Andy Stanley is being unnecessarily and purposefully cavalier with Scripture for the sake of audience reception, marketing, book sales, etc. It appears to me that he has stumbled on what some of the most effective cult-leaders have also utilized: a cavalier attitude toward the Bible in order to play into what the audience wants to hear or will make them respond in the way he wants to his message. He appears to be using the Bible for his agenda rather than preaching the Word reverentially for the sake of God’s agenda.

It comes as no surprise to followers of Andy Stanley and North Point Ministries in Atlanta, GA that their pastor and mentor has found himself once again in hot water. In a column published by Relevant Magazine Stanley disavows the use of the Ten Commandments for Christians today. As part of the Old Covenant, he argues, such things do not apply to believers under the New Covenant. This comes after last year’s controversy surrounding a Sermon where Stanley preached that Christians were also to “unhitch” themselves from the Old Testament. Arguing from Acts 15, Stanley taught his congregation of thirty-three thousand members that Paul, Peter, James, and the members of the Council of Jerusalem had echoed this sentiment when they had determined to cease to require the circumcision of Gentiles for the purposes of joining into God’s family.

So what’s all the hullabaloo about, you ask? For starters, God’s laws from both the Old Covenant and the New are not random. They are not simply God exercising power. God did not make them up spur of the moment to see if we would obey them.

Morality, reflected in the Ten Commandments, are the reflection of who he is: perfect holiness.

The reason we have these laws and the reason they are called “laws” is because they are the standard of holiness. We as Christians are not to commit adultery in any of its varying forms because God does not commit adultery. We do not go around murdering people because God does not murder. Morality is not relative to culture, rather morality is a universal that is derived from the eternally God himself.

Even more so, God’s attributes do not change. He is the same “yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8) which means that the Ten Commandments have been true since eternity past and into eternity future whether they are articulated or not. They didn’t come into being when Moses carried them written in stone down to his people. They do not cease to be appropriate when Judaism became complete in Christianity. It is simply that this was the first point in history that they were physically written down. It was morally wrong to break the Ten Commandments prior to Moses. This is basic Christian theology.

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