Did Jesus abolish the Old Testament — or have Christians been quietly cherry-picking which parts of God's law they still want to follow?

• Q

  Quinn3w ago

  Let me ask a real question: if the Old Testament moral law doesn't apply to Christians, on what basis do you say homosexuality is sin? Or adultery? Because the New Testament doesn't rebuild the entire moral framework from scratch. Either you're borrowing from Leviticus and Deuteronomy or you're building ethics on about 15 scattered verses. Tell me which one you're actually doing.

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• H

  Hana3w ago

  Theonomists genuinely believe the civil law of Israel should be the law of modern nations and some of them will tell you that includes the death penalty for idolatry and adultery. That position exists. It is held by actual Christians in actual churches. If you disagree with it, you are in practice saying some of the Old Testament law is not binding. Welcome to the club. Now argue about where to draw the line like the rest of us.

  156Reply
• L

  Liam3w ago

  The three-fold division of the law — moral, ceremonial, civil — is not in the Bible. It is a theological category invented by Reformed theologians to save the Sabbath commandment. Once you see that, you can't unsee it. The text never once says 'here ends the ceremonial stuff and here begins the moral stuff.' We made that up.

  143Reply
• J

  Jordan3w ago

  Colossians 2:16 also mentions food and festivals in the same breath. So if the Sabbath is abolished by that verse, so is dietary law. Great. Fine. But now go back and explain to the person five comments up why you still use Leviticus to argue about sexual ethics. You can't have it both ways.

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• F

  Feli3w ago

  If you believe in the Ten Commandments and not the rest, explain why. If you believe the whole thing applies, explain why you're eating that burger. If you believe none of it applies, explain where your ethics come from. I'm not trying to be a jerk — I genuinely think most Christians have never been asked to give an account of their actual position and would discover under two minutes of questioning that they don't really have one.

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• Z

  Zara3w ago

  That last comment is everything wrong with academic Christianity. Jesus preached to fishermen. The Bereans searched the scriptures THEMSELVES. God did not put His word behind a paywall of seminary degrees.

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• K

  Kofi3w ago

  i grew up in a church that preached the OT law hard. tithing, dietary stuff, some of the festival days. left in my 20s not because i stopped believing but because nobody could tell me consistently which rules still counted and which ones didnt. the answer always seemed to be whatever the pastor personally preferred. that inconsistency broke something in me.

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• J

  Jordan3w ago

  I came to faith from a Jewish background. This whole debate looks completely different from where I'm standing. The Torah was never meant to 'save' anyone even in the Old Testament — read Deuteronomy, the relationship with God comes BEFORE the law is given, not after obedience earns it. Christians arguing about which parts of the law apply to them are often missing that the whole function of the law was different from what both sides assume.

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• A

  Avery3w ago

  My grandmother kept a kosher-ish kitchen her whole Christian life. Not because she thought it was required. Just because she said it helped her remember that nothing she put in her body was hers — it was all given by God. She wasn't legalistic about it. She was devotional about it. I think we lose something when we turn every OT practice into a courtroom argument about whether it's 'still binding.' Maybe some of it's worth keeping just because it's beautiful.

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• T

  Theo3w ago

  ^ this is the actual reason most evangelical pastors still want the law to 'partially apply.' It has nothing to do with careful exegesis. It has everything to do with which ethical conclusions they want to defend.

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• J

  Jamie3w ago

  Seventh-day Adventist here. Respectfully, the church at large cherry-picks the Decalogue itself. Nine of the Ten Commandments get preached enthusiastically. The Sabbath one gets awkward coughs and a lot of talk about 'fulfillment.' If nine-tenths of the moral law still applies, explain to me theologically why the one about rest doesn't.

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• OT

  Omar T.3w ago

  The real answer is that Jesus is the living Torah. He doesn't abolish it or preserve it in amber — He embodies it, interprets it with divine authority, and invites us into a relationship where love of God and neighbor becomes the organizing principle that the whole law was always gesturing toward. That doesn't mean 'do whatever you want.' It means the Spirit writes something on your heart that the stone tablets could never accomplish. That's not my idea. Paul said it. Jeremiah said it before him.

