SHOULD CHRISTIANS FOLLOW THE OLD TESTAMENT LAWS?

Are Christian supposed to follow the laws of the Old Testament? 

“Does the Bible really forbid wearing clothes made of two fabrics or getting tattoos? And if so, are Christians just whimsicaly picking and choosing which Bible verses to follow?

You’ll often hear it like this 

📌 Person A: “Gossip is a sin!”

📌 Person B: “Yeah? Well, so is shaving your beard!”

“The idea? That we can’t take these rules literally. 

On the opposite side some Christians also use Old Testament laws to argue their points without realizing how inconsistent that is.”

“So what’s the answer? Let’s break it down—fast!”

If we follow the new covenent not the old covenent, meaning not the Old Testament law of Moses.

Then the Question isn’t really  “Why Don’t You Follow all of the old test rules?” It’s “Why Do You Follow Any of Them?”

The short answer is we don’t follow them because they are in the old covenant we follow them because some are also repeated in the new. But that’s an oversimplification Jesus after all did say he didn’t cone to abolish the law but to fulfill it so let’s dive deeper. 

The old contract or the Mosaic Covenant included three types of laws:

📌 1. Ceremonial Laws – Rules about sacrifices, food, and worship that set Israel apart as a nation of priests.

📌 2. Civil Laws – Laws governing Israel’s justice system as a theocracy and nation-state .

📌 3. Moral Laws – Universal right and wrong, like “Do not murder” and “Do not steal.”these represented Gods character. 

✔️ We don’t follow the Civil Laws because they were specifically meant to govern Israel’s society. 

✔️ We don’t follow the Ceremonial Laws because Jesus fulfilled them.

📖 Example: In the Old Covenant, sacrifices were made to cover sins. But Hebrews 10:1 says these were only a “shadow” of what was coming—Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, took away sin once for all so there is no longer need for animal sacrifices and purity rituals. 

❤️ What About the Moral Law?

“This is where it gets controversial.”

✔️ The Moral Law still applies because it reflects God’s eternal character—it wasn’t just for Israel and it existed before the Mosaic law was given and Jesus repeats a lot of it. 

✔️ Jesus didn’t remove the moral law—He fulfilled it and changed our relationship to it

📖 Galatians 5:14 – “The entire law is fulfilled in one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

✔️ Jesus revealed that the heart of the Moral Law was always love.

“If you love your neighbor, you won’t steal from him. If you love your brother, you won’t kill him. If you love God, you won’t worship idols.”

Sounds simple but there was a major problem

See, the laws weren’t given in a vacuum—they were given in a story.

The story

We see God give the first set of laws: have no other gods before Me.

And what comes next in the story? The golden calf—people making another god.

He gives more rules, and then we get more stories about how people chose rebellion.

Until 

Moses gives his final speech before they enter the Promised Land and basically says, “I see you’re not going to be able to keep these laws because of your hard hearts. You’ll need a new heart to follow them.”

📖 Ezekiel 36:26 talks about a new covenant that would come to take care of this problem.

God will make a new covenant with the people—“I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit in you.”

📖 Jeremiah 31:33 — “I will write my law on their hearts.”

✔️ Jesus said, “Follow me, and I will give you a new heart and Spirit.”

Then He showed us what real love looks like by dying in our place, and He wooed us into a new type of relationship with God.

✔️ Before Jesus, people tried to obey but they had hard hearts and the nature of a sinner.

✔️ Now, Jesus makes us righteous both legally and internally.

📖 Romans 8:3-4 – “What the law could not do, God did by sending His Son… so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.”

We are now legally righteous – Jesus took the curse of Adam and the curse of the law upon Himself and took our punishment.

He lived a perfect life—His life fulfilled the requirements of the law so that the blessings of the law could be poured out on the nations. We were justified and put in right standing with God. Since our debt was paid, we are no longer judged for our own sin.

We are also internally righteous—He makes us a new creation, gives us a new heart as the prophets said, so we naturally become more and more like Him and like the Spirit He places inside of us when we believe.

🌱 Abiding in Christ Produces Fruit

The Old Covenant was about following rules. The New Covenant is about transformation from the inside—not based on our own merit, but based on God’s grace, which makes us righteous through faith in Jesus.

Instead of striving to follow external laws, God writes His law on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), gives us a new Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26), and shapes us into His image as a natural result of our new identity.

We don’t obey to earn His love—we become more like Him because we are loved, and His love transforms us.

We love like Him because we have been loved by Him.

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