within the shallow limits of our own understandings,”109 rather than seeking to understand and believe them because of the divine authority of the
Bible. 109. Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 2:323. (790)

Heart idolatry also reveals itself in our emotions and affections, when we desire anything that God has declared sinful, or when we desire anything that is lawful for us to desire, but with a greater intensity of desire than we desire the living God and fellowship with Him. (791)

[2] THE WORLD is another idol even Christians are capable of putting in the place of God in our hearts and desires. When the profits, pleasures, applause and honor of this evil culture around us are desired by us with great longing and delight, being willing to sacrifice anything for them; when they are pursued with more earnestness and zeal than Christ, His blessings and His glory, then the world, having the highest place in our affections, becomes our god. (791-792)

We also put the world in the place of God when our thoughts and plans and interests are so consumed with the pursuit of the material things of this life that “we not only grow cold and remiss as to spiritual things, but allow ourselves no time for serious meditations on them, or for conversing with God in secret.” 111. Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 2:324. (792)

Deuteronomy 6:13 calls upon the people of God: (1) To give loving submission to God as God; (2) To give Him worship and service as their God by covenant; and (3) To swear by His name, i.e., to give public confession that they belong to God’s people and worship and serve no other God but Jehovah. (792-793)

If we are afraid to own that God is one and that He is our God, He will not own us on the day of final judgment! (793)

Because God has created us, redeemed us in Christ, and regenerated us by His Spirit, He has a total and indisputable claim to our service and obedience; and therefore, may demand of us whatever He will. Because we are created, redeemed
and regenerated by Him we show great wickedness and foul ingratitude if we deliberately or out of inexcusable ignorance, fail to keep from the heart anything at all God has revealed in His Word as due Him because of His incomparable worth. If we omit any duty required by the first commandment out of ignorance or rebellion; or if we neglect any duty out of laziness or unbelief, we transgress the commandment and are miserable sinners in need of great mercy, thorough cleansing and complete forgiveness. (794)

Ignorance of God is inexcusable because of the clear revelation of God in creation and especially in man as the image of God.... 
Man is even more culpable for his ignorance of God because of the clear revelation of God in the Bible....
His culpability increases all the more because of the supreme revelation of God in Jesus Christ: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1–2a). And especially are Christians inexcusable of their ignorance of God, His perfections, His ways and His will, because they are enlightened by the Holy Spirit to understand the revelation of God... (795)

How is it possible for anyone, and especially God’s people, to forget God? And yet we do. God is not forgotten by accident! This reminds us that sinful perversion still remains within us. (797)

Misapprehensions of God are sins against the first commandment, hence, immensely displeasing to God. Any failure to interpret or understand God correctly is to be included as a failure to give God the worship and service He demands in the first commandment. (798)

Misapprehensions and misconceptions of God ultimately arise from fallen man’s pretension that his mind and experience are the source of any knowledge about God, if God is to be known at all. (799)

God is incomparable. (803)

This means that any wrong opinion we have of God that is beneath or out of accord with the perfect revelation of this incomparable God in the Bible is displeasing to Him and is tantamount to idolatry. God takes seriously what He has revealed about Himself. (803-804)

If we are mistaken in our views of God, we will be off-track in our views of ourselves, the Bible, life and the universe. Our view of God shapes our view of politics, human nature, family life, art, agriculture, law, economics, ecology, theology and everything else. Therefore it is of vital importance that we do not hold any false opinions of God. (804)

Any conception of God not in accord with His self-revelation in the Bible is unworthy of Him. And those thoughts of God that lower him to man’s level are particularly wicked thoughts of Him. (804)

The Bible takes the occult seriously! This includes such things as: fortunetelling, sorcery, witchcraft, divination, astrology, enchantment, charms, spiritualism, wizardry, necromancy and child sacrifice in devil-worship. In fact, the Bible describes these things as false prophecy and sets them over against true prophecy (Deut. 18:10–12, 15–16). (805)

[1] God’s will has two aspects to it: a secret aspect and a revealed aspect. We know what God’s will is for our lives by His revealed will in the Bible, by which standard alone we are to understand and plan our lives. God’s revealed will is what He has commanded us to do. On the other hand, the secret aspect of God’s will is what He has predestined to do in our lives, which is totally secret to us until it happens. We are not to try to second guess or try to pry into what God has planned for our future, but which He has not yet revealed, in order to see what our future holds....Therefore, participating in the occult is (1) blatant disobedience to Deuteronomy 29:29. (2) It is an attempt to force knowledge out of God, (which He said is secret to us), by occult practices. (3) It is an attempt to know the future so as to control the future and direct life in the present without the Word of God and in disregard of the sovereignty of God. (4) It is a turning away from the Lord. (806)

Because of the antichristian and satanic assumptions of the occult, it is so detested by God that His threats against it are most solemn....Not only will those involved in the occult be excommunicated from the church and exiled from the land of promise, God will turn against them and use His awesome power against them, possibly to shorten their earthly lives. (807)

[2] The Larger Catechism gives 1 Samuel 28:7f, (which is the account of the witch of Endor supposedly conjuring up Samuel from the dead for the sake of Saul), as illustrative of the fact that participation in the occult can most definitely involve entering into compacts with the devil, consulting the devil, and therefore, being used by the devil. (810)

'The commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” means also “Thou shalt have no other powers before Me,” independent of Me or having priority over Me. The commandment can also read, “Thou shalt have no other law before Me.”' 137. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, 61–62. (814)

Profane people are far from God because of their profanity, i.e., their lawlessness, rebellion against God, ungodliness, unholiness and immorality (1 Tim. 1:9–10). (815)

Furthermore, profane people desecrate, treat with contempt, and have low esteem for holy things.
(1) They treat God Himself with contempt...
(2) They treat God’s Name with contempt...
(3) They desecrate the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath...
(4) They profane the Land of the Lord...
(5) They profane the Covenant of God...
6) They profane themselves and their families in immorality... 
​(815-816)

The human race is divided into two groups: those who love God, having been enabled to do so by regeneration, and those who hate God, because of their sinful depravity. No third, neutral group exists. And some of those who hate God will not admit that they hate Him or are not even aware of their hatred for Him. (816)

Because they hated the one, true and living God, being in rebellion against Him, they did not retain Him in their knowledge, but abandoned themselves to that wicked way of life they knew to be wicked. (817)

One of the primary traits of the unbeliever is his self-love....Such an attitude is a transgression of the first commandment; because a person cannot be a lover of God, if he is a lover of himself in the place of God. (817)

(1) Believers are called upon, not to love themselves, but to loathe themselves because they are sinners...
(2) God declares that a person is “nothing” unless and until he loves others...
(3) “Jesus sets forth self-denial rather than self-affirmation as the way to enter into a proper relationship with God.”144
(4) Rather than love self, Jesus says we are to lose self in the service of Christ...
(5) The believer is someone who no longer lives for himself, as he did before he came to Christ in faith and surrender. ...
(6) Christ takes the place of self in the Christian life in the new birth...
(7) "Love… is the very cessation of self-directed, self-concerned, selfcentered living. That’s why living for Christ and others out of love for them points us away from ourselves. Self-esteem pursuits deflect one’s attention from others and thus destroy Christian love.…" 149
144. Adams, The Biblical View of Self-Esteem, Self-Love, Self-Image, 104.
149. Adams, The Biblical View of Self-Esteem, Self-Love, Self-Image, 112.
​ (818-821)

Self-seeking is closely related to self-love. In both instances the focus and goal of one’s life, interests and desires is SELF, not the one, true and living God. Hence, self-seeking as self-love is a transgression of the first commandment. (823)

