Below is an excerpt from an article written by Jon Zens. You will find the full article here.
"It is vital to see the precise parallel at this point between the Old and New Covenants. Both covenants were based upon the Lord’s action in history to separate to Himself a people. Israel was separated to God by the Exodus out of Egypt ; the ekklesia was separated to God by the Exodus accomplished by Christ in Jerusalem (Lk 9:31 ). The moral demand on Israel was first prefaced by mention of God’s mighty arm: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt , out of the land of slavery” (Ex 20:2). The moral demand upon the New Covenant people is rooted in Christ’s work on Golgotha , “as I have loved you.” The pattern is clear — the redemptive event (the indicative) is the basis for the required life-style (the imperatives) of the covenant peoples. That is to say, the event that saves us also commands us how to live...If you look at books on Christian Ethics you will discover that most of them end up being expositions of the Ten Commandments, as if ethical fullness can only be found in Exodus 20. In such volumes the “new commandment” and its implications are almost never given any attention. To cite a glaring example, in Patrick Fairbairn’s massive The Revelation of Law in Scripture, he devotes a great deal of space to the Ten Commandments, but says almost nothing about the “new command” in John 13. In the history of theology more attention has fallen on the Old Covenant ethics based on the Egyptian Exodus than on the New Covenant ethics flowing out of the Exodus Christ carried out in Jerusalem (Lk 9:31)."
