Theologians react to Andy Stanley saying Ten Commandments don’t apply to Christians By Michael Gryboski – Christian Post
Some theologians have taken issue with Andy Stanley’s recent column claiming that the Ten Commandments do not apply to Christians.
In an opinion column published earlier this month by Relevant Magazine, Stanley discussed the tendency of many American Christians to erect Ten Commandments displays.
“[I]f we’re going to create a monument to stand as a testament to our faith, shouldn’t it at least be a monument of something that actually applies to us?” he posed.
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“Participants in the new covenant (that’s Christians) are not required to obey any of the commandments found in the first part of their Bibles. Participants in the new covenant are expected to obey the single command Jesus issued as part of his new covenant: as I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
Stanley added that he believed many of the evils committed by churches over history were connected to mixing aspects of the old covenant with Christianity and that although “Jesus was foreshadowed in the old covenant, he did not come to extend it.”
Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and executive editor of The Christian Post, told CP last Thursday that he believed Stanley “confuses ‘new’ with ‘fulfillment.’”
“In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus said that He came to fulfill the Old Testament law, to complete it. And to supplant it, but that does not mean that the Ten Commandments are irrelevant,” said Land.
“Jesus said that He didn’t come to take away from the law, that if you read Matthew chapter 5, ‘not one jot or tittle would be taken away.’ He came to fulfill it, not to abolish it. That’s Jesus.”
Land also told CP that Jesus gave a “greater spiritual understanding that no one can keep the law and that the law was not there to justify us before God, the law is there to teach us about the need for a savior who came in the fullness of time.”
