Christ Fulfilled the Law: Why Are Christians Trying to Go Back?

One of the most confusing and increasingly common teachings in the modern Church is the idea that Christians are free from some of the Mosaic Law, but still obligated to keep parts of it. This teaching often presents itself as a call to holiness, obedience, and biblical faithfulness. It appeals to Scripture, the Hebrew language, and the desire to honor God. Yet beneath the surface, it misunderstands the nature of the Law, the work of Christ, the New Covenant, and the life of the Spirit.

The danger is not merely theological confusion. The danger is that believers are quietly led back under a covenant Christ has already fulfilled and brought to an end.

The Law Is One Unified Covenant, Not a Collection of Categories

In Scripture, God never divides the Mosaic Law into moral, ceremonial, civil, dietary, or sacrificial sections. That framework does not exist in the biblical text. From Exodus through Deuteronomy, the Law is presented as a single covenant given to Israel as a nation. The Bible consistently treats the Law as a unified whole. James writes that whoever keeps the whole Law but fails in one point is guilty of all of it. Paul warns that anyone who places themselves under one command of the Law is obligated to keep the entire Law. The Law stands or falls together.

This is why Scripture never asks the question, “Which laws still apply?” That question itself is foreign to the Bible. The real question Scripture asks is, “Under which covenant are you living?”

Jesus Did Not Modify the Law, He Fulfilled It Completely

Jesus was born under the Law. He obeyed it perfectly. He fulfilled every command, every shadow, every requirement, and every prophetic purpose of the Mosaic covenant. When Jesus says He came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, He is not saying the Law continues unchanged. He is saying the Law reaches its intended goal in Him.

Fulfillment does not mean continuation. Fulfillment means completion. The sacrificial system pointed to His death. The priesthood pointed to His mediation. The feasts pointed to His redemptive work. The purity laws pointed to His cleansing. The Sabbath pointed to His rest. The covenant itself pointed forward to something greater. When Christ fulfilled the Law, He did not preserve it as an ongoing authority over God’s people. He brought it to its intended conclusion. Paul states this plainly: Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness for everyone who believes. Hebrews tells us that by establishing the New Covenant, God made the first one obsolete.

The New Covenant Is Not Better Law-Keeping, It Is New Life

The promise of the New Covenant was never that God would help His people keep Moses's law better; instead, the promise was that God would give His people new hearts, a new Spirit, and an internal transformation that the Law could never produce. Jeremiah prophesied that God would write His law on hearts. Ezekiel said God would remove the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. This was not Moses relocated inward. This was regeneration. Paul explains this clearly when he contrasts the letter that kills with the Spirit who gives life. The Law could diagnose sin, restrain sin, and condemn sin but it could never produce righteousness. Only a new birth can do that. Returning to Law-keeping as a system misunderstands the New Covenant itself.

Jesus Gave a New Commandment, Not a Restated One

When Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you,” He is not summarizing the Mosaic Law. He is introducing a new covenant ethic. Love existed in the Old Testament. What is new is the source, power, and standard of that love. “As I have loved you” is not a legal command; it is a Spirit-empowered reality rooted in union with Christ. The apostles understood this. John explains that the commandment is both old and new old in moral content, new in covenant reality. It is true in Christ and true in believers because Christ lives in them. This is why love fulfills the Law. Not because it replaces rules with sentiment, but because love flows from regeneration. A heart transformed by Christ will not murder, commit adultery, practice idolatry, steal, or lie, not because Moses forbids it, but because such actions contradict the nature of new life in Christ.

Christians Do Not Obey Moses They Obey Christ

This distinction is essential. Christians do not refrain from murder because it is the sixth commandment. They refrain from murder because they are new creations in Christ. The apostles repeatedly condemn murder, adultery, idolatry, theft, and sexual immorality, but never based on Mosaic authority. They appeal instead to identity, holiness, union with Christ, and the indwelling Spirit.

Paul explicitly states that believers are not under the Law of Moses, but under the Law of Christ. That is not a rebranded Torah. It is life governed by Christ Himself through the Spirit. This is why the Sabbath becomes the clearest dividing line.

The Sabbath Reveals the Covenant Shift

The Sabbath was the sign of the Mosaic Covenant. Scripture explicitly states this. It marked Israel as a covenant nation under Sinai. Yet the apostles never commanded Sabbath observance for the Church. Paul warns believers not to let anyone judge them regarding Sabbaths, feast days, food laws, or calendar observances. Hebrews explains that the true Sabbath rest is found in Christ Himself.

