Christians often get tangled up when reading the Old Testament. Why don’t we follow kosher dietary rules, but we do follow the Ten Commandments? Why does an Eastern Christian church still have an altar, a sanctuary, and a curtain when animal sacrifices ended two thousand years ago? Why did Christ say He came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17), if so much of the Old Covenant Law clearly doesn’t apply to us anymore?
The answer comes from something Scripture itself teaches: the Old Covenant Law was not a single, monolithic code. It came to Israel in distinct categories, given at different times for different purposes, with different qualifying circumstances. Recognizing those categories — moral, civil, and ceremonial — clears up most of the confusion and reveals what the Old Testament still has to teach us today.
A Quick Overview
Theologians have long grouped the Old Covenant Law into three categories:
- Moral Law — the Ten Commandments. Given directly by God, written in stone, binding for all people in all times.
- Civil Law (also called the Mosaic Law or “Second Law”) — the body of regulations given through Moses to form Israel into a distinct nation. Specific in purpose, fulfilled in Christ; not strictly binding for Christians, though many of its provisions still teach genuine moral principles.
- Ceremonial Law — how God was to be worshiped under the Old Covenant. Modeled on the heavenly pattern shown to Moses on Sinai (Exodus 25:9, 40). The specific rituals are fulfilled in Christ, but they still reveal how God is worshiped in heaven — which informs how Christians worship today.
There is also a fourth category that runs underneath all of this: the Natural Law, sometimes called the Law of Christ — the eternal moral reality that the Mosaic Law was meant to teach. We’ll get to that at the end.
Exodus Summarized
Before moving on let’s do a quick mini-summary of the events of Exodus.
- Moses leads a group of slaves, the Israelites, out of Egypt. This includes all the plagues and the parting of the red sea.
- Moses goes up to Mount Sinai and receives the ten commandments from God leaving Aaron in charge (Exodus 31:18)
- The Isralites make a Golden Calf, Moses breaks the tablets
- God tells Moses He will restart by giving Moses a new people. Moses interceeds. (Exodus 32:9-10))
- The Levites respond to Moses’ call and slaughter the idolaters (Exodus 32:28)
- Moses goes back up, receives a second round of ten commandments and additional regulations
With some of that story now fresh in your mind we can continue.
The Moral Law: The Ten Commandments
“Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples.” (Exodus 19:5)
The Ten Commandments stand apart from the rest of the Old Covenant. They were given directly by God, with no human intermediary. They were written in stone by God’s own hand — not once but twice, after Moses broke the first set (Exodus 31:18; Exodus 34:1). They were spoken aloud by God to all the assembled people at Sinai (Deuteronomy 5:22). And Scripture itself explicitly distinguishes them from the rest of the law: “He declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments… And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and ordinances” (Deuteronomy 4:13-14). The Ten come first; everything else is added afterward.
These commandments came without preconditions, expiration dates, or qualifying circumstances. Do this and be my people — no ifs, ands, or buts. They were enduring — written in stone, literally and figuratively — meant to apply both before and after Israel reached the promised land.
There’s also good reason to believe the moral truths they contain existed long before Sinai. Cain knew murder was wrong before any law was written down (Genesis 4). Romans 5:13 confirms that sin was in the world before the Law was given. The Ten Commandments weren’t new regulations — they were the explicit revelation of moral realities that had always been binding.
The traditional Eastern reading is that the Ten Commandments represent God’s original covenant with Israel — given before the golden calf incident in Exodus 32. After the people broke faith by worshiping the calf, Moses then went back up the mountain, received new tablets, and along with them a much larger body of law to help guide a stiff-necked people.
That larger body is what is called the second law by ancient sources.
The Civil Law: A Nation in the Making
“You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them; that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out. And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I am casting out before you.” (Leviticus 20:22-23)
The book of Deuteronomy literally means “second law” in Greek (deuteros + nomos), and it’s where much of this material is collected. After the golden calf, God gave Moses fresh tablets along with an extensive set of regulations to shape Israel into a coherent nation in the promised land because they were such a stiff necked people (Deuteronomy 5:30-31).
These laws covered nearly everything: agriculture, warfare, family disputes, dietary practices, civic responsibilities, and the boundaries between Israel and the surrounding peoples. Their purpose, as Scripture itself explains, was to make Israel a people set apart, so that the Messiah could one day come from them (Deuteronomy 4:5-8; Leviticus 20:22-23, 26).
