The Advent Truth
One of the strangest arguments people make against God’s law is this: “If the Ten Commandments existed before Sinai, why does John 1:17 say the law was given by Moses?”

But that argument confuses the messenger with the Author.

John didn’t say Moses invented the law. He said the law was given by Moses. Moses was the instrument God used to deliver it to Israel. By the same logic, because Moses wrote Genesis, would anyone claim creation began when Moses wrote about it? Of course not.

The bigger problem is this: the Bible is full of examples of God holding people accountable for sin long before Mount Sinai.

Cain was condemned for murder. The generation of the Flood was destroyed for wickedness. Sodom and Gomorrah were judged for their rebellion. Pharaoh was punished for refusing God’s will. The Amorites were filling up a cup of “iniquity” centuries before Moses was born.

That raises an unavoidable question:

How can there be iniquity if there is no moral standard?

The Bible defines sin as “the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4). If there was no law before Sinai, then there was no transgression before Sinai. If there was no transgression before Sinai, then God’s judgments throughout Genesis become impossible to explain.

Ironically, Genesis 15:16 proves the exact opposite of what some claim. God told Abraham that the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. Iniquity means guilt before God. Guilt requires a standard. God was judging pagan nations by His moral law hundreds of years before Israel stood at Sinai.

And what sins were the Amorites committing? Idolatry. Child sacrifice. Adult style immorality. Unalivings. The very things condemned by the Ten Commandments.

The truth is simple: Sinai was not the birth of God’s law. Sinai was the public proclamation of a law that had already existed from the beginning.

The law did not originate with Moses. It originated with God.

And the strongest evidence that God’s law existed before Sinai is that sin existed before Sinai.