Exodus 20:1-17 Study Guide: The Role of the Law in the Christian Life

Community Group Study Guide — The Role of the Law in the Christian Life
Exodus 20:1-17

Study Information:
You have likely heard the phrase that Christianity “is not a religion it is a relationship.” The sentiment behind that statement is great in many ways as we are saved from our sin into fellowship with our loving God because of his grace and mercy for us. Likewise, the goal of salvation is not just that we’d be better people and more moral, but our goal is to grow in relationship with our creator and king. However, that kind of statement can often downplay what it means to follow God’s commands or to pursue activities that many would categorize as “religious.” Do we really have to make rules and relationship enemies ? Many healthy relationship include expectations, boundaries and way we can honor one another through our actions. With that said, our culture has been pushing back against rules and authority for quite some time, often because of how those rules are hypocritically followed or because of abuse of power. You may have noticed the cultural narratives in our midst about rebelling against authority. It seems like almost any kids movie, play or book has a major plot line about how the kids found freedom through overthrowing authority they thought was holding them back. 

Are rules meant to be oppressive or freeing? What about rules from God? This study guide will explore three ways christians could relate to the law of God. Our goal is to avoid legalism and lawlessness as we find freedom through faith in Christ and that flows into living as we have been designed under the commandments of God. 

Legalism
Galatians 3:10
The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) give us a picture of how we are designed to live as image bearers in relationship with God. They are God’s moral framework and will get applied in the rest of the 613 commands in the Old Testament, given in the context of Israel living in the Ancient Near East, as freed slaves with the mission to be a light to the nations around them. 

One way we can negatively interact with the Law is to go down the path of legalism. Legalism is not a rejection of the Law’s authority, it is viewing the Law as a means of earning and validation. The Legalist will use their obedience to the commands of God to look down on others and to find their sense of value with God from how well they can keep it. 

A great example of this is in Luke 18:9-14 where a Pharisee and a Tax Collector both pray in the temple. The Pharisee was someone who was known for their observance to the Law, even going so far as to add on extra commands so they wouldn’t break one of God’s commands. Likewise, the word “Pharisee” means “separate one.” They were known for being away from people of the world to preserve their way of worshipping God. The Tax Collector was someone that most people would have thought of as sinful because their job involved collecting taxes for Rome, from the Jews and they’d often skim some off the top for themselves. The Pharisee is said to have “prayed to himself,” not silently in his head (because he spoke out loud) but rather self focused prayer and you see that in how he pointed to all the things he did and even ended his prayer putting down the Tax Collector who was not like him. The Tax Collector went away justified because he cried out to God for help and mercy. We can use the Law wrongly if we try to use it as a sense of worth and as a measurement of our spiritual performance. Paul in Galatians 3:10 wrote “all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse.” That curse is because we cannot keep it and relying on the Law means we are not living by faith. 

Lawlessness
Romans 6:14-17
Another way we can relate to the Law is by throwing it off and rebelling against it. This is often called “licentiousness,” as in we have a license to do whatever we desire, whenever we please. Paul addressed this attitude three times in the book of Romans. After speaking about God’s amazing grace to us in Christ, Paul warned his readers that this does not mean we should just go on and sin because God will forgive us! He wrote in Romans 6:15 “are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!” We can wrongly think of freedom as an absence of restrictions and being able to choose our own path and follow our own desires, but the problem with the follow your heart culture we live in is that our hearts can’t be fully trusted. One day we desire to do this and the next day we desire to do something else, which desire is our true desire? Our desires can also shift based on our income, emotional stability, career path, friendships or dozens of other factors.  

A great example of this is in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. In that parable, a son asked for his inheritance from his father to go and spend it on what the Bible called reckless living. You get a sense that the son wanted to live without the restraints of being in his father’s home, under his father’s rules. After a time the money ran out, crisis hit the land with a famine and the prodigal son “came to himself.” There was a measure of repentance and he went back home thinking he’d need to come back as a servant. Instead we learn the heart of God to welcome him back as a son. Many of us think that there is freedom with absence of restrictions, rules, guidelines or commands. But to think that is to assume that we have more knowledge and wisdom for how to find happiness, joy and fulfillment in life than God does. The commands of God are given to us in love and to love God is to obey his commands and that his commands are not burdensome (1 John 5:3). 

Living as a Child of God
Romans 8:12-17
Jesus taught us that to love him is to keep his commandments, he taught that relationship flows towards following (John 14:15). The image that Paul used in Romans 8:12-17 is the image of a child of God by faith. We will explore this more in the next study guide, but at the heart of the Ten Commandments is the grace of God. God opened his commands by reminding his people that they had been set free from slavery and freed to love and serve God. They were not freed after their obedience or through keeping of God’s moral will, in fact we’ve already learned that they failed pretty hard in the wilderness already. Rather, their freedom was a gift of God and now they’re given God’s design for how they can walk in righteousness and reflect his goodness to the world around them. Paul described it as “no anger living according to the flesh,” meaning neither rebelling against God’s will and doing whatever feels good nor trying to measure up and find justification in our moral actions. Instead we are called to live by the Spirit of God as children of God (Romans 8:14). Knowing God’s gracious love for us which compels us to want to do what pleases him and what leads us to unhindered worship. 

At your community group:
Take 15-20 minutes to share about how God has been at work in your life, prayer concerns and pray for one another.

How did God speak to you through the scripture and the sermon this week? 

Discussion Questions:
Read Exodus 20:1-17

What are some of your general observations about the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17? Why would God give this to his people at this place in their story instead of before they were freed from slavery in Egypt?

Have you tended more towards legalism or lawlessness in your own life (either before knowing Christ or as you’ve been growing in following him)?

Why would Paul warn us against finding our value and standing before God in the Law/Commandments? 

How does the image of a being a child of God by faith help you to grasp God’s intent behind his commands?