This is true Christlikeness—seeking after the interests of Christ and His church, rather than one’s interests. This is losing yourself in the work of the gospel for the sake of Christ; rather than trying to seek your own welfare, goals, comfort and affluence. (823)

(1) They understood that human beings would, “ORDINATELY” [disciplined and orderly] AND MODERATELY [not excessively], set their thoughts, affections, and desires on many people, things and concerns in their everyday work and life in this world. This present life—physically, spiritually and socially—is important to God. It is in this earthly existence that God calls us to faithfulness in all things: “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present YOUR BODIES a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” (Rom. 12:1; emphasis added). There is a spiritual-physical-social unity to human existence, and therefore, in all our involvement in all the aspects of life on this earth, we are to love and work and play, loving God with all our heart. (2) At the same time, we are not to take our thoughts, affections, and desires off the triune God in whole or in part. He must be the constant, conscious and ultimate desire of our heart. In all we do and desire, His glory is our ultimate purpose and goal, which we long for above all else...The phrase, in whole or in part, does not mean that we may not think about anything but God, love anyone or anything else but God nor desire anything else but God. That would be to deny our humanity. Rather, in all our human desires, thoughts, affections, actions and relationships, God in Christ must be preeminent in everything we do. (824)

There may be no rivals or competitors in our lives of our love for Him. No other person, however dearly loved, may ever be put before the claims of Christ and His kingdom. (826)

"Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:1–3)."
(1) The radical change of heart and of “spiritual environment” that the Christian has undergone will affect every aspect of his spiritual-physical-social life on this earth.
(2) Having been raised to a new sphere of life in Christ, the believer now has a new aim in life...
(3) Before he was converted, the believer was dead in sin and dead to God. Now, because of regeneration, he is “dead to sin” and “alive to God.”...
(4) Christians possess within them the power of Christ’s resurrection, because of their union with Christ, which continuously and increasingly transforms their entire lives....
(5) Those that seek to obtain these “things that are above” are not chasing phantoms but are gathering priceless treasures. They are not the kind of people who forget about their duty in the here and now. On the contrary, they are very practical, for
the graces that have been enumerated enable them not only to gain victory upon victory in their struggle against fleshly indulgence but also to be truthfully “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.”164
(6) The practical implications of being raised with Christ are that “believers have now no life of their own. Their life is the life of Christ, maintained in being by Him at God’s right hand and shared by Him with all His people. Their interests must therefore be His interests.”165
164. Hendriksen, Exposition of Colossians and Philemon, 140–41.
165. E. K. Simpson and F. F. Bruce, New International Commentary on the
New Testament: Commentary on The Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, [1957], 1965), 259.
(828-830)

      Racheal

Lincoln had changed the war's issue, altered the conflict for men and women in both sections and also for people of other nations. The war would now be a kind of crusade--slavery against freedom. (p 199)

      Racheal

The presupposition of the first commandment—“You shall have no other gods before Me”—is that, regardless of the fact that man worships a vast array of idols he calls gods, other than the triune God of the Bible, no other gods exist. In fact, the Hebrew word for an idol literally means “a nothing,” “a non-entity.” (712)

"His forbidding us to have other gods means that we are not to give to another than himself what belongs to God… that we are to worship him alone; we are to rely upon him with complete faithfulness and hope; whatsoever is good and holy we are to recognize as received from him; and we are to direct all praise for goodness and holiness to him." 4 ​I. John Hesselink, Calvin’s First Catechism: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1997), 11. (714)

God’s Law is covenant law; it defines the relationship between the Creator and His friends in Christ....We do not obey God’s Law in order to be redeemed or to enter the covenant (Gal. 3:24). When a person is rightly related to Jehovah through the sacrifice and intercession of the Mediator of the Covenant, obedience to Biblical Law by believers for Jesus’ sake enhances covenant life. (717)

Since the God of the Bible is the only true and living God whom we are to serve with all our heart, we are obliged to know all we can know about Him from His written Word, and on the basis of that Word know Him personally as our God. (718)

This true knowledge of God is the foundation of all life, thought and behavior: “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Pet. 1:3). (718)

...Packer brings out some helpful points regarding the knowledge of God:
(1) A person can know a great deal about God without knowing God.
(2) A person can know a great deal about living the Christian life without knowing God.
(3) Those who truly know God exert great energy for God: “the people who know their God will display strength and take action” (Dan. 11:32). ...
(4) Those who truly know God have great thoughts of God which fill their minds. ...
(5) Those who truly know God show great boldness in serving and witnessing for God.  ....
(6) Those who truly know God have great contentment in God. ...
(7) “Knowing God is a matter of personal dealing, as is all direct acquaintance with personal beings. Knowing God is more than knowing about Him; it is a matter of dealing with Him as He opens up to you, and being dealt with by Him as He takes knowledge of you.”11
(8) “Knowing God is a matter of personal involvement, in mind, will and feeling. Otherwise, it would not be a fully personal relationship. To get to know another person, you have to commit yourself to his company and interests, and be ready to identify yourself with his concerns.”12
(9) Knowing God is a matter of grace. It is a relationship in which the initiative throughout is with God—as it must be, since God is so completely above us and we have so completely forfeited all claim on His favour by our sins. We do not make
friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know Him by making His love known to us.13
(10) “What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that He knows me.… All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me.”14 
11. Packer, Knowing God, 34.
12. Packer, Knowing God, 35.
13. Packer, Knowing God, 36, emphasis added.
14. Packer, Knowing God, 37.
(719-721)

The command to “swear by His Name” is the command to confess our faith in God and to declare our total loyalty to Him. Swearing by God’s name is a confession of faith in the Old Testament, and our confession always includes the renewal of our vows and our devotion to our God. (721)

The one true and living God has commanded all His intelligent creatures to worship Him in sincerity and according to His Word, with all their heart and soul. (723)

In the broadest sense, worship is the giving of praise, honor, adoration, devotion and service to the one true and living God who is our God in Jesus Christ. (724)

The loyalty and devotion Almighty God demands of us is total and all encompassing, for “He will not share His glory with another.” (725)

The true worship of God is both internal and external. It is INTERNAL and INWARD in that, in essence, it consists in fearing, loving, praising, calling upon, trusting in and serving the Lord with all the heart, all of which show themselves in holiness of behavior. It is EXTERNAL and OUTWARD in that faith without works is dead. Adoring worship in the heart will manifest itself in the public worship of God according to the way He has commanded in His Word. (725)

The INWARD always expresses itself in the OUTWARD. The outward expression of worship is governed by several Biblical principles. (1) God accepts only that worship which is in accordance with what He has commanded in the Bible regarding how He is to be worshipped (Deut. 12:32). (2) God may not be worshipped with the help of visual representations of Him (Deut. 4:15, 16, 23). (3) God condemns the attempted worshipping of Him in any other way not prescribed
in the Bible (Matt. 15:9). In other words, in the worship of God, if it is not commanded, it is forbidden. (726)

Human beings exist to glorify God and to delight in the God of glory. Humankind
has been predestined to be the instrument of the Divine glory, to reflect that glory in their own consciousness and to enjoy God as the all-glorious One. In other words, glorifying God and enjoying God are inseparable. (727)

So then, we can say that honoring God or glorifying God involves appreciation, adoration, submission and witness.

