There are many Christians today who believe in keeping various of the ceremonial law or Law of Moses. Some of them do not make a distinction in their minds between the ceremonial law or Law of Moses and the Ten Commandments, but the Bible makes a clear distinction between them. For example: (1)The Moral Law or Ten Commandments was spoken to the people by God’s own voice, and after Moses reviewed this law of Ten Commandments with the children of Israel (Deuteronomy 5:6–21) he stated that God “added no more” (Deuteronomy 5:22). The principles of the Ten Commandments were explained more fully to Moses and he wrote down these explanations for the people; e.g. see Leviticus 18 and 20 for a fuller description of the seventh commandment and Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 for a fuller description of the sixth commandment. All of the other commandments were also explained more completely by Moses. But, in addition to this, the Lord also gave His people ceremonial laws governing religious rituals. These ceremonial laws are very instructive because we find there an accurate picture of the plan of salvation and what is necessary for a man to do to be saved. These ceremonial laws were symbolic for the time of the Old Covenant (Hebrews 9:9) and included, (1) the daily service of the sanctuary with all that it involved—animal sacrifices, a priest who at that time was Aaron or one of his descendants, and (2) a yearly service of the earthly sanctuary (Hebrews 9:6–8) with all that this service involved and (3) ceremonies involving “foods and drinks, various washings and ordinances” pertaining to the body or the flesh (Hebrews 9:10). Then Paul states that these things were “imposed until the time of reformation.” When was the time of reformation? When the seed came (Galatians 3:19), when the Old Covenant would be superceded by the New Covenant (see Matthew 26:26–29), when the earthly sanctuary would be superceded by the heavenly sanctuary (Hebrews 9:11–15).
In the New Covenant we do not keep the types but rather the New Covenant ceremonies instead—the Old Covenant has passed away. The New Covenant ceremonies are three: (1) the ceremony of baptism which takes the place of circumcision; (2) the ceremony of humility or footwashing service (John 13) which takes the place of all the washings and purification ceremonies of the Old Covenant; and (3) the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper which takes the place of the Passover. Paul is very clear that Christians are not to keep the typical or ceremonial laws anymore; notice especially Hebrews 9:10; Galatians 3:19; Ephesians 2:14–18; Galatians 4:9, 10; Galatians 4:21–31; Galatians 5:1–6; Galatians 6:12–15.