The 10 commandments are a poor substitute for those who don't love with the love of God, that is those who don't have the nature of God, that is those not born again. It tells them what they should do, because by their nature they don't naturally do it. Therefore when they keep the law it appears to look like love but it's not coming from the nature of God in them but from an external manipulating force to coerce them to act in a loving way.
The reason the 10 commandments were given was to actually show people that they couldn't love the way God wanted them to love. Why? Because they were still in Adam with the Adamic fallen nature. It shows them their need for salvation! That it has always been Gods plan to conform us to the exact image of Christ and therefore to love with his perfect love. Walking under the 10 commandments will still cause us to fall dismally short of God's impeccable standards and to think we can do it is to not see the cross and to walk in self righteousness. We're called to walk by something far greater than the 10 commandments and that is the Spirit! Over an over again the New Testament talks about how weak and useless the law is to produce life, and liberty, and righteousness, and fruitfulness and the image of God in us, but reveals that anyone who turns to Christ receives the Spirit of liberty, life, righteousness, love, truth, fruits etc! God is not looking to control us from the outside with external laws, he is looking to empower us from the inside with his very nature! The new nature! The nature of God in our reborn spirit.
2 Cor 3 makes this all very clear. It says that the letter (which was engraved on stone - a clear reference to the 10 commandments) kills and brings death. That it's a ministry of death, and a ministry condemnation and cannot produce liberty nor the image of God in us. The very image we have fallen short of (Roms 3:23). But the Spirit does! For the Spirits ministry is a ministry of life and righteousness and transforms us into the very same image of Christ and restores us to that glorious image of God by the Spirit of God and by the glory of God. It's not by the 10 commandments that we become the image of Christ but by the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit! It's actually blasphemous to say that we can become the exact same image of Christ by our own efforts to walk in the 10 commandments.
The law cannot produce love! Gal 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Paul is saying that if you loved you wouldn't need the law! That if you could love the way God wanted us to love then we wouldn't have needed the law but because we couldn't, the law had to come and show us that. How do we love then with the love of God?
Well 1 Jn 4 shows us that it's by God supernatural rebirth in us, through faith in Christ, that we receive God's nature of love and thereby are empowered to love others!
1Jn 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
1Jn 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
1Jn 4:9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
1Jn 4:10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1Jn 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
1Jn 4:12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
1Jn 4:13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
1Jn 4:14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
1Jn 4:15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
1Jn 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
1Jn 4:17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
1Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
1Jn 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us.
Galatians 5 is where Paul is pleading with the Galatians not to go back under the law (trusting in the flesh or performance righteousness) but to continue walk in the spirit (walk in the spirit/grace covenant, by your reborn spirit, in fellowship with the Holy Spirit) because that is what produces in us what the law cannot - ie the love of God, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, humility, self control and many other fruits!
We're not called to walk by the 10 commandments but by the Spirit! Walking by the 10 commandments will not produce life ,love or liberty but death and condemnation! Walking by the Spirit will product the love, life and righteousness of God in us! It is a demonic deceiption to try and walk by the 10 commandments. That's what the vail represents in 2 Cor 3 - a blinding of the mind so that we cannot see the end of the law!
2Co 3:13 And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
2Co 3:14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
2Co 3:15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
2Co 3:16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
That's when we have faith in the finished work of Christ who fullfilled the law on our behalf, not faith in our law keeping ability.
- The law says 'You must not sin and you must love others' but fails to empower you to do that!
- Grace say, 'You have already overcome every sin in Christ and he has put his nature of love in you to empower you to love with his love!'
The truth is we are a new creation! We have become something better than Adam was! He was created in the image of God but still in his own righteousness. When we get born again we get recreated in Christ and transformed into His very same image and become his righteousness! We're not like Adam 'in the image of God', we're like the last Adam (Christ) 'the image of God'!
Col 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
Col 2:10 And ye are complete in him...
The NIV says it even better: 'For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ...
2Co 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
This is why the New Covenant is far superior to the Old Covenant because it transforms us into something the Old Covenant never could - the very likeness of Christ! And as we walk by the spirit we walk in his likeness and manifest his life on this earth! If the law could have produced that Jesus would have never had to come!