First, APPRECIATION. We glorify God when we recognize God’s “impressiveness” in His self-revelation and have God-admiring thoughts about Him. Second, ADORATION. We glorify God when we praise Him and adore Him for His “impressiveness” as revealed in Christ, the Bible and creation. Third, SUBMISSION. We glorify God by submitting to the supremacy and finality of His revelation in total dependence and obedience. Fourth, WITNESS. We glorify God when we hold and give a good opinion of God by the witness of our lives and mouths to others. Therefore, “whether… you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). (727)

The worship of God is the conscious and deliberate glorifying and enjoying of God regulated by His Word. (728)

[1: Thinking of Him]
 Among the evils that bring down God’s most severe judgment upon an individual or a people is not wanting and refusing to have God in all their thoughts. (729)

In stark contrast to the reprobate, the true believer in Jesus understands that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,” and so in all his thinking he starts with God as the source of all life, truth and morality. To say that the fear of the Lord is the starting point and foundation for all wisdom and knowledge (Proverbs
1:7; 9:10) is to say that true knowledge is acquired, not rationalistically, existentially, or empirically, but revelationally; therefore to know anything from physics to theology, one must begin with God and His verbal revelation, as the only basis for knowledge and morality....If in our thinking we do not begin with God, we will never end with God. (730)

[2: Meditating on Him]
"Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. Its purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let His truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart. It is a matter of talking to oneself about God and oneself; it is, indeed, often a matter of arguing with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God’s power and grace. Its effect is ever to humble us, as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory, and our own littleness and sinfulness, and to encourage and reassure us…as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ.… And it is as we enter more and more deeply into this experience of being humbled and exalted that our knowledge of God increases, and with it our peace, our strength, and our joy. 28 Packer, Knowing God, 18–19. (732-733)

[3: Remembering Him]
Time and again in the Bible we are urged not to forget the Lord, but to remember Him, whether we are enjoying prosperity or suffering poverty. ...
"Then let us mark, that the remembering means the reverencing of Him." 29. Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, 284. (733)

[4: Highly Esteeming Him]
The Hebrew is that they “thought upon His name,” in the sense that they “esteemed” it and “prized” it, in contrast to those aroundthem who had come to “despise” that holy name. (734)

[5: Honoring Him]
We honor God when, in our hearts we know, recognize and love all the revealed perfections of God: His justice as well as His grace, His wrath as well as His mercy, His righteousness as well as His love, His sovereignty as well as His patience. (736)

[6: Adoring Him]
It manifests this loving reverence in verbal expressions in worship to him in whom these glorious perfections reside. The language of adoration is accompanied with praise, which arises from our consciousness of the delight we enjoy in the contemplation of these divine perfections. (738)

[7: Choosing Him]
A true Christian is not one who makes only one “decision for Jesus,” rather he is one who seeks to make “every decision for Jesus.” (739)

[8: Loving Him]
Choosing God means loving Him. (741)

What is it to LOVE God? Love is emotional, but it is more than emotion. Emotions cannot be ordered to act on command; but God commands us that we love Him with all our heart. This means that we must:
"see love as a choice. Because only Yahweh is God, Israel and we must choose for Him. To love means to stick with your choice. When a marriage gets into trouble, the only path to resolution is the choice to love. The emotional element in that love may be wholly or partially absent, but faithfulness must come out. Concretely, then, love means that husband and wife form no relationships with third parties, but maintain the choice they made for each other with their wedding vows. The same is true of our relationship with the Lord. He covenanted Himself to Israel, and Israel to Him. The first commandment demands a love that is faithful to the covenant. Here, too, no third party may come between them. Love cannot be shared between Yahweh and Baal, between God and Mammon.… To love is to stick with your choice, regardless of whether it feels good." 42 Douma, The Ten Commandments, 21. (741-742)

[9: Desiring Him]
For those who love the triune God, nothing they desire equals the intensity of the longing of their hearts for fellowship with the one true and living God, who is their God in Christ. (743)

Therefore, we will have no intense desire for God unless we have the following. (1) A thoroughly Biblical understanding of His being and perfections, including His self-sufficiency (Ps. 115:3). If we are convinced He favors us because He needs us, we will more highly esteem ourselves, and will not be overwhelmed with the greatness
and blessedness of His being. The believer loves God because of who He is and what He has revealed of Himself. (2) A thoroughly Biblical understanding of our total need for Him and His willingness, ability and generosity in meeting all our needs in Christ (Phil. 4:19). Until we recognize that in and of ourselves we lack everything that is good and honorable and pleasing to God, that we have no spiritual resources to live life the way God meant for it to be lived, we will not have any proper and intense desire for God, because we will not see or feel our total need of Him. (745) 

[10: Fearing Him]
The source of the true worship of God is the fear of God....This fear of the Lord
is reverential awe, adoration and submission in the conscious presence of the triune God, which creates in us a deep and profound humility before God, without which no one can come to God and be accepted by Him. (745)

The fruit of the fear of God includes: (1) Faith and Repentance, without which it is absolutely impossible to do anything that pleases God (Heb. 11:6; Isa. 1:10–17). (2) Humble Submission to God, because the God we worship is the Lord God Almighty, the Sovereign of the universe. (3) Joyful Praise, in the celebration of redemption
God has given us in Christ. (4) Intense Delight, because in the worship of God our great and glorious God manifests Himself and His glory to us. (747)

[11: Believing Him]
Believing in God and believing God are inseparable. In fact, unless we believe God we will not believe in Him....True faith “believes in,” the Lord, i.e., trusts in and commits to the Lord (John 3:16) and it also “believes that,” God has spoken, persuaded by the Spirit that all He has spoken is true: “believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Rom. 10:9). (747)

[12: Believing in Him]
Hence, believing IN God denotes “a steady, resting repose, reliance upon, and a fixedness of confidence in” God in Christ. (749)

[13. Trusting in Him]
To “trust” in the Lord involves renouncing all confidence in self or in any other human being, and relying solely upon the Lord alone for life and salvation. (749)

In faith the believer not only TRUSTS God in Christ for salvation, he also ENTRUSTS himself to Christ forever. He relies upon Him, rests and leans upon Him, and commits all he is, has, and ever will have to Christ. (750)

[14. Hoping in Him]
Those who trust in God hope in God, because they know that their God is a faithful God, and they are assured that He will fulfill all the great and glorious promises He has made in His Word, however, in His own time and schedule, which means that sometimes they have to wait in faith through many difficulties to see the promise
realized. (750)

Hope has certainty in it. Because faith rests in the Promiser, hope waits confidently and expectantly for the promises. Faith hopes with anticipation and certainty regarding the blessings of God to the believer in the future because it knows that God has promised: “I will never leave you, nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5). (751)

(1) Salvation is oriented to hope; and (2) Hope produces perseverance.
First, salvation is oriented to hope....This refers to the fact that the salvation
bestowed in the past, the salvation now in possession of believers, is characterized by hope....In other words, possessed salvation cannot be separated from the certainty of its consummation. Salvation—past, present and future—is one salvation. ...
Second, hope produces perseverance. Hope has a two-fold effect on the believer. (1) It makes him wait on God in patient, eager and joyful expectation: “we exult in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2). (2) It gives him patience, endurance and constancy while he is waiting in faith for God to fulfill His promises: “and not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations; knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint” (Rom. 5:3–5). (751-752)

Here is a picture of a Christian person: he is a person of hope, who can combine eagerness and patience at one and the same time. He is neither impulsive nor phlegmatic. Therefore he is stable and reliable. (752)

[15: Delighting in Him]
For those who know God loves them in Christ, there is profound delight in the enjoyment of His love. We delight in the character of Him whom we love. (753)

[16: Rejoicing in Him]
The Bible abounds with references to joy and rejoicing. It speaks of gladness, contentment, satisfaction, mirth, cheerfulness, peace, serenity, the joy of faith and rejoicing in hope....From a study of...Old Testament words, we can learn several things about joy. (1) Shouting is associated with joy: “shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart” (Ps. 32:11b). (2) Over against paganism, joy is coupled with righteousness: “Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous ones” (Ps. 32:11a). (3) Joy has God as its source and object. Psalm 32:11 calls upon us to “be glad IN
THE LORD” (emphasis added). (4) God is a joyful God: “Let the LORD be glad in His works” (Ps. 104:31). (5) “The joy of the LORD is your strength” (Neh. 8:10). “True joy is based on knowledge of and submission to God’s Word.”66 (6) In God’s presence is “fullness of joy” (Ps. 16:11). (754-755)