If the Ten Commandments were still binding as Mosaic Law, this would be impossible to say. The Sabbath does not continue as law because the covenant it belonged to has been fulfilled.

Christ is our rest.

The Fatal Error of Dividing the Law

Because Scripture clearly teaches that the Law is fulfilled and no longer binding, later theologians attempted to explain continuity by dividing the Law into categories: moral, ceremonial, and civil. While often well-intended, this system is not biblical. God never divided His Law. Jews never saw the law as divided into categories but rather as one law, cohesive with maybe some lesser laws within it. The apostles never taught these categories. The system emerged centuries later, beginning with Augustine and becoming formalized through medieval scholasticism, especially Thomas Aquinas, who turned it into a well-written system of categories. This sadly influenced the Reformers to inherit it primarily for teaching purposes, not because Scripture demanded it. The danger of this system is that it introduces distinctions God never gave. Once the Law is divided, confusion follows. Who decides which laws are moral? Why is one command permanent and another temporary? Why is Sabbath excluded but other commands included? Why stop eating pork, but mixing fabrics is ok? Why can your wife lie in your bed during menstruation and cleansing ritual times, yet we pay our tithe? This is precisely the confusion Satan exploits. If we break The Law into humanized categories, Satan can then use it to deceive. "Did God really say"? Same garden tactic, different era, different topic. Paul warns that anyone who places themselves under even part of the Law obligates themselves to the whole. Dividing the Law undermines the very argument Scripture makes about covenant fulfillment. If you think you are to keep even one law, you are bound to them all. It is ONE LAW.

The Early Church Rejected Law-Keeping Without Exception

The earliest Christians, those taught directly by the apostles and their disciples, were unified on this issue. Not one early church father taught Christians to observe Torah. Ignatius of Antioch warned that continuing to live according to Judaism was a denial of grace. Justin Martyr argued openly that the Law given at Sinai was temporary and not imposed on Gentile believers. Irenaeus taught that the Law served a preparatory purpose until Christ and that believers now live by the Spirit under the New Covenant. Whenever Judaizing appeared in the early Church, it was consistently rejected and often associated with other doctrinal errors, such as denying Christ’s full deity or rejecting the authority of the apostles. The early Church did not regard Torah observance as a deeper or more faithful expression of Christianity, but as a misunderstanding of the gospel itself. Scripture itself acknowledges that some Jewish believers were still wrestling with these issues during the transitional period between the Old and New Covenants, which is why Paul refers to them as “weaker brothers.” As the gospel spread, the New Testament was completed, and the mystery of Christ came to fuller expression, Torah observance faded rather than increased. By the late first century, documents such as the Didache reflect Christian communities no longer living under the Mosaic Law, no longer observing the Sabbath as a covenant command, and instead gathering on the Lord’s Day to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. There is no evidence in early Christian writings of mandatory law-keeping or Sabbath observance for believers. Satan has always twisted Scripture to confuse the naïve or immature in the faith, drawing them backward rather than forward. False teaching requires extensive manipulation of Scripture, while the gospel itself is plain: in Christ, the Law has been fulfilled, and believers now live by the Spirit.

Torah Observance Movements Are Modern, Not Apostolic

The modern Hebrew Roots and Torah observance movement did not arise from Jesus, the apostles, the early Church, or even the medieval and Reformation periods. It emerged in the mid-20th century, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, from fringe restorationist groups already outside historic Christian orthodoxy. Influences include the Sacred Name movement and offshoots connected to Herbert W. Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God, many of which emphasized Sabbath-keeping, feast observance, dietary laws, and Hebrew terminology while simultaneously distorting core doctrines of grace, justification by faith, and apostolic authority. As the movement developed, it introduced additional unbiblical assumptions. Some teachers claimed Gentile believers are part of “lost Israel” and therefore obligated to keep Torah. Others questioned or diminished the authority of the apostle Paul, insisted the New Testament must be interpreted primarily through a “Hebrew lens,” or labeled historic Christian worship as pagan corruption. These ideas are not rooted in Scripture or church history and require significant manipulation of biblical texts to sustain. The early Church moved away from Torah observance, not toward it. Those closest to the apostles consistently rejected Judaizing as a misunderstanding of the gospel rather than as a deeper form of obedience. By the late first century, Christian writings reflect believers living under the authority of Christ and the New Covenant, not under the Mosaic Law. Calling a practice “Hebrew” does not make it biblical. Apostolic teaching, not cultural reconstruction, defines Christian faith, and returning to the law is not spiritual maturity, but a step backward from the freedom found in Christ.

