The Ten Commandments

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Basic Human Ethics

by Edwin Walhout

Published by Edwin Walhout

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Edwin Walhout

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Cover design by Amy Cole ([email protected])

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Contents

1. Are the Ten Commandments Still Valid?

2. No Other Gods

3. Idolatry

4. The Name Yahweh

5. The Sabbath Day

6. Parental Respect

7. Killing

8. Adultery

9. Stealing

10. False Witness

11. Coveting

12. The New Covenant

1

ARE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS STILL VALID?

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

Psalm 19:7

Before examining the ten commandments individually, it will be useful to ask the question whether or not the ten commandments are still valid. Are they still in force or have they gone the way of all items in the old covenant, valid for ancient Israel but superseded in Christian faith?

How do we determine this? We can examine each of the specific commands, and try to evaluate it as to whether it still serves a purpose, or whether it is nothing more than an arbitrary religious requirement. Take, for example, the command to remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. By and large people today no longer find this command relevant. Committed Christian people do all kinds of things on Sunday (assuming that is the sabbath day) that past generations of Christians would not dare to do. Or take the seventh commandment, Thou shalt not commit adultery. Past generations understood this to mean no sexual activity outside of the bonds of marriage, marriage being the union of a man and a woman. But some moderns find little value in this prohibition, such that mutual consent is the only applicable rule for sexual activity.

The Old Covenant

But even if we do not accept popular opinion and practice as decisive in the question of the continuing validity of the commandments, there is still a very cogent biblical argument against it. That argument is simply that the old covenant is past, no longer in effect, supplanted by a new and better covenant. The Decalogue is the cornerstone of the old covenant and is therefore also passè along with all the other provisions of that covenant. The new covenant in Christ’s blood supersedes it. Jesus Christ has fulfilled all the provisions of that old covenant, so that now simply believing in him is sufficient – believing, of course, understood as producing a life guided by his Spirit. The point being that Christians are now guided by the Holy Spirit rather than by the Law (including the Decalogue); they are no longer under the Law. That’s the argument.

It is clear enough that Paul’s theology, reflecting the teaching of Jesus, does insist that Christians no longer are required to observe the tenets of Old Testament law. They may do so if they choose, but they are not to be held accountable if they do not. The early Jewish Christians might feel very uncomfortable if not allowed to practice some of those treasured old religious ceremonies: circumcision, kosher food, holy days – so it is acceptable for them to do so. On the other hand, newly converted Christians of Gentile background are not required to observe these Jewish ceremonies. Those religious practices contribute nothing to Gentile Christians in the way of serving God and following Jesus. Christians are freed from that law. That’s Paul’s argument.

Still Paul, in his letters, is constantly listing the kind of behavior that is acceptable and proper for Christian people. There are standards of right and wrong. There are things that Christian people simply do not do, and there are virtues that Christian people must strive to attain. Paul may refer to these as the fruits of the Spirit, as in Galatians 5, but clearly he implies some kind of objective standard by which to judge the rightness and wrongness of certain kinds of behavior. And that implies, does it not, some kind of moral law? And if this law is not the Ten Commandments, what is it?

How do you maintain that there is an essential difference between right and wrong if you reject the concept of objective moral law as the criterion? To affirm that Christians are guided by the Holy Spirit, not by law, does not quite answer the question. The Holy Spirit does lead all Christians, but Christians are found in a wide variety of circumstances, so that moving closer to God may involve considerably different activity for some people than for others. Christian missionaries in the past have found native people living in near nudity, for example. Is there an objective divine law that our bodies must be fully clothed? Must missionaries make western habits of clothing mandatory for newly converted persons in native surroundings?

The point here is that the Spirit leads each person individually, beginning where that person is, and gradually leading him or her closer to the goal of godliness. But the process of getting there may vary considerably from one group of Christians to another, depending on where they start. The Spirit may well lead Seventh Day Adventists to observe Saturday as the sabbath, and other Protestants to observe Sunday as the Lord’s Day. But cannot they both be right, granting our mutual shortcomings? Cannot the Spirit be leading both? That would not mean both are absolutely, unchangeably, eternally right. It would mean that both would be right in the ongoing process of sanctification. Maybe ultimately, from the point of view of absolute truth and right, maybe both are wrong, but need to go through this phase in order to get to a better point of view.

The Holy Spirit may well lead a Christian who has not yet licked the demon of alcoholism to an Alcoholics Anonymous group. But a Christian who does not have that problem would find little value in it. The Holy Spirit may well make a proud Christian humble by humiliating him, whereas a person who is humble to begin with may need some other kind of guidance. The Spirit may lead a wealthy Christian in vastly different paths than one who is poverty stricken. The Spirit may lead a Christian of modest intellect in different paths than a Christian of superior mental ability. And so it goes. What is useful and good for one Christian may not necessarily be useful and good for other Christians.