  88Reply
• HL

  Hana L.3w ago

  Okay but Jesus himself quoted from the Old Testament constantly. He said not one jot or tittle would pass away. If you're just going to declare the whole thing obsolete, you're not following Jesus — you're following Marcion, and the early church decided that was a heresy in like 150 AD. Just saying.

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• J

  Jamie3w ago

  Cults. Right. Grandma's kosher kitchen is a cult warning sign now. Incredible contribution.

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• J9

  Jamie 923w ago

  Romans 10:4. 'Christ is the end of the law.' Not the fulfillment in the sense of keeping it going — the END. Telos. The destination. The law was always pointing to Him and now that He's here, the pointer is unnecessary. You don't keep staring at a road sign once you've arrived at the city.

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• L

  Leo3w ago

  New Covenant Theology, Theonomy, Dispensationalism, and classic Reformed covenant theology all give completely different answers to this question and all four camps have serious scholars defending them from the same Bible. If you think the answer is obvious you haven't read enough of the debate.

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• H

  Hana3w ago

  Because Colossians 2:16-17 explicitly says 'do not let anyone judge you regarding a Sabbath day — these are a shadow of things that were to come; the substance belongs to Christ.' The Sabbath is specifically listed as a shadow fulfilled in Jesus. That's not cherry-picking, that's following explicit apostolic teaching.

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• A

  Alex3w ago

  I appreciate the passion but 'God preached to fishermen' does not mean 'therefore exegetical training adds nothing.' The fishermen also walked with the risen Christ for forty days. We don't have that. We have text. Text requires interpretation. Interpretation requires skill. This is not elitism, it's just basic honesty about how language works.

  62Reply
• ZM

  Zara M.3w ago

  I think Paul deals with this more clearly than people give him credit for. He's not antinomian — 'shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid!' — but he is absolutely insistent that Gentile believers are not under the Mosaic covenant. That covenant was made with Israel at Sinai. We weren't there. We're grafted in under a NEW covenant. The New Covenant has its own ethical content and it's mostly communicated through the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.

  58Reply
• S

  Sam3w ago

  hot take nobody wants to hear: most of the arguments in this thread could be resolved if people actually read the Sermon on the Mount carefully. Jesus doesn't abolish the law. He INTENSIFIES it. 'You have heard it said do not murder — I say do not hate.' He's not making it easier. He's making the entire internal posture the issue. That's not abolishment. That's radicalization in the best sense.

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• J

  Jordan3w ago

  Okay I'll be the heretic apparently. I think the whole Mosaic law was for a specific people at a specific time in a specific covenant arrangement. It's Scripture, it's inspired, it shows us who God is and how seriously He takes holiness. But as a legal code binding on 21st-century Christians? No. The New Covenant is not just the Old Covenant with some adjustments. It is genuinely, categorically new. Jeremiah 31 said it would be. It is.

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• FM

  Feli M.3w ago

  ok but what does 'fulfilled' even mean in Matthew 5:17. theologians have been arguing about that word for literally 500 years and nobody agrees. how are normal Christians supposed to just pick an answer on a random tuesday morning

  41Reply
• PL

  Priya L.3w ago

  The road sign analogy is cute but completely wrong. Signs don't give you instructions for how to live once you arrive. The law does. Big difference.

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• R

  Ravi3w ago

  Normal Christians should open a commentary and read it, that's how. The pietistic idea that everyone with a Bible and no training can figure out first-century Greek Jewish legal philosophy in their pajamas is genuinely dangerous.

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• JR

  Jamie R.3w ago

  That's lovely but sentiment is not hermeneutics. Whether to voluntarily practice something and whether it is divinely obligatory are two completely different questions. Conflating them is how cults start.

  18Reply

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