False Teaching Requires Scripture Gymnastics

False teachers rarely deny truth outright. Scripture warns us that deception seldom comes by rejecting God’s Word, but by twisting it. From the beginning, Satan’s strategy has been to quote Scripture selectively, redefine words, blur covenant boundaries God has clearly established, and present error as deeper spiritual insight. This is precisely what Paul warns about when he speaks of those who distort the Scriptures to their own destruction. Returning believers to Law-keeping requires this kind of manipulation, because the New Testament is consistently and repeatedly clear: believers are not under the Mosaic Law, but under the New Covenant in Christ.

One of the most evident signs of false teaching is how much explanation it requires to overturn what Scripture plainly teaches. When teachers must constantly reframe Paul, minimize his authority, redefine covenant language, and explain away entire books like Galatians and Hebrews, something is wrong. God did not give His Word in a way that only scholars or “enlightened” teachers can understand its most essential truths. Yes, Scripture is deep and rich and invites lifelong study, but it is also clear and accessible, meant to be understood by ordinary believers. If keeping Torah were still required for covenant faithfulness, God would not have buried that requirement beneath layers of reinterpretation and argumentation. And certainly not kept it buried for almost 2,000 years with literally no evidence that it was the case.

Paul does not describe returning to the Law as a sign of spiritual maturity or deeper obedience. He calls it regression. He warns that rebuilding what Christ destroyed places believers back under a yoke of slavery and severs them from grace not because obedience is wrong, but because the covenant itself has changed. Obedience now flows from the Spirit, not from Sinai. This raises a necessary and unavoidable question: how could the Church have been wrong for nearly two thousand years if Torah observance were essential to faithfulness? Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church and that the Spirit would guide His people into truth. If Law-keeping were required under the New Covenant, then the Church would have lost the gospel almost immediately, and God would have allowed His people to live in widespread disobedience for centuries. That claim is not humility, it is presumption. It places modern teachers above the apostles, above the early Church, and above the Spirit’s ongoing work in preserving the faith once delivered to the saints.

Scripture also warns us that false teachers rarely present themselves as enemies of Christ. They present themselves as servants of righteousness. Satan uses willing vessels to repackage old errors in a new language, appealing to sincerity, discipline, obedience, and biblical terminology while quietly undermining the sufficiency of Christ. This is why discernment matters. The test is not whether a teaching sounds biblical, but whether it aligns with the whole counsel of Scripture, honors the finished work of Christ, and remains anchored in the New Covenant. Any teaching that draws believers backward to what Christ has already fulfilled is not a more profound truth; it is a departure from it.

Conclusion

The Mosaic Law was holy, righteous, and good, but it was never designed to give life. It could reveal sin, restrain sin, and condemn sin, but it could not transform the heart. That work belongs to Christ alone. Jesus did not partially fulfill the Law, revise it, or divide it into categories for future generations to manage. He fulfilled it completely and brought the covenant to its appointed end. In doing so, He inaugurated a better covenant, built on better promises, grounded not in external commands but in internal transformation. Sinai does not govern the Christian life, but the indwelling Christ does. Obedience does not flow from tablets of stone, but from a new heart. Love does not arise from fear of punishment, but from union with the One who loved us first. The Spirit now does what the Law never could: He produces holiness from within. This is not a lowering of God’s standards, but their fulfillment. What the Law demanded from the outside, Christ produces on the inside. This is why the question for believers is never, “Which laws must I still keep?” That question belongs to a covenant that has passed away. The New Covenant asks a different question altogether: “Does Christ live in me?” And if He does, the answer is not a return to the Law, but a walk in the Spirit. To go back to what Christ fulfilled is not faithfulness, but confusion. It is not humility, but distrust in the sufficiency of His finished work.

The gospel is not complex, hidden, or reserved for the spiritually elite. It is plain, powerful, and preserved by God Himself. Christ has fulfilled the Law. The Spirit has been given. The New Covenant has been established. And the Church has been sustained for nearly two thousand years by grace, not by Torah observance. To remain in Christ is to remain free. And to remain free is to walk forward in the life He purchased, not backward into a covenant He completed.