I enjoy this particular conversation because it hits on something I struggled with for a while. I think for me the best way to explain this is by using two keywords, descriptive and prescriptive.
There is nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments. However, the Word of God makes it clear that the commands in themselves are not able to make me right before God.
Romans 8:3
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
So we know that the law is unable to save us.
Romans 3:20
For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
As we read the commands of God "Thou shalt not covet" sin is revived and we die.
Romans 7:9
I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
This is explained in Romans 5:13
for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.
Therefore, the proclamation of the law made the evil deeds of the people increasingly sinful. So we see how the law itself was given to manifest sin, and the Law was a guardian to lead us down the path to Christ.
Now that Christ has come, and now that the true faith has been revealed, we have no need for a guardian. A born again Christian will do good works because he or she is born again.
The Law - Prescriptive for any who follow it.
Prescriptive means that I MUST do this in order to sustain my relationship with God.
The Law - Descriptive of Christ and anyone in him.
Descriptive means that I WILL do this because I HAVE a relationship with God through Christ Jesus our Lord and faith in his finished work.
The Law is binding for all those who follow after it. The law is also descriptive of a saved believer who is indwelled by the spirit of God.
The New Covenant is not the Old Covenant. This is not simply a continuation of things. A change has occured.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah,
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers
on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord:
Hebrews 8:8 - 12
I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more.”
The fulfillment of the law is this, to love God with all of your heart, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. This behavior issues out of a cleansed heart and the working of God in a believers life. Through Grace are we saved, that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God lest any man should boast.
We will love God and others, not because tablets of stone command us to, but because the work God has done and continues to do in the process of sanctification.