St. Paul tells us directly that this body of law was added to the moral law “because of transgressions” (Galatians 3:19) — meaning it was a response to Israel’s covenant-breaking, not part of the original plan. It was likely a concession after Moses’ intercession (Exodus 32:11-14). This confirms what the Old Testament’s own structure suggests: the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Mosaic Law are different things, given at different times, for different reasons.
For Christians, this second law, although sometimes confusingly referred to as just the Law, is not legalistically binding (Hebrews 9:15). Christ was the fulfillment of what it was pointing toward. But that doesn’t make it useless — many of its provisions still illuminate moral truths that do apply to us - when viewed in light of the teachings of Christ - because the underlying realities they were pointing towards were always part of the Natural Law.
A handful of examples make this concrete in various different ways.
Marriage (Matthew 19). In the beginning, marriage was sacred and indissoluble — the picture of Adam and Eve. The Mosaic Law allowed for divorce under certain conditions because of the people’s hardness of heart. Christ then clarified that the original intention at the beginning was the standard all along; divorce was a concession to a stiff necked people, not the design.
Images and Icons (Deuteronomy 4:15-18). The Mosaic Law strictly prohibited any image of any creature in heaven, on earth, or in the sea — because at that time God had not revealed Himself in any visible form. The lesson was about idolatry. Once God took on visible form in Christ, the strict prohibition was lifted: God now had a true icon in His Son. The underlying lesson — that idolatry of the heart is sin — remains in full force.
Leavened bread at Passover (Deuteronomy 16:3). Israel ate unleavened bread at Passover as the “bread of affliction.” Under Christ’s New Covenant, we are no longer under affliction; Christ Himself is the new leaven of our lives. So the form changes, while the deeper meaning is fulfilled.
Confession of sin (Leviticus 5:5). The old pattern required a sacrifice, a Levitical priest, and repentance. For Christians, the sacrifice has been offered once and for all by Christ. We still confess to a priest, but now to a Christian priest — because the Christian people are themselves a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9) — and true repentance remains essential.
Justice between neighbors. The Mosaic standard of “an eye for an eye” set strict, proportional limits on retribution — a step toward fairness in its own time. Christ’s standard — “turn the other cheek” — calls us beyond mere proportion to mercy, restoration, and active goodness toward those who wrong us.
In each case, the Mosaic provision was a real law for its time, and it was simultaneously pointing toward something deeper that Christ would reveal in fullness. Its never a case of old vs new, its always the old leading towards Christ and the true Natural Law.
The Ceremonial Law: A Window into Heaven
“And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.” (Exodus 25:40; see also Exodus 25:9; Exodus 26:30)
The third category is the body of laws governing how God was to be worshiped — most of it given in Exodus and Leviticus. What sets the ceremonial law apart is its source. When God instructed Moses on the Tabernacle, the priestly garments, the sacrifices, and the worship calendar, He emphasized again and again that these were modeled on a heavenly pattern. So the other two categories were given directly by God — one via stone, one verbally related to Moses. This category is unique because it is based on the firsthand witness of what heaven, and heavenly worship of God, is actually like. It offers a glimpse into the unchanging reality of God.
The Letter to the Hebrews confirms this directly: the earthly Tabernacle was “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Hebrews 8:5; see 9:23-24). What Moses was shown was not arbitrary. It was a window into how God is worshiped in heaven itself.
This is why the ceremonial law still matters for Christians. The specific Old Covenant rites have been fulfilled in Christ — we don’t sacrifice bulls and goats anymore — since Christ is the substance. But God doesn’t change (Hebrews 13:8), and how He is worshiped in heaven hasn’t changed either. The ceremonial law, viewed through the lens of Christ, still teaches us how to approach God with reverence.
The Holy of Holies and the Layout of the Church
The clearest example is the structure of the place of worship itself.
The Tabernacle, and later the Temple, had three concentric sections separated by curtains:
- The outer court, accessible to ceremonially clean Israelites only — no Gentiles allowed.
- The Holy Place, accessible only to priests of the tribe of Levi performing their regular duties.
- The Holy of Holies, accessible only to the High Priest, and only once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Exodus 26:31-33; Leviticus 16:2; Hebrews 9:1-9).
When Christ died, the curtain of the Temple was torn from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51). This wasn’t a rejection of the Temple’s structure — it was its opening. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that we now have access to the Holy of Holies through Christ, our great High Priest, and that we should approach with confidence — but also with reverence and a clean conscience (Hebrews 10:19-22).
