In my previous post, I wrote about how Latter-day Saints conflate the Abrahamic covenant with Christ’s New Covenant, seeing the two as essentially identical. As I argued there, this blurs the crucial distinction between God’s gracious promise and human obedience, leading to an overemphasis on works and an underappreciation of grace in salvation.

Now I want to turn to the covenant God made with Moses at Mount Sinai.

The LDS View of the Law of Moses

Latter-day Saints have a distinctive take on the Mosaic covenant based on Doctrine and Covenants 84:23–27. They see the Law of Moses as a regression—a “lesser law” given because Israel could not live the higher law. According to D&C 84, “the children of Israel hardened their hearts and could not endure his presence; therefore, the Lord in his wrath… took Moses out of their midst, and the Holy Priesthood also.”

The idea is that God originally wanted to give Israel a higher, celestial law—the same law that governs the Melchizedek Priesthood—but the Israelites rejected it. Because they refused to live the higher law, God supposedly “withdrew” the greater priesthood and gave them instead a more external, ritual-based law of performances and ordinances. In this view, the Mosaic covenant was a step backward—a temporary system given as a punishment for Israel’s lack of faith.

The Law as a Tutor

This interpretation likely stems from a misunderstanding of Galatians 3:19–24. In this section, Paul asks why the Law was given. His answer: it was added “because of transgressions” — not as a punitive downgrade, but to expose sin and to act as a guardian or tutor (Greek: paidagōgos) leading God’s people to Christ.

But when Paul speaks of the law given “becuase of transgressions” he does not mean that the law was a lower law given in punishment to Israel. Instead, he describes it as a a temporary but divinely intended stage in God’s plan of redemption.

Like a parent who sets rules to train a child toward maturity, the Mosaic Law instructed, disciplined, and pointed forward to something greater. When Christ came, the time of tutelage was over—we were no longer under the guardian but became full sons and daughters through faith (Gal. 4:1–7).

One of the law’s most important functions was to serve as a mirror to reveal our sin and our need for grace. In our pride, we imagine we are better than we are. The law shatters that illusion. It exposes the anger behind murder, the lust behind adultery, and the selfishness behind idolatry.

For instance, the law declares that we should not kill, and this was always intended to lead us to examine our hearts and identify and confront the hatred within. When Christ in the Sermon on the Mount spoke of the need to not even harbor hatred in our heart, he was not offering a new teaching that was separate from the law, but teaching the true spirit and intention of the law.

As parents, we understand this dynamic. We give our kids rules, hoping that in time the kids will learn not just to follow the letter of the rule, but to follow its spirit. And yet, the rules that we set down also produce jealousy, strife, contention, and lawbreaking. The rules we set reveal our kids to be rebellious and lawbreakers at heart.

The same is true of us. The law reveals that we are rebels at heart and that our only hope is grace. The law therefore exposes our sin and our need for a deeper heart transformations. It’s our failure to live the law with exactness that finally drives us to our knees, seeking God’s mercy.

So the Law wasn’t a retreat from grace. It was an essential part our our journey toward grace.

The Law as a Type and Shadow

The book of Hebrews takes this even further. It describes the Mosaic covenant as a shadow of the better covenant to come (Heb. 8:5; 10:1). The sacrifices, priesthood, and tabernacle weren’t arbitrary—they were types and patterns pointing forward to Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice and His heavenly priesthood.

Hebrews 8:6 says that Jesus “has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.” The author does not say the old covenant was a mistake or a demotion. It was good, but provisional—designed to point to the true, eternal realities fulfilled in Christ. The New Covenant doesn’t exist because the Mosaic one failed; it exists because the Mosaic one did its job.

The temple system illustrates this perfectly. The temple dramatized the barrier sin created between humanity and God, and the sacrifices symbolized the need for atonement. Each year, the high priest entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement—but only after much preparation and sacrifice. These offerings could never truly cleanse the conscience; they constantly reminded Israel of sin and the need for a perfect mediator.

When Christ died, the temple veil was torn, signifying that through His once-for-all sacrifice, the way into God’s presence was now open so that we could come boldly to the throne and seek grace. The law showed us the need for the perfect sacrifice that Christ provided.

Why it Matters

These differing views of the Law of Moses lead to entirely different gospels.

The LDS view allows believers to sidestep Paul’s warnings about confusing law and grace by claiming that what God really wanted all along was a higher, even more demanding law. But Paul’s whole point is that Christ fulfilled the law through His perfect righteousness and finished work and that he offers us blessings on the basis of grace and promise. The law curses everyone who fails to “do everything written in the book of the law” (Gal. 3:10), but Christ bore that curse for us. Now, the blessings promised to Abraham come to us by faith, not by flawless performance.

Latter-day Saints simiarly insisit on requiring updated temple rituals that are more Christ-centered than those of the law of Moses, all the while failing to realize that the whole temple system was a type and shadow of things to come when Christ offered a once-for-all sacrifice.

Moreover, the LDS view obscures the centrality of the cross. If the goal is merely to restore a “higher law,” then Christ’s death becomes a means to acceess another stricter system of commandments rather than the culmination of redemptive history. It turns God’s covenants into a steep ladder we need to climb rather than a rescue mission that culminated in our redemption on the cross. On the other hand, when we correctly see the Mosaic covenant as a divinely appointed law that points us to the cross, we recover the true center of Scripture — the death and resurrection of Jesus as the climax of God’s redemptive plan.