Matthew 5:17-20, Romans 6:14, Galatians 3:23-25, Acts 15:1-29, James 2:8-12
There are six hundred and thirteen commands in the Torah by the traditional count, covering sacrifice, diet, farming, textiles, debt, sexual conduct, courts, and the calendar. They were given to one nation in a particular place, with a temple, a priesthood, and a land. The New Testament says both that not one stroke will pass from the law until all is accomplished, and that believers are not under law but under , and it says them without apparent embarrassment.
Every Christian tradition draws a line somewhere, because nobody keeps all of it and nobody discards all of it. Almost no one offers sacrifices; almost everyone thinks the prohibition of murder still stands. The disagreement is not really about whether there is a line but about where it runs and, more importantly, on what principle it is drawn.
Where everyone agrees
Nobody here believes a person is saved by keeping the law. Everyone here believes the law reveals God's character and that the commands about loving God and neighbour are still binding. Everyone agrees the sacrificial system is not to be resumed. The argument is about the principle that sorts the rest.
The threefold division: moral, civil, ceremonial
The moral law continues, the civil law expired with the nation, and the ceremonial law was fulfilled in Christ.
What it claims
The law has always had distinguishable parts, and Scripture itself treats them differently. The prophets rank mercy above sacrifice. Jesus declares all foods clean. Hebrews retires the priesthood. And the Ten Commandments are singled out from everything else, written by God's own finger and placed inside the ark. From there the sorting is straightforward. The moral law reflects God's unchanging character, so it cannot expire. The civil law governed a state that no longer exists. The ceremonial law pointed forward, and what it pointed to has arrived. That gives a usable principle instead of a case-by-case guess.
Who holds it
Aquinas, the Reformed , and by inheritance most evangelical and Reformed teaching in English. It is the default assumption in a great many pulpits.
The texts it stands on
Matthew 5:17-19 Not to abolish but to fulfil, with the weightiest matters named elsewhere as justice, mercy, and faithfulness
Hebrews 8:13 The first covenant made obsolete in its priestly and sacrificial arrangements
Mark 7:19 Thus he declared all foods clean
Strongest case
It is workable, it has centuries of careful use behind it, and it explains the actual practice of nearly every church without special pleading.
Hardest question
The division is not stated anywhere in Scripture and the Torah does not sort itself that way; Leviticus 19 mixes idolatry, wages, gossip, mixed fabrics, and loving your neighbour in a single chapter with no seams. Critics argue the categories are imposed afterwards, and that the line ends up wherever a tradition already stood.
Holding the map
A test worth applying to any position here, including your own: does it explain your actual practice, or does it explain your preferred practice? Most people keep roughly the same commands regardless of the theory they hold, which suggests the theories are often doing less work than they appear to.
And a note on tone, because this argument goes bad in a predictable way. Those who keep more should watch for the drift from gift into measurement. Those who keep less should watch for treating a command God gave as merely obsolete, which none of the positions above actually says.
EKLI serves Christians across traditions. On questions where churches differ we explain how each one sees it and leave the deciding to you.
