The Bible teaches that the Old Testament Law was given to guide God's people in their relationship with Him and with each other. As seen in Jeremiah 31:31-34, this Law was a covenant between God and His people, but it has been superseded by a new covenant in Christ. According to Hebrews 8:13 and Romans 7:6, the old covenant is now obsolete, and believers are no longer bound by its requirements. However, as Jesus taught in Matthew 5:17-18, the Law still has value as a reflection of God's character and will, and its principles continue to inform Christian ethics and morality. The Law points forward to the greater righteousness that Jesus brings.
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By speaking of a new covenant, He has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.
But now, having died to what bound us, we have been released from the law, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt— a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them, ” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”
The entire law is fulfilled in a single decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed, I would not have been mindful of sin if not for the law. For I would not have been aware of coveting if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”
By this we can be sure that we have come to know Him: if we keep His commandments. If anyone says, “I know Him,” but does not keep His commandments, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone keeps His word, the love of God has been truly perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him: Whoever claims to abide in Him must walk as Jesus walked.
Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”