How to love God and others

An overview of the 10 Commandments

Mount Sinai

Israel, God’s chosen people, were free. They had been enslaved people in Egypt for four hundred years. Now God had given them laws to live by. Israel was special. God wanted them to be different from all of the other nations. They were to be a people set apart. Like Israel, God calls believers to be different. Different from the world around us.

The ten commandments.
This is the moral law that God gave to Israel. While God gave many other laws to Israel, these ten are essential for us today.

Why should we care about the ten commandments?

The Bible is a book about God. Who He is, His character, His actions, His commands, and so much more.

The ten commandments are God’s laws. They are an expression of who he is as God.

“The law is an expression of the Lawgiver’s heart and character…… The commandments not only show us what God wants; they show us what God is like. They say something about his honor, his worth, and his majesty. They tell us what matters to God. We can’t disdain the law without disrespecting the Lawgiver.” (DeYoung, 2018)

The law shows us God’s expectations. It shows us we are sinners. It shows us our need for a Savior, a cleansing of our sins, and a righteous standard of holy and good living.

Being set apart, we are to live a certain way. Long after the Israelites had received these laws, Jesus reiterated them in the New Testament. Reminding his followers how important they were to follow.

“..when Jesus was asked which of the commandments was the greatest, He summarized the ten into two inseparable rules—love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself. These two principles formed the foundation of the entire law. Jesus said that loving God with all our hearts was the greatest commandment, and that loving our neighbors as ourselves was second (Matthew 22:36–40). Jesus’ answer shows how the Decalogue is divided: the first four commandments focus on the vertical, spiritual, relationship of loving God, and the remaining six focus on the horizontal, moral, relationship of loving other people. Thus, the Ten Commandments should be understood within the context of love. (West, 2010)

What are the ten commandments?

Commandment 1: “You shall have no other gods before me.

Commandment 2: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Commandment 3: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Commandment 4: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Commandment 5: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Commandment 6: “You shall not murder.

Commandment 7: “You shall not commit adultery.

Commandment 8: “You shall not steal.

Commandment 9: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Commandment 10: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

While the ten commandments were given to Israel in the Old Testament, Jesus in the New Testament highlights their importance to his followers. Obeying the ten commandments does not earn our salvation. It is because we are saved by grace through faith that we obey them.

“…salvation is not the reward for obedience; salvation is the reason for obedience. Jesus does not say, “If you obey my commandments, I will love you.” Instead, he first washes the feet of the disciples and then says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). All of our doing is only because of what he has first done for us.” (DeYoung, 2018)


The ten commandments tell us how to please God by loving Him first, then others. How have you loved God this week?

“If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society, He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.” Zig Ziglar


Bibliography
DeYoung, K. (2018). THE 10 COMMANDMENTS What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them
West, R.M. (2010) “The 10 Commandments—Then and Now”