Pastor's Blog

Relevant Magazine recently posted an article by Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church in Atlanta.   North Point is the second largest church in the country, averaging 38,000 people in attendance on six campuses.   The headline was: “Why Do Christians Want to Post the 10 Commandments and Not the Sermon on the Mount?” Stanley begins by referring to controversies in several jurisdictions in recent years concerning monuments of the Ten Commandments in public places.   His central claim is that the controversies are all for nothing because the Ten Commandments don’t apply to us.   “If we’re going to create a monument to stand as a testament to our faith,” he writes, “shouldn’t it at least be a monument of something that actually applies to us?”   As possible alternatives, he suggests the Sermon on the Mount or John 13:34, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another:   just as I have loved you, you also are to love one ...

What does Paul mean when he says in Romans 10:4 that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes”? Let me first tell you what it does not mean. It does not mean that we do not have to keep the commandments. There is this silly notion about that the grace of God frees us from the obligation to obey him. Not so. If anything, grace increases our obligation to obey. Paul says in his letter to Titus that the grace of God teaches us “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age” (Tit. 2:11-12). In First Corinthians he says, “For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God” (1 Cor. 7:19). In Hebrews we read that Christ has become the “source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Heb. 5:9). So when Paul says that Christ is “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,” he is not saying that the law its...