The New Testament has about six words for joy and rejoicing. (1) It refers to joy as a gift of God to His children: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace” (Gal. 5:22). (2) It is the response of the believer to the gospel of Christ: “And the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord’” (Luke 2:10–11).67 (3) It is future-oriented for perfected joy and is a feature of life in the consummated universe: “Well done, good and faithful slave; you were faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of
many things, enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21). (4) The joy of Christians is the joy of Christ, who said, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (John 15:11)....(5) This joy is unknown to the unbelieving world—“A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor. 2:14). (6) The believer can rejoice in afflictions and sufferings with “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (Acts 5:4; 2 Cor. 6:10; 1 Pet. 1:6, 8; 4:13).  (755-756)

[17: Being Zealous for Him]
One who loves God will be zealous for God, because “zeal is the fire of love, active for duty, burning as it flies.” What is zeal? It is “an ardour of mind, a fervent affection for some person or thing; with an indignation against everything supposed to be pernicious and hurtful to it.” 72 John Gill, Body of Divinity (Atlanta, GA: Turner Lasseter, 1965), 824. (757)

True zeal is “a zeal for God.”...Because true zeal has as its object the true God and His honor, it also has as its object the worship of God and the Word of God, including all the truths contained therein. (758)

Moreover, the cause of Christ is also the object of true zeal. Those who are possessed with the zeal of love for God, seek not their own things, but the things of Christ (Phil. 2:21). They are intensely concerned for the welfare of Christ’s churches, for the advance of the gospel of Christ in the world and for the faithful administration of the ordinances of Christ in His church, along with the loving practice of church discipline. (758)

[18: Depending on Him]
God is independent of His creation, and at the same time He has made His creation and everything in it totally dependent upon Him for its continued existence. (760)

The conscious recognition of our total dependence upon God is highlighted in Jesus’ statement: “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all” (Mark 10:15). In this call to discipleship, Jesus demands of those who enter His kingdom that they realize their total helplessness in their relationship to His
kingdom. (760)

Philippians 4:6 presupposes our dependence upon God and instructs us on how that sense of dependence will manifest itself in our lives. (1) It excludes worry and anxiety, knowing that God cares for us, that He will not let anyone hurt one hair on our head without His will, and that He causes everything that happens to us to happen for our good and His glory (Rom. 8:28). (2) It moves us to live by prayer, by consciously and continuously petitioning God to give what we need according to His will, believing that He is willing and able to do so: “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). (3) It moves us to be thankful to God in everything that happens to us, knowing that He does all things well, and therefore that everything that happens to us has purpose and meaning. (4) It means the trusting of God to guide, protect and provide for us, as we seek to serve Him in all we do, resting in the knowledge of His providential care and governance of us: “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Phil. 4:11b). (5) Depending upon Him, knowing that He will not fail us, produces in us “the peace of God that surpasses all comprehension” (Phil. 4:7), so that we can “rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4), even in the midst of hardships and tragedy. (761)

[19: Obeying and Submitting to God]
1) What Obedience is: 
The obedience and submission that pleases God is the obedience and submission that grow out of faith in Him as Lord and Savior. Such obedient submission consists in acknowledging in adoration the majesty and infinite worth of Him who is to be obeyed; in the joy of subjecting ourselves to His righteous and kind government; with the willingness to do and be whatever He is pleased to command, and to seek His counsel and His will in every decision and situation of life; motivated by gratitude to God in Christ for saving us from sin; and depending upon the Spirit of Christ to enable us to do whatever He has commanded. (762)

2) What Obedience is Like:
The obedience to God which the first commandment demands of us is a yielding of all obedience and submission to Him with the whole man. Four truths should be observed in this statement. (1) This obedience is demanded of all those who know and acknowledge the Triune God to be their God and who glorify Him as God. (2) We are to yield all obedience to God. (3) We are to yield all submission to God. (4) We are to yield all obedience and submission to God with the whole man. (763)

3) Pleasing God:
The believer in Jesus lives for the pleasure of God....From the moment He gives us new hearts in regeneration, He gives us the desire and the ability to live in a way that is pleasing to Him....These are not two different things: obedience to God’s commandments and pleasing the Lord. Rather they are one and the same responsibility and privilege of the Christian: he lives for the pleasure of the Lord by doing what He commands from the heart, thus pleasing Him.
Our obedience to God for Jesus’ sake really does please God. (766)

[20: Grieving at Offending God]
A believer in Jesus has a tender conscience. When he sins his conscience smites him, and so he grieves over offending the God that loves him. This godly grief moves him to go to Jesus for continued forgiveness and cleansing, to confess his sins to God, to hate his sins, as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavoring to walk with Him in all the ways of His commandments (WCF, XV, ii). He grieves over his sins because of their filthiness and odiousness in the sight of God, because they are contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God. (768)

The difference between “sorrow according to the will of God and the sorrow of the world” is an important one. The former is a grief for sin because of the heinousness of sin as an offense and rebellion against the living God. The latter is the experience of sorrow “because of the painful and unwelcome consequences of sin. Self is its central point; and self is also the central point of sin. (770)

[21: Daily Commnuing with God]
Because the believer has been brought into saving, vital union with Jesus Christ, he communes (fellowships) with the triune God daily as friend with Friend... (771)

(1) We are to “do justice” (mishpat), i.e., to govern all our decisions, evaluations, thoughts and expressions by the perfect standard of righteousness, justice, and judgment in the written Word of God. (2) We are to “love kindness” (hesed), i.e., to love and cherish faithfulness to God and loving loyalty to the bond of God’s covenant. (3) We are to “walk humbly with our God.” (772)

Our “daily walk” is our daily lives day by day and week by week. In the Bible we are told that Christians walk “after” God in imitation of His character as revealed in His Word. We walk “before” God, conscious of the protection and care of His Face and providence. We walk “under” God in glad submission to His sovereignty over us. We walk “with” God in daily conscious fellowship with Him as friend with Friend. (773)

How may we walk with God everyday? (1) We walk WITH God when we walk BEFORE God and AFTER God, i.e., when we make as our goal to please our Father who is in Heaven, and when we follow wherever He leads us in the Bible. (2) We walk WITH God when we walk WITH God, i.e., when we communicate freely with Him and meditate on His self-communication to us in Christ and the Bible, and pray for His enlightenment of our hearts with His Spirit and His presence. (3) We walk WITH God as we REST in Christ alone for salvation. One’s walk with God does not begin until he puts his faith in Jesus Christ as His Lord and Savior. Our motive and power to walk daily with God is sustained by faith in Christ. If we do not believe ourselves to be reconciled to God in Christ, our walk with God will be interrupted by our guilt. (4) We walk WITH God when we raise our children to walk WITH God. (5) We walk WITH God when we bear witness to others about judgment and salvation in Christ. (777)

     Racheal

​God himself descended from heaven and by a supernatural voice promulgated to man the Moral Law, the expression of his will, the reflection of his nature, the immutable standard of right, the inflexible rule of action for his accountable creatures, containing every essential principle of duty, and embodying the grounds of all the future rewards and punishments to be enjoyed or suffered throughout the ages of eternity. 2. George Bush, Notes on Exodus (Minneapolis, MN: James Family Christian Publishing Co., 1852), 250. (680)