The traditional layout of an Eastern Christian church preserves and fulfills this same threefold structure:
| Old Covenant | New Covenant Fulfillment | |
|---|---|---|
| First curtain | The entrance to the Temple/Tent. Only ceremonially clean Jews could enter; no Gentiles allowed. By Jesus’ time the surrounding court had become a marketplace and a place of money-changing. | The doors into the church. Because the veil was torn at Christ’s death, anyone may now enter a Christian church. |
| Second curtain | The entrance to the Holy Place. Only the priestly tribe of Levi could enter to perform their duties. | The doors into the main sanctuary, where the new “royal priesthood” — the Christian congregation (1 Peter 2:9) — gathers for the Divine Liturgy. |
| Third curtain | The entrance to the Holy of Holies. Only the High Priest could enter, and only once a year on Yom Kippur. The Ark of the Covenant rested behind it. | The royal doors of the iconostasis, opening into the sanctuary itself. The veil is torn — we can see in and approach with reverence (Hebrews 10:19-22). Christ, our High Priest, is physically present here during the Divine Liturgy. |
This isn’t ceremonial law preserved out of nostalgia. It’s the same heavenly pattern still being worshiped in heaven, now made accessible fully through Christ.
The Altar
Here is another example of that fulfillment. The Old Covenant required an altar for animal sacrifice. The New Covenant still has an altar — “We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (Hebrews 13:10) — but the sacrifice offered there is now what Hebrews calls “a sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15), with Christ Himself the eternal Lamb (Revelation 5:6).
The form continues. The substance is fulfilled.
The Natural Law: What Christ Came to Fulfill
Underneath all three categories — moral, civil, and ceremonial — runs something deeper. Call it the Natural Law, or the Law of Christ, or simply the underlying moral reality the Mosaic Law was always pointing toward.
This is what St. Paul means when he says that faith does not overthrow the law but upholds it (Romans 3:31), and what he tells Timothy when he writes that “the law is good, if one uses it lawfully” (1 Timothy 1:8). It’s what St. John means when he defines sin as “lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). And it’s what Christ Himself was speaking of when He said He came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17), and that not the smallest letter would pass away “until heaven and earth pass away” (Matthew 5:18) — a passing that, as the Book of Revelation tells us, doesn’t happen until the New Heaven and New Earth (Revelation 21:1).
The Natural Law was never new. It existed before Sinai (Romans 2:12-15; Romans 5:13), which is why Cain was guilty of murder long before any commandment forbade it. The Mosaic Law didn’t create sin — it illuminated it (Romans 3:20), making sin explicit so that a particular people could be formed and prepared to receive the Messiah.
Christ summarized this underlying law in two commandments: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40). But the Christian standard reaches further than the literal letter of the Mosaic provisions. Consider:
If I tell a technically true statement, but I do so with the intention of misleading someone or deflecting from the truth, am I lying?
By a strictly legal first-century reading, perhaps not — no false statement was uttered. But by Christ’s standard, yes: my heart was malicious, even though my words were technically accurate. This is why Christ insists that sin begins in the heart (Matthew 5:21-28). The Natural Law, properly understood, judges us at the level of intention, not just behavior.
What This Means for Christians
Pulling it all together: Scripture asks us to read the Mosaic Law as God patiently teaching a very specific group of people — former slaves recently freed from Egyptian polytheism, who had no national identity of their own — what sin was and how to worship Him (Deuteronomy 4:5-8; Leviticus 20:22-23, 26). The goal was to form a nation set apart that could prepare the way for Christ and the full revelation that He offered. The specific laws, and the very physical blessings and curses attached to them, were tailored to that specific purpose. Notice that none of the Mosaic Law dealt with eternal life or how to enter heaven — that revelation only comes with Christ (Galatians 3:21).
For Christians today, the Ten Commandments remain fully binding, because they were never tied to the formation of Israel as a nation; they are moral truths for all people in all times. The Mosaic civil law is no longer legalistically binding, but its underlying moral principles often still apply, because they were illuminations of the Natural Law beneath. The Mosaic ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Christ, but it still teaches us how God is worshiped — because how God is worshiped in heaven hasn’t changed, and the heavenly pattern is what Moses was shown. And the Natural Law — the deeper moral reality Christ revealed and fulfilled — remains in full effect, and will remain so until heaven and earth themselves pass away.
The nature of true sin and the nature of true worship were always the same. They simply weren’t fully revealed until Christ.
Continuing the Core Faith Series
With the Old Covenant Law now in proper view — moral, civil, ceremonial, all illuminating the deeper natural law that Christ came to fulfill — the next article in the Core Faith series turns to what sin really is in the New Testament, and why righteousness is not quite what most American Christians have been told.
