The Mosaic covenant or Law of Moses, which Christians generally call the "Old Covenant" (in contrast to the New Covenant), played an important role in the origins of Christianity and has occasioned serious dispute and controversy since the beginnings of Christianity: note for example Jesus' teaching of the Law during his Sermon on the Mount and the circumcision controversy in early Christianity.

Rabbinic Jews"Gentiles: Gentiles May Not Be Taught the Torah". Jewish Encyclopedia. assert that Moses presented the Jewish religious laws to the Jewish people and that those laws do not apply to Gentiles (including Christians), with the exception of the Seven Laws of Noah, which (according to Rabbinic teachings) apply to all people.

Most Christians (including Catholics, Lutherans and Reformed Christians) believe that of the Old Covenant, only parts dealing with the moral law (as opposed to ceremonial law) are still applicable (cf. covenant theology), a minority believe that none apply (cf. dispensationalism), and dual-covenant theologians believe that the Old Covenant remains valid only for Jews. Messianic Jews hold the view that all parts still apply to believers in Jesus and in the New Covenant.

Catholic and Orthodox views Catholic

Theologian Thomas Aquinas explained that there are three types of biblical precepts: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. He holds that moral precepts are permanent, having held even before the Law was given, since they are part of the law of nature. Ceremonial precepts (the "ceremonial law", dealing with forms of worshiping God and with ritual cleanness) and judicial precepts (such as those in Exodus 21) came into existence only with the Law of Moses and were only temporary. The ceremonial commands were "ordained to the Divine worship and to the foreshadowing of Christ".Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 102, a. 2 (emphasis added) Accordingly, upon the coming of Christ they ceased to bind, and to observe them now would, Aquinas thought, be equivalent to declaring falsely that Christ has not yet come, for Christians a mortal sin.

However, while the judicial laws ceased to bind with the advent of Christ, it was not a mortal sin to enforce them. Aquinas says, "If a sovereign were to order these judicial precepts to be observed in his kingdom, he would not sin." Although Aquinas believed the specifics of the Old Testament judicial laws were no longer binding, he taught that the judicial precepts contained universal principles of justice that reflected natural law. Thus some scholars refer to his views on government as "General Equity Theonomy".Clausen, Mark A. "Theonomy in the Middle Ages". Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Marriott Wardman Park, Omni Shoreham, Washington Hilton, Washington, DC.

Unlike the ceremonial and judicial precepts, moral commands continue to bind, and are summed up in the Ten Commandments (though the assigning of the weekly holiday to Saturday is ceremonial). The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the ApostlesApostolic Letter Dies Domini, 1; The Catechism of the Council of Trent: ""The Jewish Sabbath Changed To Sunday By The Apostles" instituted the religious celebration of Sunday without transferring to it the ceremonial obligations associated with the Jewish Sabbath, although later some of these obligations became attached to Sunday, not without opposition within the Church. The Roman Catholic Church thus applies to Sunday, the Lord's Day, the Third Commandment.

Eastern Orthodox According to Fr. Lawrence Farley, "The Old Testament remains for most Orthodox a closed book, as if the Bible began not with Genesis, but with the Gospel of Matthew." The Orthodox Church is thought to read the Old Testament in an allegorical and typological sense.

For one example, in Psalm 137, a blessing is pronounced on anyone who takes revenge upon the enemies of Israel by "dashing their infants against the rocks", but here is the new meaning of that passage "the infants are those troublesome sinful thoughts, the early beginnings and promptings of evil; one subdues them by striking them against the firm and solid strength of truth".

The Old Testament is affirmed in its new meaning.

Classical Protestant views Lutheran

The Lutheran Churches divide Mosaic Law into three components: the (1) moral law, (2) civil law, (3) ceremonial law. While the civil law was applicable to the theocracy of Israel and the ceremonial law was applicable until the arrival of Jesus, the moral law as contained in the Ten Commandments remains in force today for Christians.

Article V of the Formula of Concord (1577) of the Lutheran Church declares:Triglot Concordia, FC Epitome V, (II).1, p. 503ff

The distinction between Law and Gospel is that Law demands obedience to God's will, while gospel refers to the promise of forgiveness of sins in the light of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Between 1580 and 1713 (considered the age of Lutheran Orthodoxy) this principle was considered of fundamental importance by Lutheran theologians.

The foundation of evangelical Lutheran biblical exegesis and exposition is contained in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article 4) (1531):

Lutherans, quoting Colossians 2 and Romans 14, believe that circumcision and the other Old Testament ceremonial laws no longer apply to Christians.

Reformed

The view of the Reformed churches or Calvinism, referred to as Covenant Theology, is similar to the Roman Catholic view in holding that Mosaic Law continues under the New Covenant, while declaring that parts of it have "expired" and are no longer applicable.Bahnsen, et al., Five Views on Law and Gospel. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993). The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) divides the Mosaic laws into three categories: moral, civil, and ceremonial.Philip S. Ross, From the Finger of God: The Biblical and Theological Grounds for the Threefold Division of the Law. (Fearn: Mentor, 2009). In the view of the Westminster Divines, only the moral laws of the Mosaic Law, which include the Ten Commandments and the commands repeated in the New Testament, directly apply to Christians today. Ceremonial laws, in this view, include the regulations pertaining to ceremonial cleanliness, festivals, diet, and the Levitical priesthood.