God gave us His Law, among other reasons, to teach us His will for our lives. (680)

The condemnation of God’s Law on our sin is removed forever from those who are united to Jesus Christ by grace through faith....The Law of God could not save them or forgive them for their transgressions against it, but God saved them and forgave them because of the atoning sacrifice of His incarnate Son, taking their condemnation upon Himself in their place and on their behalf. And, God did all this for us with the goal in view that “the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us,” that is, in our own lives and daily experience, as we depend upon the power of the indwelling Spirit of God, rather than trusting in our own strength. In other words, the goal of God’s regenerative and redemptive work in Christ by His Spirit for us was that we might live righteous lives before Him in obedience to His Law from our loving hearts. (682)

James calls God’s Law “the perfect Law, the law of liberty” (James 1:25, reflecting Ps. 119:44–45)...When Paul declares, “it was for freedom that Christ set us free,” and then exhorts us to “keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1), he is calling upon believers to stand fast in the truth of salvation that we are justified by faith in Christ alone and not by the works of the Law, which faith is a living faith that manifests itself in obedience to God’s Law and which refuses to allow the conscience to be bound by the regulations of man seeking to achieve his own salvation. (683)

It should be noticed what Moses, inspired by the Holy Spirit, received from the Lord and gave to the covenant people: (1) The Ten Commandments; and (2) Statutes and judgments which would teach God’s people how to apply the Ten Commandments in their every day living. These statutes and judgments, commonly called “case-laws,” are inseparable from the Ten Commandments, being practical applications of the Decalogue to the life of the people of God. The Ten Commandments set forth the basic principles; the case-laws, proverbs, exhortations and ethical teachings develop the implications of those principles.

The Ten Commandments are not the extent of God’s demands on His people, they summarily comprehend the moral law of God. They are the broad, sweeping moral principles that are foundational to all of God’s demands, proverbs, exhortations, and ethical teaching found in the Bible. (684-685)

The Catechism says that the first four commandments set forth our duty to God, and the last six our duty to man. This is correct, but can be misleading, for all Ten Commandments set forth our duty to God in all our relationships, and the motive for obeying all Ten Commandments is our love for God and our desire to glorify God. (686)

These two tablets contained the “ten words,” as the essence and summary of the covenant of the LORD with His people....More than likely, the two stones were duplicates of the same information, i.e., the essential ingredients of a covenant—preamble, prologue, commands, blessings and curses, making each stone a complete summary of the covenant in itself....It was common in treaties of that day to make exact duplicates of the covenant-treaty, and then each party received one copy, so as to be a permanent, legal witness to the faithfulness of the other, thus assuring the continuance of the treaty. However, in the O.T., both copies were deposited in the ark of the covenant in the Tabernacle of the Lord (Ex. 25:16, 21; 40:20; Deut. 10:2). This implies that Jehovah alone took upon Himself the work and responsibility of maintaining the covenant relationship between Himself and His people, as well as acting as the witness-rewarder-avenger to the oaths of the
other party. (688)

The Ten Commandments are comprised of three elements: the preamble (Ex. 20:1–2), in which is given the revelation of God as the motive for obedience to these commands; the substance of the commands themselves, i.e., our duties implied in them and the sins forbidden by them; and the reasons, along with promises and curses, that are given in some of them, which are graciously given the more to enforce them. (696)

In the Ten Commandments, the address is made in the SINGULAR, not the PLURAL number.  ....
The nineteenth century Bible commentator, George Bush, gives one possible answer: “The design of this is, undoubtedly, to render the language in the highest degree emphatic. Every individual to whom this law comes is to consider himself as being as directly and personally addressed as though it had been spoken to him alone.” 18. Bush, Notes on Exodus, 259. (696)

Why are the commandments stated mostly as prohibitions: “Thou shalt not?” Answer: to be a sharp reminder to believers of the antithesis that must always be maintained between our way of life as the people of God and the way of life of the fallen race in rebellion against God. (697)

The preamble of the Ten Commandments contains the motives for obedience: (1) The Lawgiver is our Creator; (2) The Lawgiver is Jehovah; (3) The Lawgiver is our covenant Friend; (4) The Lawgiver is our Redeemer. (698)

According to Mark 12:29–30, Jesus began His answer with these words: “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord.’” ....
"Jesus demands a decision and readiness for God, and for God alone, in an unconditional manner.… The love which determines the whole disposition of one’s life and places one’s whole personality in the service of God reflects a commitment to God which springs from divine sonship. This commitment finds expression in a similar commitment to men.… A whole-hearted love for God necessarily finds its expression in a selfless concern for another man which decides and acts in a manner
consistent with itself." 25
Jesus concludes His answer by emphasizing that, “on these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
25. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark, 432–33. (704-705)

Henry Krabbendam, (in classnotes from Covenant College), has
concisely described how love fulfills each of the Ten Commandments:
1. The first commandment requires us to love God alone as He
has revealed Himself in the Bible.
2. The second commandment requires us to love God in all that
He has revealed concerning Himself.
3. The third commandment requires us to love God in all that He
does, by reverencing everything connected with His Name.
4. The fourth commandment requires us to love God on the day
He has set apart for rest and holy convocation.
5. The fifth commandment requires us to love our neighbor by
honoring the authority God has given him.
6. The sixth commandment requires us to love our neighbor by
honoring the life God has given him.
7. The seventh commandment requires us to love our neighbor
by honoring the marriage and home God has given him.
8. The eighth commandment requires us to love our neighbor by
honoring the property God has given him.
9. The ninth commandment requires us to love our neighbor
by honoring the reputation God has given him, and by honoring
the truth in all our relationships with our neighbor
and with God.
10. The tenth commandment requires us to love God and our
neighbor from the heart.
(705-706)

In Jesus’ statement on the greatest of the commandments, reaffirmed by Paul that love is the fulfillment of the law, we have
"one of the strongest affirmations of the abiding relevance and validity of God’s Law. It is summarized in love, and love is the Christian’s perpetual duty. Certainly a summary does not nullify the contents of that which it summarizes! The law of God is the standard of Christian love, so that one who does not follow the Law can never be said to love.… As explained by Jesus, love entails a totalitarian and all-embracing surrender to God;… as such it corresponds to the demand of radical obedience and service to God contained in the statutes of the Law of God." 29. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, 243. (707-708)

      Racheal

Are the Old Testament Dietary Laws Binding on the Christian Today? No.
Does the Bible Advise Christians Today to Use the Dietary Laws in their Daily Diet? No.
Were the Dietary Laws Given for Hygienic & Nutritional Reasons? No. (653)

For centuries Reformed Christians have not asked these questions because they knew the answer to them before they thought to ask them. Had they asked them they would have answered “No” to all three. Today, however, some Christians have different answers....Some Christians, desiring to be healthier by eating nutritional foods and avoiding substances harmful to the body, hold that the Bible teaches that the observation of dietary laws of the Old Testament will make one’s diet more nutritional, and that God either commands or advises us to keep them. (653)

"Their ethical, judicial, and geographical holiness was to be manifested by what they ate and did not eat: primarily at the Passover meal and secondarily by the dietary laws. This holiness or separation was ritually reinforced by the Passover meal and the special dietary restrictions.… With the abrogation of the Old Covenant order came the abrogation of the Mosaic food laws: Passover and “pork” laws. This abrogation ended with the abrogation of the Promised Land’s historically unique
position as an agent of God’s sanctions.… Prior to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Promised Land was said to spew out evil-doers.… The Israelites would drive out the Canaanites; if they subsequently rebelled, other nations would drive them out. After A.D. 70, the land of Israel lost its special covenantal status. The Mosaic sacrificial system was cut off." 169 Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), 345, 348, 349. (654-655)

The argument of those who hold the view that the dietary laws are still obligatory upon or advisory to the Christian today is based on their assumption that these laws were given to Israel by Jehovah for hygienic and nutritional purposes, i.e., unclean meats are hygienically unclean and therefore non-nutritional and unhealthy, while clean meats are hygienically clean and therefore nutritional and healthy. (655)

(1) When God allowed mankind to eat meat, He said that all meat may be eaten: “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant” (Gen. 9:3)....This contradicts the view that the restrictive dietary laws were based on hygiene and nutrition. ....

