CONTENTS
There
are two things which are indispensable to the Christian’s life: first, a clear
knowledge of duty, and second, a conscientious practice of duty corresponding
to his knowledge. As we can have no well-grounded hope of eternal salvation
without obedience, so we can have no sure rule of obedience without knowledge.
Although there may be knowledge without practice, yet there
cannot possibly be practice of God’s will without knowledge. And therefore that
we might be informed what we ought to do and what to avoid, it has pleased the
Ruler and Judge of all the earth to prescribe for us laws for the regulating of
our actions. When we had miserably defaced the Law of nature originally written
in our hearts, so that many of its commandments were no
longer legible, it seemed good to the Lord to transcribe that Law into the
Scriptures, and in the Ten Commandments we have a summary of the same.
First let us consider their promulgation. The manner in which the Decalogue was formally delivered to Israel
was very awe-inspiring, yet replete with valuable
instruction for us. First, the people were commanded to spend two days in
preparing themselves, by a ceremonial cleansing from all external pollution,
before they were ready to stand in the presence of God (Exodus 19:10, 11). This
teaches us that serious preparation of heart and mind must be made before we
come to wait before God in His ordinances and receive a word
at His mouth; and that if Israel must sanctify themselves in order to appear
before God at Sinai, how much more must we sanctify ourselves that we may be
meet to appear before God in Heaven. Next, the mount on which God appeared was
to be fenced, with a strict prohibition that none should presume to approach
the holy mount (19:12, 13). This teaches us that God is
infinitely superior to us and due our utmost reverence, and intimates the
strictness of His Law.
Next
we have a description of the fearful manifestation in which Jehovah appeared to
deliver His Law (Exodus 19:18, 19), which was designed to affect the people of
Israel with an awe for His authority and to signify that if
God were so terrible in the giving of the Law, when He comes to judge us for
its violation how much more so will He be? When God had delivered the Ten
Words, so greatly affected were the people that they entreated Moses to act as
a mediator and interpreter between God and them (20:18, 19). This teaches us
that when the Law is delivered to us directly by God it is
(in itself) the ministration of condemnation and death, but as it is delivered
to us by the Mediator, Christ, we may hear and observe it (see Galatians 3:19;
1 Corinthians 9:21; Galatians 6:2). Accordingly Moses went up into the mount
and received the Law, inscribed by God’s own finger upon two tables of stone,
signifying that our hearts are naturally so hard that none but the finger of God can make any impression of His Law upon them. Those tables
were broken by Moses in his holy zeal (Exodus 32:19), and God wrote them a
second time (34:1). This signifies that the Law of Nature was written on our
hearts at creation, broken when we fell in Adam, and rewritten in our hearts at
regeneration (Hebrews 10:16).
But
some may ask, "Has not the Law been fully abrogated by the coming of
Christ into the world? Would you bring us under that heavy yoke of bondage
which none has ever been able to bear? Does not the New Testament expressly
declare that we are not under the Law, but under Grace; that Christ was made under
the Law to free His people there from? Is not an attempt to
overawe men’s conscience by the authority of the Decalogue a legalistic
imposition, altogether at variance with that Christian liberty which the Savior
has brought in by His obedience unto death?" We answer thus: So far from
the Law being abolished by the coming of Christ into this world, He Himself
emphatically stated,
"Think
not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets (the enforcers thereof):
I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law,
till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5:17, 18).
True,
the Christian is not under the Law as a Covenant of Works nor as a ministration
of condemnation, but he is under
it as a rule of life and a means of sanctification.
Second, let
us consider their uniqueness. This appears first in that this
revelation of God at Sinai, which was to serve for all coming ages as the grand
expression of His holiness and the summation of man’s duty, was attended with
such awe-inspiring phenomena that the very manner of their publication plainly
showed that God Himself assigned to the Decalogue peculiar importance. The Ten
Commandments were uttered by God in an audible voice, with
the fearful adjuncts of clouds and darkness, thunders and lightnings and the
sound of a trumpet, and they were the only parts of Divine Revelation so
spoken—none of the ceremonial or civil precepts were thus distinguished. Those
Ten Words, and they alone, were written by the finger of God upon tables of
stone, and they alone were deposited in the holy ark for
safekeeping. Thus, in the unique honor conferred upon the Decalogue, we may
perceive its paramount importance in the divine government.
