When I was growing up in mid-20th century America, the ten commandments were the standard of morality for Christians. My Southern Baptist grandmother often asked me to mow her lawn (about an acre). But she would never allow me to do it on Sunday.
Lately, I'm hearing more and more about a doctrine which states that the ten commandments were nailed to the cross and that the Holy Spirit has replaced them. I recently asked my very aged father about this and he said that he'd never even heard of such a thing.
What happened?
I don't know about the expression "Ten Commandments." That is the result of a poor translation in the KJV, and the term took off and has pervaded much of Christianity. The text says, "the ten sayings." There are many other commandments, not just ten. The Jews give the number at 613. The Orthodox Church correctly refers to these ten sayings as the Decalogue -- or ten words.
Great confusion exists, I think, since most Christians cannot view the Old Testament without imposing the beliefs of their churches. Can we discuss the matter first from the perspective of the people who received these ten sayings?
Israel was brought out of Egypt and led to Mount Sinai. God had not commanded them to do anything. He had not created a Levitical priesthood. God spoke to them all at Sinai. Moses understood everything perfectly since his mind was "unassuming." He was humble, he did not think he knew things when he didn't, so his mind was open and could duplicate the concepts when God spoke. Joshua came in second. Remember, he was further up the mountain than anyone else, and his understanding was better. The seventy were higher than most others, and it was these seventy which acted as Sanhedrin later since their understanding was better than most. The rest of the people contained "priests" -- and mind you, there was no Levitical priesthood! Who were the priests? At the time, the head of each family acted as a priest. I'll return to this matter later.
When Israel heard the Voice of God, they could not discern much of the intelligence in it. It shook them up. They heard a threatening sound like a trumpet which got louder and louder. There were ten things they all could understand: The ten sayings. The rest was gibberish to most of them. Indeed many of those laws look like gibberish to us today -- because we look at them wrong -- we are hung up on the letter and not the spirit -- we fail to discern how all those 613 are somehow about loving God or loving our fellow man. We Christians are as dim-witted as the people of Israel. We can see the love in some of them but not in others; yet Jesus told us the law was all about love.
Israel could not understand the Torah Or -- the Law of Light. They were then given the written Torah, using the language of men. Jews to this day will tell you they do not understand the Torah. They study it in order to have it written on their hearts -- to find the love in it. They also say when Messiah comes, everyone will understand the Torah perfectly -- and the "letter" will fade away.
Then when Moses came down from the mountain, he found Israel practicing idolatry in the matter of the Golden Calf. Moses asked who was on the LORD's side. The tribe of Levi was. That is how the priesthood got transferred from the heads of households to the Levites. The first born male still "owed" something to God for being the first born; but since they were disbarred from performing it, they could square matters by paying money (Numbers 3).
Not only do the "ten words" stand, I say every Word that came from the mouth of God still stands, and man shall live by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Now jumping forward to the time of Jesus, we find him telling people to obey whatever the Sanhedrin commanded. Why? The Sanhedrin was composed of men who had the time, opportunity and disposition to study the Torah. Most people could not. Most people could not be expected to understand what all the written commandments meant. Some things were cultural. To understand some laws, you need to understand the cultural context of the time they were given. Times change, culture changes; and thus the Torah Or (the real Law, the Law of Light) needed to be interpreted for each generation. That was what the Sanhedrin did.
For example, take the matter of the death penalty in the time of Jesus. The Jews had negotiated with the invading Romans and agreed to give up using the death penalty. Only Rome was allowed to put someone to death. That was fine by Mosaic Law -- the Sanhedrin was within its rights to say that and to forbid Jews from executing anyone. Some will say, "But the law of Moses says to put some people to death." So it does, but the purpose of the Law was to preserve life. The Roman army was about to massacre the Jewish people. For the Sanhedrin to insist on retaining the right to execute people would have meant the death of countless thousands of innocent people. Thus they suspended that part of the Mosaic code.
When people brought that woman accused of adultery to Jesus, they were tempting him to disobey the Sanhedrin. They were also tempting him to say she was worthy of being put to death without two good witnesses. And where was her partner in crime? So they were tempting Jesus not only to disobey a ruling of the Sanhedrin but also the law of the Romans. Then they could have turned him over to Rome who would have executed him.
Do not think then that Jesus was despising the Law of Moses. He was obeying in spirit. Let us not confuse the "letter" or "literal" with the spirit of the law.