(2) The dietary laws which distinguished Israel nationally were ceremonial laws that had no meaning apart from the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. ....

(3) If their purpose was hygienic and nutritional, in order for that goal to be achieved in a healthy diet for the Israelite, the list of clean and unclean foods would have to have been exhaustive and all-inclusive, and it is not. ....

(4) The Bible NOWHERE says that the purpose of the dietary laws was hygienic and nutritional. ....

(5) If the reason for the prohibition of certain animals to be eaten was hygienic, because they are so detrimental to one’s health that they should never be eaten, Jesus would never have pronounced all these foods clean in His day....
(655-659)

The New Testament clearly teaches that these Old Testament dietary laws have been disengaged since the death and resurrection of Christ, and therefore Christians are neither commanded nor advised to keep them for the purpose of good health or for any other reason. (659)

First, the dietary laws along with the rest of the Old Testament ceremonial rites in the Levitical sacrificial system were “shadows” that “foreshadowed” the glory of Christ and the New Covenant. Colossians 2:16–17 teaches us that the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were “a mere shadow of that which is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ” (emphasis added). (660)

Jesus’explanation to His disciples of His comments to the Pharisees as indicating that the clean-unclean distinction between meats was no longer in effect.
"And He said to them, “Are you too so [uncomprehending]? Do you not see that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him; because it goes not into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?” (Thus He declared all foods clean.) And He was saying, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man” (Mark 7:18–20; emphasis added)." (660-661)

Third, the temporary nature of the dietary laws is seen in God’s calling of Jewish Peter to bring the gospel of grace to non-Jewish Cornelius in Acts 10:9–16, 28. (661)

Fourth, these dietary laws symbolized God’s choice of Israel from the Gentiles as we have seen. (664)

Fifth, the apostle Paul refers to the passing authority of the Old Testament ceremonial laws in 1 Tim. 4:1–5, Rom. 14:14–15 and Col. 2:20–23. (666)

The threatenings and penalties of God’s Law show us what sin deserves and what we can expect if we disregard or transgress that Law (Ezra 9:13–14; Ps. 89:30–34)....Without these sanctions, i.e., a measure, either a threat or a promise, used to enforce it, law is mere suggestion.....When a Christian feels the power of indwelling
sin beginning to assert itself, he can reflect upon the threats and promises of God’s word and thereby be motivated to resist temptation.
God’s Law, when obeyed and enforced by the civil government, also restrains sin in a society, even in the lives of unregenerate people. (669)

Because God’s Law restrains sin in the believer and the unbeliever, although only in the unbeliever’s outward behavior, the enforcement of God’s moral law and its civil sanctions by the civil government are indispensable in the deterring of crime, lawlessness and immorality in a society. (670)

However, not only the state must enforce God’s Law (in its civil sanctions), the church must obey and enforce God’s Law in its ecclesiastical sanctions through the preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments and the practice of church discipline (Matt. 16:19; 18:15–20; 1 Cor. 5:1–13). The family also has a
central role as it obeys and enforces God’s Law in all its relations and activities in the disciplining, training, instructing, and counseling of children (Eph. 6:4; Prov. 22:6; 29:15). (670)

The ORIGINAL PURPOSE of God’s Law was and is TO GUARD AND PROMOTE LIFE. (671)

Choose Christ and His Law and you have life. Choose His Law without Christ, or
Christ without His Law, and you have death. However it must be clearly understood that the Law does not and cannot give life, only Christ gives life; but the Law does protect and enhance life in Christ when obeyed by believers. (672)

...sin, which abuses God’s Law, that same law now promotes death in all those outside of Christ in that it gives occasion to sin (Rom. 7:9–12). But in Christ believers are restored to a right relation to God’s Law, so that it no longer condemns us or aggravates our sin; rather it now guides our living, thinking and loving in this world, and we gladly submit to its authority, since God has written His Law in our hearts by regeneration. (673)

Biblical Law “constitutes a plan for dominion under God.”187...In the New Testament God renews His covenant with a new people in Christ (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25)....They are called to subdue the earth and to have dominion over it under Christ. 187. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, 8 (674)

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We have learned that the believer in Jesus will obey Biblical Law for Jesus’ sake. (645)

Some critics of Biblical Law like to quote Romans 6:14 to defend their viewpoint that the Christian is not obligated to obey the laws of the Old Testament, but simply to yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit and to live in a way that is consistent with grace, which is antithetical to law, in their opinion. (645)

We know this is not the correct interpretation [of Romans 6:14] for two reasons: (1) In verse 15 Paul anticipates this error by telling us that we may not “sin”, i.e., we may not break God’s Laws simply because we are under grace: “May it never be!” (2) In the context of Romans 6–8, the Christian life is NOT freedom from the
Law as a rule of life, but freedom from the Law as something that indicts us and condemns us for our sin, and which aggravates our sin as long as we remain in unbelief. (645-646)

What verse 14 IS saying is that, since the believer is under the power of God’s grace in Christ which delivers us from bondage to sin (6:1–2), and enables us to live a new life in Christ, we are no longer under the condemnation (8:1), and the sin-aggravation of the Law (7:9–11), for these reasons: “he who died is freed from sin” (6:7), and “having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness,” i.e., conformity to God’s Law (6:18), because “when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness” (6:20). (646)

Or as Paul said in Galatians 2:19: “I through the Law died to the Law so that I might live to God.” We must notice carefully that it is NOT the Law of God that dies! It is NOT the Law of God that is dead! We, in Christ, are dead to the death sentence of
the Law (Rom. 8:1) but the Law of God is not dead. (647)

According to Romans 7:4, there is a death that releases the bond of condemnation of God’s broken Law...That death to which Paul refers is our death to the claims of
God’s Law against us for our sins in the vicarious death of Jesus Christ, and our union with Him in that death. (647)

Christ died on the cross for one reason: to satisfy the claims of God’s Law against His sinful people. If His people were to be accepted with God, the demands of the Law against them had to be silenced and its just judgment satisfied....The Law as
that which condemned us for our sins is now silenced. Because of the sacrifice of Christ and through faith in Him we are dead to the claims of the Law against us. (648)

Having died to sin and the claims of God’s Law against our sin, we are raised to newness of life in Christ and we are no longer slaves of sin, i.e., habitual Law-breaking; rather we are now “slaves to righteousness,” i.e., habitual Law-keeping. (649)

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The unregenerate are those unbelieving people who are still in rebellion against God, dead in their trespasses and sins, who have not been born of God (John 1:13), and to whom the Holy Spirit has not applied the benefits of redemption. (587-588)

The Law of God is used by the Holy Spirit in the lives of unregenerate (but elect) people convicting them of their sin and misery, awakening their conscience to flee from the wrath of God by repentance and faith in Christ, giving them the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of (their) sins,
as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God, moving them to apprehend God’s mercy in Christ and to grieve for and hate their sins as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavouring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments (WCF, XV, ii). (588)

