You Are Not Under the Law, You Are Under Christ

A lot of good men get tangled up on the Law of Moses, and it usually goes one of two ways.

One man reads the Old Testament, sees command after command he knows he could never keep, and walks around under a low hum of guilt, sure God is mostly disappointed in him. The other man hears that Christians are "not under the law," decides that means the rules are off, and quietly makes peace with sin he has no real intention of fighting.

Both of them missed what actually happened at the cross. So let me try to say it plainly, the way I would say it to you across a table.

The Law of Moses Was a Covenant, Not Just a List

Start right here, because most of the confusion lives at this one spot. The Law of Moses was never just a pile of rules. It was a covenant. God made it with Israel at Sinai, and it governed everything about their life as His people: their worship, their priesthood, their sacrifices, their courts, their calendar, the whole national arrangement. It came with blessings for keeping it and curses for breaking it. It was a binding agreement between God and one nation.

That matters more than it sounds like it should, because a covenant can be fulfilled and brought to a close in a way a list of good advice never can.

The New Testament calls that whole arrangement the old covenant, and it says two honest things about it at the same time. It was good, and it was temporary. It put God's holiness on display. It exposed sin for exactly what it is. But it could never finally fix the problem. All those animals on all those altars, year after year, were pointing forward the entire time, waiting for a better priest and a better sacrifice to show up.

Jesus Did Not Come to Erase It. He Came to Finish It.

Here is where a lot of men get nervous, like Jesus arrived to throw out the Old Testament. He said the opposite.

"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill."
Matthew 5:17, NASB 1995

Fulfill. Not abolish. To fulfill something is to fill it all the way up, to carry it to the thing it was always reaching for. And Jesus did that in two ways no one else ever could.

First, He kept it. Perfectly. From the heart, not just on the surface. He lived the whole covenant the way Israel never once managed to. Then He climbed up on a cross and became the sacrifice that every one of those Old Testament offerings had only ever been a picture of. The demands of the Law, finally met. The curse of the Law, fully absorbed. Paul says Christ "redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us." The penalty that used to hang over your head got spent on Him instead.

So the covenant did its job. And a covenant that has done its job is finished. Hebrews does not soften that even a little:

"When He said, 'A new covenant,' He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear."
Hebrews 8:13, NASB 1995

Obsolete. Ready to disappear. That is not me getting edgy about the Old Testament. That is the Bible telling you the old covenant reached its end in Christ.

Not Under the Law, but Under Grace

Which brings us to the line that trips almost everybody. Paul writes it flat out, and he writes it in Romans:

"For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!"
Romans 6:14 to 15, NASB 1995

Read that slow, because both halves are carrying weight. You are not under law but under grace. That means the Law of Moses is not the covenant you now stand under. Its priesthood, its sacrifices, its national rules, that entire structure came to its end in Christ, and you are not living underneath it anymore.

But look at what Paul does in the very next breath, because he knew exactly how a man would try to bend it. Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be. Being out from under the old covenant was never a hall pass. "Not under the Law" does not mean "free to do whatever you want." It means you are no longer under that particular covenant with its curse standing over you. You have been moved.

You Were Not Discharged Into Nothing

Here is the picture I would hand you. Think about a man who served under one command for years. Then his orders change and he is honorably discharged from it. He is genuinely, completely out from under that old command. Nobody up that chain gives him orders anymore. It is finished, and it is finished for good.

But he did not get discharged into lawlessness. He got transferred. He is under a new command now, a new authority, a new set of orders. The man who walks out the gate thinking "I answer to no one now" has not found freedom. He has gone AWOL.

That is exactly what happened to you at the cross. You were not released from the Law of Moses into a life with no Lord. You were transferred. You came out from under the old covenant, and you came under Christ. On the night before He died, Jesus lifted the cup and called it the new covenant in His blood. That was the fulfillment of a promise God had made through Jeremiah centuries before: that one day He would write His law on hearts instead of stone, forgive sins, and be known by His people up close and personal.

The Law of Christ, Written on the Heart

So what are you under now? Not nothing. You are under Christ, and the New Testament even has a name for the way of life He calls you into. It calls it the law of Christ.

"Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ."
Galatians 6:2, NASB 1995

Paul draws the same line on himself. He says he is not under the Law of Moses, but he is "under the law of Christ." He did not trade a Lord for no Lord. He traded covenants. He traded masters.

And here is the part that should take the low hum of guilt off your back for good. The old covenant handed you a standard carved in stone and left you to go keep it in your own strength, which is exactly why it kept crushing you. The new covenant does the thing the old one never could:

"For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."
Romans 8:3 to 4, NASB 1995

Sit in that one for a second. What the Law could not do, weak as it was through your flesh, God did Himself. He sent His own Son, dealt with sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law would actually be fulfilled in you as you walk by the Spirit. You are not white-knuckling an external code anymore, hoping you measure up by Friday. The Spirit of God lives in you and writes the thing on your heart from the inside out.

That is not a lower standard, brother. In a lot of ways it is a higher one. Jesus did not loosen the moral will of God. He summed it up, and then He moved into you to live it: love God with everything you are, and love the man next to you the way Christ loved you.

So Say It Plainly

Let me put the whole thing in one breath, the way you would explain it to another man in a truck.

God gave Israel the Law as a covenant, to show His holiness and expose their sin. Jesus came, kept it perfectly, and then died as the sacrifice it had been pointing at the whole time, so that every demand and every curse landed on Him instead of on you. Because He did that, the old covenant is finished. It did its job. You are not under it anymore.

But you were not set loose to be your own god. You belong to Jesus now, under a new covenant, and He is your Lord. His law is His teaching and His example, and it comes down to this: love God with all you are, and love your neighbor the way Christ loved you. The Holy Spirit writes that on your heart, so you keep it not as a slave sweating under a code he cannot carry, but as a forgiven son who has been made new and handed the power to actually walk in love.

The cross did not erase God's moral standard. It closed the old covenant and took it off your back as your master. Now you live under Christ, the One who finished the whole thing, and you follow His law in the strength of His Spirit.

That is the good news for the man being crushed under the rulebook, and it is the warning for the man who thought grace meant the rules were off. You are not under the Law.

You are under Christ.

Now go live like a man who belongs to Him.