Advocates of this view hold that, while not always easy to do and overlap between categories does occur, the divisions they make are possible and supported based on information contained in the commands themselves; specifically to whom they are addressed, whom or what they speak about, and their content. For example, a ceremonial law might be addressed to the Levites, speak of purification or holiness and have content that could be considered as a foreshadowing of some aspect of Christ's life or ministry. In keeping with this, most advocates also hold that when the Law is spoken of as everlasting, it is in reference to certain divisions of the Law.

Anglican and Methodist Anglican and Methodist theology regarding the Old Covenant is expressed by their historic defining statements known as the Thirty-Nine Articles and Twenty Five Articles of Religion, respectively.

Article VII of the Church of England's 39 Articles, as well as Article VI of the Methodist 25 Articles, specify only that Christians are bound by the "commandments which are called moral", but not bound by the ceremonial, ritual, or civil laws from the "law of Moses".

Modern Protestant views

Dispensationalism As a theological system, Dispensationalism is rooted in the writings of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) and the Brethren Movement, but it has never been formally defined and incorporates several variants. Dispensationalists divide the Bible into varying numbers of separate dispensations or ages. Traditional dispensationalists believe only the New Testament applies to today's church, whereas hyperdispensationalists believe only the second half of the New Testament, starting in the middle of Acts or at Acts 28, applies.

Wayne G. Strickland, professor of theology at the Multnomah University, claims that his (not necessarily "the") Dispensationalist view is that "the age of the church has rendered the law inoperative".Five Views on Law and Gospel, Gundry editor, Chapter 4: The Inauguration of the Law of Christ with the Gospel of Christ: A Dispensational View by Wayne G. Strickland, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993, page 259

This view holds that the Mosaic Laws and the penalties attached to them were limited to the particular historical and theological setting of the Old Testament. In that view, the Law was given to Israel and has not applied since the age of the New Covenant.

Replacing the Mosaic Law is the "Law of Christ", which, however, holds definite similarities with the Mosaic Law in moral concerns but is new and different, replacing the original Law. Despite this difference, Dispensationalists seek to find moral and religious principles applicable today in Mosaic Law.

Believing the New Covenant to be a new dispensation, George R. Law has proposed that the Law of Christ is recorded in Matthew 5–7. He suggests that Matthew's record of the Sermon on the Mount is structured similarly to the literary form of an ancient Near Eastern covenant treaty. Law's theory is built on the work of Viktor Korošec, Donald J. Wiseman, and George E. Mendenhall. Like other variations of the covenant form throughout ancient history, this new covenant form can be identified by its combination of ancient covenant elements. If this record in Matthew can be identified as the record of the promised New Covenant, then its contents can also be identified as the formal presentation of the Law of Christ (and includes Christ's new Ten Commandments).George R. Law, "The Form of the New Covenant in Matthew", American Theological Inquiry 5:2 (2012). For more information on the content of the Law of Christ including His Ten Commandments see George R. Law, The Law of Christ: God's Will for New Testament Believers (Pfafftown, NC: Ready Scribe Press, 2011).

One view of Dispensationalism divides the Bible into these seven periods: of innocence (Genesis 1:1–3:7), before Adam's fall; of conscience (Genesis 3:8–8:22), Adam to Noah; of government (Genesis 9:1–11:32), Noah to Abraham; of patriarchal rule (Genesis 12:1–Exodus 19:25), Abraham to Moses; of the Mosaic Law (Exodus 20:1–Acts 2:4), Moses to Jesus; of grace (Acts 2:4–Revelation 20:3), the current church age; and of a literal, earthly 1,000-year Millennial Kingdom that has yet to come (Revelation 20:4–20:6).Scofield Reference Bible

A misunderstanding of Dispensationalism sees the covenant of Sinai (dispensation #5) to have been replaced by the gospel (dispensation #6). However, Dispensationalists believe that ethnic Israel, distinct from the church and on the basis of the Sinai covenant, is featured in New Testament promises, which they interpret as referring to a future time associated with the Millennium of Revelation 20 (dispensation #7). In Dispensational thought, although the time from Jesus' resurrection until his return (or the advent of the Millennium) is dominated by the proclamation of the gospel, the Sinai covenant is neither terminated nor replaced, instead it is "quiescent" awaiting fulfillment at the Millennium. This time of Jewish restoration has an especially prominent place within Dispensationalism; see also Christian Zionism.

Theonomy Starting in the 1970s and 1980s, an obscure branch of Calvinism known as Christian Reconstructionism argued that the civil laws as well as the moral laws should be applied in today's society (a position called Theonomy) as part of establishing a modern theonomic state. This view is a break from the traditional Reformed position, including that of John Calvin and the Puritans, which holds that the civil laws have been abrogated though they remain useful as guidance and revelation of God's character.