When the Holy Spirit convicts unregenerate (but elect) people, he awakens their consciences to the profound awareness of their necessity to flee from the wrath of God which abides on their sin. He convinces them that: (1) The Law of God is good; (2) The Law must be used for the purpose for which it was intended, i.e., to condemn our sin and drive us to Christ; (3) When the Law is used properly it condemns us for our specific transgressions against the Ten Commandments and against “whatever else is contrary to sound teaching;” (4) It condemns us for our unbelief in “the glorious gospel of the blessed God,” which unbelief is inexcusable disobedience to God’s command (588-589)

Two words in the Catechism’s statement must be clearly understood, when it tells us that in unregenerate people the use of the Law of God is to awaken their consciences to flee from wrath to come…
First, the word consciences. God has placed a conscience in all human beings (Rom. 2:15) with “the work of the Law written in their hearts,” to which that conscience bears witness, “and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending themselves.” The conscience functions as a Law, prescribing the path of duty, and as
a Judge, in pronouncing sentences against transgressions, “a conscience which impresses every man with a sense of right and wrong, and which often visits the sinner with the inward pangs of conviction and remorse.”  105
However, the conscience, while it serves many beneficial purposes, is not sufficient in its present condition, corrupted by sin, to awaken the heart and soul of a person to a full sense of his true condition before God, although it is able to render that person responsible to God as his Judge. The reasons the conscience cannot awaken the soul of a person to a due sense of his own depravity are: (1) The conscience has been affected, as has every other human faculty, by the ruinous and degenerative effects of man’s fall into sin; and the spiritual blindness and darkness caused by sin prevents the conscience from seeing its own moral corruption. (2) The tendency of habitual sin to sear and deaden the conscience, whereby the conscience becomes weaker as sin grows stronger in a person, until the sinner may arrive at the point of depravity at which God gives him over to a reprobate mind. (3) It is most difficult to focus the human mind on any proper consideration of the wickedness and danger of sin. Hence the sinner’s conscience needs
to be, not only convicted, but enlightened and awakened from its spiritual darkness and sleep of spiritual death in sin. 
Second, we need to understand the Catechism’s use of the word awaken....He awakens the unconverted to the EVIL of his sinful state and to the DANGER the sinner is in because of his sin, therefore, it is really an awakening to sin itself, as well as to the danger of sin.
105 James Buchanan, The Holy Spirit (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, [1843] 1966), 59. (589-590)

Conviction of sin by the Law in the power of the Spirit has good results when it incites those who experience this conviction to flee from the wrath of God their sins deserve to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, their only refuge from the wrath of God, resting in Him alone for salvation. (594)

"Whenever the preaching of the law is positively objected to, and the preaching of the gospel is proposed in its place, it will be found that the “gospel” means that good-nature and that easy virtue which some mortals dare to attribute to the Holy
and Immaculate Godhead! He who really, and in good faith, preaches the Cross, never opposes the preaching of the law." 112 W. G. T. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886), vii. (598)

Those people who continue in their unbelief, impenitency and rebellion against God are completely inexcusable for all their sinful thoughts and actions, and if they die in that condition their judgment will be just because it is deserved. (598-599)

Romans 1:18–32 tells us that persistent rebels against God are all inexcusable for their sinful way of life. (1) They deliberately are working to suppress what they know is true in unrighteousness, to deceive themselves into believing that they do not believe what they do believe. (2) The will and glory of God are clearly evident in their conscience and very constitution as human beings made in the image of God. (3) The glory of God is clearly and unmistakably revealed in every atom of this universe, so that if a person does not see it or understand it through this creation, he is “without excuse.” (4) Although the unbeliever “knows” God, he suppresses what he knows to be true so as not to “honor Him as God or give thanks.” (5) All human beings have been made in the image of God with consciences that “know the ordinance of God.” (6) They also know that those who break the ordinance of God are “worthy of death.” (7) And yet they are not content to damn themselves, they want to damn others along with themselves. (599)

"We like to think of a God who blesses rather than of a God who curses. Some people have tried to escape the dilemma by pointing out that Paul writes not of the curse of God, but of “the curse of the Law” (verse 13). It is very doubtful, however, if the Biblical authors would have recognized this distinction. The Law can never be isolated from God, for the Law is God’s Law, the expression of His moral nature and will. What the Law says, God says; what the Law blesses, God blesses; and what the Law curses, God curses." 113. Stott, The Message of Galatians, 79. (600)

Jesus promised His disciples that He would send His Holy Spirit to “convict the world of sin” (John 16:8–11)....Since that time He has been active, convicting, enlightening, liberating and transforming people, and His power has not in the least diminished.
Biblical Law by itself cannot bring conviction of sin without the work of the Holy Spirit of God....The Holy Spirit takes the Law of God and opens up to us the sinful pollution of our lives, so that we may come to deep conviction, humiliation and grief for our sin, and may see our great need of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
By God’s Law, the Spirit convinces us of sin’s presence, criminality, danger and deserved consequences (Rom. 7:9–10). (601)

The awakening of the conscience to the peril of sin is the work of the Holy Spirit using the Law of God. (603)

Regenerate people are those who have been “born of God” (John 1:13), given new heart (Ezek. 36:26), passed from death to life, and who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and who are therefore believers in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. (604)

In fact, believers not only remain under the obligation to obey the Law of the Creator, as do all human beings, but their obligation is increased by God’s grace, not diminished by it. Although we are freed from the curse of the Law, we are not freed from obedience to it. Now with new hearts and the indwelling Spirit we have the desire and ability to obey God from the heart, because His Law is written
on our new hearts (Ezek. 36:26; Jer. 31:33)... (604-605)

"The moral law is to be considered in two respects, as a rule of life, and so no one is delivered from it [as such]; or as a covenant of works, in the same sense in which it was given to man in innocency [before the Fall], the condition of which was his
performing perfect obedience, in default whereof he was liable to a sentence of death. In the latter respect a believer is delivered from it." 134. Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism, 2:304. (411-412)

The Law is the same but the Covenants differ. In the Covenant of Grace in which the believer lives, God’s Law is as lasting as God’s Grace, and the believer not only has the work of that Law written on his conscience by virtue of his creation, nor does he only have that Law “written on tablets of stone,” but he also has that Law written on his new heart by the power of the Holy Spirit (Ezek. 36:26; Jer. 31:31). (412-413)

No one can earn forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God by obeying God’s Law. Doing the right things does not “make points” with God. We are justified by faith in Christ alone and not by the works of the Law. The Law has no power to justify, only condemn when it is transgressed....Salvation is by grace through faith and not by works, lest anyone should boast (Eph. 2:8–9). (613)

Christ’s perfect obedience to the Law of God secures our release from the necessity
of personally keeping the Law as a condition of justification....His righteousness is credited to us so that we will be accepted in Him with God and no longer condemned by Him. (614-615)

[1] The more convicted a believer is of the remaining wretchedness of indwelling sin in him, the more he recognizes and rejoices in his total dependence upon Jesus Christ and in His active and passive obedience to God as the basis of his eternal salvation. Jesus obeyed all the “jots and tittles” of God’s Law in our place so as to credit his
life of perfect righteousness to our account with God, because all our righteousness is as filthy rags. Jesus died on the cross in our place to bear the full penalty of the Law our sins deserved, and to satisfy God’s Law and God’s justice as our Substitute and Redeemer. (616)

[2] Consciousness of the perfection of God’s Law and its fulfillment in Christ’s life and satisfaction in His death for all who believe in Him as their Lord and Savior moves (provokes) the believer to more thankfulness for he has greater inducements to gratitude than any other human beings. (618)

[3] Believers’ awareness that salvation is by sheer grace and not by the works of the Law and that they are eternally secure in Christ not only provokes intense gratitude in them, but that gratitude stirs them to greater care, greater determination, consecration, diligence and perseverance in conforming themselves—inside and outside—to God’s Law as the rule of their obedience, for when Christ became their Savior He did not cease to be their Sovereign, whom now they love with all their hearts and whose glory is the chief end of their lives....“The Law does not cease to be the Law now that the Christian has come to love it.” 144 Kevan, The Grace of Law, 217. (621)

