Question
Why is observing all Christ commanded a New Covenant reality rather than a return to law-keeping?
Summary:
The New Covenant doesn’t replace obedience with belief. It replaces an external law written on stone with an internal capacity for obedience given by the Spirit. Observing Christ’s commands isn’t works-righteousness. It is what life under the New Covenant looks like.
The command to teach disciples to observe all that Christ commanded (Matt 28:20) creates some Protestant discomfort. The worry is that observing commands sounds too close to a works-righteousness the Reformation spent considerable energy rejecting. The worry is understandable. It is also misplaced. The call to observe Christ’s commands isn’t a return to law-keeping. It is a description of life under the New Covenant.
The distinction exposes a common misunderstanding about the New Covenant itself. The New Covenant isn’t the replacement of obedience with belief. It is the replacement of an external law written on stone with an internal capacity for obedience given by the Spirit. God promises through Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezek 36:26-27). The commands don’t disappear. What is given is the capacity to keep them.
Under the Old Covenant, obedience was demanded of people whose hearts weren’t yet capable of faithful response. Israel’s history is, in part, a long demonstration that external law can’t produce the internal disposition that genuine obedience requires. The law isn’t the problem. As Old Testament scholar Richard Averbeck has put it, the law was good and weak and unified all at once. Good because it revealed God’s wisdom. Weak because it couldn’t produce in Israel the capacity to live it. The New Covenant addresses the weakness.
Under the New Covenant, the Spirit enables obedience. This doesn’t mean obedience becomes automatic. It means obedience becomes possible in a way it hadn’t been. We aren’t attempting to earn righteousness by keeping commands. We are learning to walk in a capacity already granted by the Spirit. John writes that the commandments aren’t burdensome (1 Jn 5:1-4). For the heart that has been changed, keeping God’s commands is an expression of love rather than an imposition from outside.
Discipleship is participation rather than compliance. It isn’t submission to an external code. It is the ongoing development of a life now capable of reflecting its new allegiance. We delight in the Lord’s instruction (Ps 1:2) because our hearts have been made capable of such delight. The constraints remain. What changes is the person inhabiting them.
Observing Christ’s commands can’t be reduced to a list of behaviors. The command to love God with all we are and have (Deut 6:4-5; Matt 22:34-40) can’t be kept the same way in every situation. It requires the kind of wisdom that emerges only from a transformed heart shaped by the Spirit over time. This is what Christian tradition has called sanctification: the Spirit’s ongoing work of conforming us to Christ.
Discipleship doesn’t oscillate between grace and effort. It is effort enabled by grace. We work because God is at work in us (Phil 2:12-13). To treat discipleship as optional is to misunderstand the New Covenant. The New Covenant is the promise that we will, in fact, walk in God’s statutes. A Christianity that doesn’t expect this has replaced the New Covenant with something else.
Key Takeaways: Obedience Under the New Covenant
• Ezekiel’s Promise: Ezekiel 36:26-27 promises a new heart and the Spirit’s presence that causes us to walk in God’s statutes. The commands remain. The capacity is given.
• Averbeck’s Diagnosis: The law was good, weak, and unified. The New Covenant addresses the weakness without dispensing with the obedience the law called for.
• Participation, Not Compliance: Discipleship isn’t submission to an external code. It is life lived from a heart now capable of delight in God’s instruction (Ps 1:2).
• The “So What”: A Christianity that doesn’t expect believers to walk in God’s statutes has replaced the New Covenant promise with something else.
About the Author
James Spencer, PhD, is a theologian, author, and host of the Thinking Christian podcast, where he writes and speaks on Christian formation, political theology, and technology. He holds a PhD in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and completed the Institute for Educational Management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He serves as President of the D.L. Moody Center in Northfield, Massachusetts, as adjunct faculty in Wheaton College’s MA in Leadership program, and as an Associate Research Fellow at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Christianity.com, and Sojourners; he has been quoted in The Telegraph; and he is a regular guest on Stand in the Gap Today with the American Pastors Network. His forthcoming book is Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press, Fall 2026). Learn more at jamesgspencer.com.