So we seem to be caught between two poles. On the one hand, there does seem to be an absolute standard of right and wrong that should apply to every person on earth. But on the other hand, each person needs individual guidance such that rigid laws governing everyone might not be what some individuals need to grow spiritually.

How do you get to Chicago, by going east or by going west? It depends on where you start. You may have to go north or south. You can’t make a hard and fast law about it. So too, how do you get into the kingdom of heaven? It depends from where you start. The Holy Spirit may take one person east and another person west, but they are both traveling in the right direction, toward the throne of God.

Written in Stone

None of this helps much to answer the question whether or not the Ten Commandments are still valid. Are these commandments in the category of absolute unchangeable truth, absolute divine right and wrong? Or are they in the other category of relative truth, relative to ancient Israel for their time in history, but no longer useful for modern Christians? Is the Spirit of Christ leading us as Christians in a different direction than he led the ancient Old Testament people of God, but still aiming for the same destination?

There is one feature about the Ten Commandments that differentiates them from the rest of the provisions of the ancient Code of Moses received at Mount Sinai. They were written in stone, as were not the liturgical, judicial, social and other laws we find in Exodus and Leviticus. The phrase has come into recognized English usage, written in stone. It means, generally, that something is unchangeable. You can’t erase it and make it say something else. It is chiseled into the granite.

But does this mean it is unchangeable for the Israelites or does it mean for all human beings? God gave the Ten Commandments to the Israelites, and there does not seem to be any suggestion in Exodus that they were intended for all nations everywhere (though they might be so intended without saying so). There is, of course, the promise to Abraham that his descendants would become a blessing to the whole world. So perhaps this might be how: the Ten Commandments for everyone. But that conclusion hardly carries conviction, because it says nothing about Jesus. Still the fact that the commandments are written in stone does suggest a great deal of permanence, as opposed to the other laws written on papyrus. But are they superseded by the new covenant in Jesus’ blood?

There is a clue in one of the commandments that might be taken as a straw in the wind. Moses writes that there is a sabbath day for Israel because there was a sabbath day for God. God created the world in six days and rested the seventh day. We, being images of God, ought to do the same. We should rest from our daily labors one day in seven, just as God did in creation. Might this interesting tidbit be a clue to be followed, such that all the commandments should be seen as somehow connected with God from the beginning of creation?

On the other hand, maybe this rationale for a sabbath day is merely a literary technique. Maybe Moses began with the observation that people did have the custom of resting one day in seven, and then projected that observation into his story of how God created the world. In that case God would be imitating people, not people imitating God. That’s not a good way of understanding the Bible, but someone could make the argument.

Then again, there is no evidence that one day in seven is rooted in nature. We could make that argument for a year or for a month or for a day, but not for a week. A year is the amount of time it takes for the earth to travel once through its orbit. A month is the time it takes for the moon to travel once through its orbit. A day is the length of time it takes for the earth to rotate once upon its axis. But what is a week? Where in nature does the idea of one day in seven come from? It would be very hard to make an argument that a sabbath day once a week is rooted in the nature of things. You can say it is rooted in the pattern of God’s creation, but that is a literary origin, not a natural one.

So we do not seem to be getting anywhere in our examination of whether or not there is any evidence anywhere to suggest that the Ten Commandments are still in effect.

Moral Principles

Let’s try another tack. It was not uncommon in the ancient world for people in other nations to make a set of laws. The Code of Hammurabi, centuries earlier, comes to mind. Most major nations did develop such a code of laws to introduce some form of justice into the social fabric. The Israelites were still in the process of escaping from Egyptian slavery, on their way to who knows where. They were not by any stretch of the imagination an organized, well-disciplined nation. They were a conglomeration of mostly unorganized ex-slaves, ill prepared to take on the duties of self-government. So what Moses did at Mount Sinai simply was an urgent necessity. He composed, under the guidance of God, a workable and comprehensive set of laws to govern every area of life. There were laws for adjudicating disputes, for punishment of crime, for inheriting estates, for marriage; there were liturgical laws designed to remind the people that there was, after all, a God who looked after them and who was guiding them every day. Laws of offerings and annual festivities, laws for priests and Levites, laws for a tabernacle. Part of this whole corpus was the Ten Commandments. Written on stone, not on papyrus. The people of Israel needed the Ten Commandments fully as much, if not more, than they needed that whole vast estate of social and political and economic law.

Accordingly, what we see in the Ten Commandments is a kind of summary of all the other laws, the Law in a nutshell, God’s law in miniature. The Ten Commandments are moral laws, not case laws. They do not say what shall