Those who have received the saving mercy of God in Christ are enabled and motivated to present themselves in the entirety of their being to God as “a living and holy sacrifice.” In doing so they are not to be “conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of [their] mind, that [they] may prove what the will of God is.” In other words, the reception of mercy in Christ and our consciousness of being recipients of that saving mercy should motivate believers to submit to Christ out of gratitude, and to separate from the pressures to sin in this evil culture. (623)

A person thankful for God’s mercy in saving him from the condemnation of God’s Law in Christ, will continually be in the process of transforming himself in a Christian direction, in his outlook, dispositions, worldview, habits, preferences, priorities, behavior, relationships and forms of self-expression. This spiritual
and ongoing transformation grows out of the Spirit’s thorough conforming of us into the image of Christ, as God’s goal for all Christians (Rom. 8:29). (623)

The means of this continuing transformation in the believer, which are pressed on us here as a duty which we perform in the strength of God are: (1) The renewal by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:3–8), and (2) The renewal by the Bible (Rom. 6:17). The point is that believing Bible study, put into practice, does something to us. It shapes and molds our lives and minds in more ways than we can count. (624)

Biblical Law guides our sanctification. God’s Law offers positive, infallible, and specific direc tions for Christian living. (625-626)

[4] Some have said that Christians should only obey the laws of the New Testament; others have said only the laws of the New Testament after the Day of Pentecost; others say only the Ten Commandments have to be obeyed in the Old Testament along with the principles of the New Testament, while others want only
nine of the Ten Commandments, excluding the Sabbath commandment as ceremonial and not moral in nature. (626)

The Christian is to take seriously all the laws of God found anywhere in the Bible. The entirety of Biblical Law is to be studied, interpreted and applied in different ways, but all of the laws of the Bible are to be taken seriously. The ceremonial laws
are to be studied to grasp their underlying gospel-principles, although, as we have seen, their literal observance is no longer obligatory for us. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of Biblical morality and Christian ethics. Every case-law, proverb, exhortation and ethical principle in the entire Bible is based on
them. The case-laws of the Old Testament, being practical applications of the Ten Commandments to every day life, are also to be included in the moral law of God to which Christians, and all mankind, today are responsible. (626-627)

This book [De Regno Christi] presents a strategy whereby human society can be genuinely Christianized by the gospel and the application of God’s Law, including the Old Testament case-laws, in the power of the Holy Spirit. It shows how Biblical Law deals with everything from the reform of the church to the reform of marketing, from the celebration of nuptials to the care of public inns. (627-628)

The general equity of the Old Testament case-laws that we are still required to obey refers to
"the underlying moral principle which is illustrated by the particular cases mentioned in the judicial laws.… For the Westminster Puritans, the substance of the judicial laws was just as binding as the Ten Commandments. The judicial laws
served to give definition to the Ten Commandments; to invalidate the former would therefore be to invalidate (or alter) the [latter].… Notice, next, that the writers of the Westminster Confession were quite precise in their declaration about the judicial laws of Moses. According to them these laws were not “abrogated,” which is the language used of the ceremonial law (19.3), which was set aside due to the change of covenantal administration from Old to New Covenants, (7.5–6). The Confession teaches us, not that the judicial laws were abrogated, but rather that they “expired” due to the expiration of Israel as a “political body.” When the particular political body for which they were worded passed away, the literal wording or specific form of the judicial laws was put out of gear. Only the underlying principle (“equity”) of those historical illustrations continues to be obligatory. “Expired” cannot mean, in Confessional context, that modern Christians
are free from obligation to the judicial laws.… Their equity was taken to be perpetually binding. 151 Greg Bahnsen, “The Westminster Assembly and the ‘Equity of the Judicial
Law,’” Penpoint, Vol. 4, No. 7 (Southern California Center for Christian Studies, CA: October, 1993). (629-630)

When He used the phrase, “the Law or the Prophets,” He was focusing on the ethical stipulations contained in the entire Old Testament....As He begins His Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7), He is defining the relation of the Old Testament Law to His own doctrine, to His teaching ministry. In other words, He will not teach anything that will have the effect of abolishing the ethical stipulations of “the Law or the Prophets,” i.e., the Old Testament. (634)

The Bible presents us with one system of morality—the “jots and tittles” of Biblical Law. (635)

First, the foundational laws, i.e., the Ten Commandments, are always applicable and are to be obeyed in every situation (Ex. 20:1– 17).
Second, the underlying principles of righteousness, i.e, the general equity, of the case-laws are always applicable, since they are practical applications of one or more of the Ten Commandments (Deut. 25:4; 1 Cor. 9:9, 10, 14; 1 Tim. 5:17, 18). This point is the central one in interpreting case-laws. When the Christian today interprets Old Testament case-laws, his primary concern is not the literal law itself, but the underlying principle of righteousness which the case-law was meant to apply and illustrate. ....
Third, where the historical, cultural context of the interpreter is similar to the historical, cultural context of the case-law, the literal case-law itself is applicable. ...
Fourth, the ceremonial laws and rituals have reached a termination point in Jesus Christ, therefore they are not to be literally observed in the Church.
Fifth, the underlying gospel truths of the ceremonial laws still remain in full authority and are to be believed (Heb. 9:2–10).
Sixth, in some instances even these ceremonial laws illustrate moral principles of abiding authority (Lev. 2:1–16; 1 Cor. 5:7).
Seventh, the case-laws are to be applied wisely and progressively as the historical situation allows. ....
Eighth, the case-laws are “often illustrations of the extent of the application of the law; that is, by citing a minimal type of case, the necessary jurisdictions of the laws are revealed [1 Cor. 9:9–14].” 159 Rousas J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, 11. (637-640)

...since God’s holy character is unchanging, His Law, which is a written revelation of His holy character, is holy and perpetual. (640)

...when the Divine Lawgiver (Isa. 33:22) issues a law, only He may dictate the duration or termination of our duty to obey it....Only God may set the boundaries of His law, and unless He has clearly done so in His written Word, we must assume His laws continue in force....Jesus Christ expressly states that the coming of the New Testament dispensation (the Christian era) in no way abrogated the Biblical morality of the Old Testament (Matt. 5:17–19); rather, Christ came to confirm Biblical morality and to put it into effect. (640)

Ceremonial law is comprised of all those rituals and regulations that had as their purpose to teach the covenant people what to believe about redemption from sin and reconciliation with God and how it is accomplished in Christ. These laws are highly symbolic, figurative, and “typical;” in one way or another, they taught the people about Christ and His salvation. (641)

It is not always easy to distinguish ceremonial laws from moral laws in the Old Testament. One reason is that there are moral principles to be found among some ceremonial laws (Lev. 2:1–16). But one principle of interpretation which may be helpful in identifying ceremonial rituals is this: if a law or regulation, such as those laws involving the release of blood or bodily fluids, is meaningless apart from the sacrificial system, it must be viewed as a part of that system. (641)

The ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were “shadows” that pointed God’s covenant people to the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ, who is the “substance” or reality symbolized by all these Old Testament ceremonies and rituals....As the apostle Paul describes the relation of the Old Testament ceremonies to Christ: they are “things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance
[literally, “the body”] belongs to Christ” (Col. 2:17). (641)

"With Christ’s obedient life, sacrificial death, and the accomplishment of salvation under the New Covenant, the ceremonies have been finally observed for all God’s people." 162. Bahnsen, Theonomy and Christian Ethics, 207–10. (643)

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