Third, let
us consider their springs, which is love. Far too little emphasis has been placed upon their
Divine preface: "And God spake all these words,
saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Whatever of awful grandeur and solemn
majesty attended the promulgation of the Law, nevertheless, it had its
foundation in love. The Law proceeded from God as a clear expression of His character
as both the gracious Redeemer and righteous Lord of His
people. The obvious conclusion and all-important principle that must be drawn
from this understanding is this: redemption necessitates conformity to God’s
character and order in those who are redeemed. Not only was God’s giving of the
Decalogue an act of love, but love was the basis upon which it was received by
His people, for only thus could there be a conformity, an essential
likeness, between a redeeming God and a redeemed people. The words at the close
of the second commandment, "showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments,"
make it crystal clear that the only obedience which God accepts is that which
proceeds from an affectionate heart. The Savior declared that the requirements
of the Law were all summed up in loving God with all our
hearts and loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Fourth, let
us consider their perpetuity. That the Decalogue is binding upon every man in each succeeding
generation is evident from many considerations. First, as the necessary and
unchanging expression of God’s rectitude, its authority
over all moral agents becomes inevitable: the character of God Himself must
change before the Law (the rule of His government) can be revoked. This is the
Law that was given to man at his creation from which his subsequent apostasy
could not relieve him. The Moral Law is founded on relations which subsist
wherever there are creatures endowed with reason and
volition. Second, Christ Himself rendered to the Law a perfect obedience,
thereby leaving us an example, that we should follow in His steps. Third, the
Apostle to the Gentiles specifically raised the question "Do we then make
void the Law through faith?" and answered,
"God
forbid: yea, we establish the Law" (Romans 3:31).
Finally,
the perpetuity of the Law appears in God’s writing it in the hearts of His
people at their new birth (Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:26, 27).
Fifth, we
pass on to say a word upon the number of the commandments of the Moral
Law, ten being indicative of their completeness. This is emphasized in
Scripture by their being expressly designated "the Ten Words" (Exodus
34:28 margin), which intimates that they formed by themselves an entire whole
made up of the necessary, and no more than the necessary, complement of its
parts. It was on account of this symbolic import of the
number that the plagues upon Egypt were precisely that many, forming as such a
complete round of Divine judgments. And it was for the same reason that the
transgressions of the Hebrews in the wilderness were allowed to proceed till
the same number had been reached: when they had "sinned these ten
times" (Numbers 14:21) they had "filled up the measure of their iniquities." Hence also the consecration of the
tithes or tenths: the whole increase was represented by ten, and one of these
was set apart for the Lord in token of all being
derived from Him and held for Him.
Sixth, we
consider their
division. As God
never acts without good reason we may be sure He had some particular design in writing the Law upon two tables. This design is
evident on the surface, for the very substance of these precepts, which
together comprehend the sum of righteousness, separates them into two distinct
groups, the first respecting our obligations Godward, and the second our
obligations manward, the former treating of what belongs peculiarly to the
worship of God, the latter of the duties of charity in our
social relations. Utterly worthless is that righteousness which abstains from
acts of violence against our fellows while we withhold from the Majesty of
heaven the glory which is His due. Equally vain is it to pretend to be
worshippers of God if we refuse those offices of love which are due to our
neighbors. Abstaining from fornication is more than neutralized if I blasphemously take the Lord’s name in vain, while the most
punctilious worship is rejected by Him while 1 steal or lie.
Nor do
the duties of Divine worship fill up the first table because they are, as
Calvin terms them, "the head of religion," but as he rightly adds,
they are "the very soul of it, constituting all its
life and vigor," for without the fear of God, men preserve no equity and
love among themselves. If the principle of piety be lacking, whatever justice,
mercy, and temperance men may practice among themselves, it is vain in the
sight of Heaven; whereas if God be accorded His rightful place in our hearts
and lives, venerating Him as the Arbiter of right and wrong, this will
constrain us to deal equitably with our fellows. Opinion
has varied as to how the Ten Words were divided, as to whether the fifth ended
the first table or began the second.
