Ordinance

An ordinance is a prescribed rule or practice — something ordained, whether by God, by a religious body, or by civil authority — and in Scripture the English word covers both ceremonial regulations and the ordering of public life.

The text of Hebrews describes the first tabernacle as standing while "the way into the Holy Place wasn’t yet revealed" (Hebrews 9:8), its worship consisting of "foods and drinks and various washings" — "fleshly ordinances, imposed until a time of reformation" (Hebrews 9:10). Linguistically, the Greek noun behind "ordinances" there is a word for requirements or regulations, and the same Greek term underlies "the law of commandments contained in ordinances" that Ephesians says Christ abolished in his flesh to make peace and "one new man" of two peoples (Ephesians 2:15). Colossians speaks of "the handwriting in ordinances which was against us," taken away and "nailing it to the cross" (Colossians 2:14), and then asks why believers would still "subject yourselves to ordinances" as though living in the world (Colossians 2:20). The word is also used of purely human authority: "subject yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether to the king, as supreme" (1 Peter 2:13).

Scripture consistently treats ordinances as ordered means rather than ends. Circumcision, the paradigmatic commanded rite, "amounts to anything" neither way in Christ Jesus; what counts is "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6) and "a new creation" (Galatians 6:15). The prophetic critique runs in the same direction: the text says God has "had enough of the burnt offerings of rams" and will not hear multiplied prayers while hands are "full of blood" (Isaiah 1:11, 1:15), and it calls instead for washing, ceasing evil, learning to do well, seeking justice, relieving the oppressed, defending the fatherless, pleading for the widow (Isaiah 1:16–17).

Christian traditions read the term differently. Baptist and other free-church traditions commonly call baptism and the Lord’s Supper "ordinances" — practices Christ commanded, observed in obedience, and typically understood as symbolic and declarative rather than as conveying grace; Reformed churches likewise speak of ordinances of worship, including Word, sacrament, and prayer, often as means of grace. Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican usage generally prefers "sacrament," with Lutheran and Reformed bodies counting two and Catholic and Orthodox bodies seven, and understanding them as channels of grace. Traditions also differ on how far the "ordinances" of Ephesians 2:15 and Colossians 2:14 mean the ceremonial law, the Mosaic law as a whole, or humanly added regulations.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.