Personally, we incline decidedly to the former: because parents stand to
us in the place of God while we are young; because in Scripture parents are
never regarded as "neighbors"—on an equality; and because each of the
first five commandments contain the phrase "the Lord
thy God," which is not found in any of the remaining five.
Seventh, let
us consider their spirituality. "The Law is spiritual" (Romans 7:14), not only because it
proceeds from a spiritual Legislator, but because it demands something more
than the mere obedience of external conduct, namely, the
internal obedience of the heart to its uttermost extent. It is only as we
perceive that the Decalogue extends to thoughts and desires of the heart that
we discover how much there is in ourselves in direct opposition to it. God
requires truth
"in the
inward parts" (Psalm 51:6) and prohibits the smallest deviation from
holiness even in our imaginations. The fact that the Law takes
cognizance of our most secret dispositions and intentions, that it demands the
holy regulation of our mind, affections, and will, and that it requires all our
obedience to proceed from love at once demonstrates its Divine origin. No other
law ever professed to govern the spirit of man, but He who searches the heart claims nothing less. This
high spirituality of the Law was evidenced by Christ when
He insisted that an unchaste look was adultery and that malignant anger was a
breach of the sixth commandment.
Eighth, we
consider their
office. The
first use of the Moral Law is to reveal the only righteousness which is acceptable to God, and at the same time to discover to us our
own unrighteousness. Sin has blinded our judgment, filled us with self-love, and
wrought in us a false sense of our own sufficiency. But if we seriously compare
ourselves with the high and holy demands of God’s Law, we are made aware of our
groundless insolence, convicted of our pollution and guilt, and made conscious
of our lack of strength to do what is required of us.
Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book II, Chapter 7, section 7),
says, "Thus the Law is a kind of mirror. As in a mirror we discover any
stains upon our face, so in the Law we behold, first, our impotence; then, in
consequence of it, our iniquity; and, finally, the curse, as the consequence of
both." Its second use is to restrain the wicked, who though
they have no concern for God’s glory and no thought of pleasing Him, yet
refrain from many outward acts of sin through fear of its terrible penalty.
Though this commends them not to God, it is a benefit to the community in which
they live. Third, the law is the believer’s rule of life, to direct him, and to
keep him dependent upon Divine grace.
Ninth, we
consider its
sanctions. Not
only has the Lord brought us under infinite obligations for having redeemed us
from sin’s slavery, not only has He given His people such a sight and sense of
His awe-inspiring majesty as to beget in them a reverence for His sovereignty,
but He has been pleased to provide additional inducements for us to yield to His authority, gladly perform His bidding, and shrink with
abhorrence from what He forbids, by subjoining promises and threatenings,
saying, "For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that
hate Me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My
commandments." Thus we are informed that those who
perform His bidding shall not labor in vain, just as rebels shall not escape
with impunity.
And tenth and finally, we consider their interpretation. "Thy commandment" said
the Psalmist "is exceeding broad" (119:96). So comprehensive is the
Moral Law that its authority extends to all the moral
actions of our lives. The rest of the Scriptures are but a commentary on the
Ten Commandments, either exciting us to obedience by arguments, alluring us by
promises, restraining from transgressions by threatenings, or spurring us to
the one and withholding us from the other by examples recorded in the
historical portions. Rightly understood the precepts of the
New Testament are but explications, amplifications, and applications of the Ten
Commandments. It should be carefully observed that in the things expressly
commanded or forbidden there is always implied more than is formally stated.
But let us be more specific.
First, in
each Commandment the chief duty or sin is taken as
representative of all the lesser duties or sins, and the overt act is taken as
representative of all related affections. Whatever specific sin be named, all
the sins of the same kind, with all the causes and provocations thereof, are
forbidden, for Christ expounded the sixth commandment as condemning not only
actual murder, but also rash anger in the heart.
Second, when
any vice is forbidden, the contrary virtue is enjoined, and when any virtue is
commanded, the contrary vice is condemned. For example, in the third God
forbids the taking of His name in vain, so by necessary consequence the
hallowing of His name is commanded. And
as the
eighth forbids stealing, so it requires the contrary duty—earning our living
and paying for what we receive (Ephesians 4:28).