The Law and The Commandments

Many religious scholars have lamented that Jesus left behind no text, nothing in His own words to guide us and be certain of His intention.  Yet if we accept and understand that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament then we do, in fact, have a document written in the very hand of God.  The Ten Commandments.  While there are many other laws, ordinances and principals listed within both the Old Testament and the New Testament only the Ten Commandments were written directly on tablets of stone in God or Jesus’ own hand.

And there is a difference between the Ten Commandments and the many other laws that are written in the Scriptures.  This doesn't mean that one must be obeyed while the others can be ignored – nothing written inspired by God can be ignored – but there are differences.  In the book of Leviticus, for example, God explains the many different forms of sacrifice, the differing times such sacrifices should be offered and what specific animals, incense or other tools or materials would be required.  The ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, God incarnate come to live as a human man, made those Old Testament sacrifices redundant.  This doesn't mean that God’s word is redundant – sacrifice is necessary for the cleansing of sin in order to draw closer to God – but the manner in which sacrifice takes place has changed dramatically.  Since Jesus’ death and resurrection, the sacrifice that God asks of us daily is that we live our lives in accordance and relationship with Him.

The book of Leviticus also recites many laws pertaining to being ritually or literally ‘unclean’.  For example in Leviticus chapter 13 God speaks of the way the community should deal with someone who has an infectious skin disease.  They should be cleansed by the priest and put outside the camp.  These laws are not fundamental today as we have antibiotics, skin lotions and other medications which can treat an infection and prevent it spreading to other people.  Yet the principal behind the law remains the same – basically if you’re sick and contagious you should stay away from other people rather than risk giving them the same sickness.  So while the ‘letter’ of the law may have changed according to our changing world the ‘spirit’ of the law remains the same.

 

Yet there are some laws, many in fact, that the Scriptures make plain are absolutely immutable and unchanging.  God does not try to hide or disguise those laws which will be abiding forever, He makes a point when discussing certain laws that these must be kept eternally.  The most specific of those laws are the Ten Commandments.  I would like to take the time, over the next series of posts, going through each one of those specific Commandments and how and why they should and still apply today.

Firstly it is interesting to note that the Ten Commandments are divided into two sections.  The first section, or the first four Commandments, tells humans how they should love and worship God and the second section, the remaining six, tells humans how they should love and treat each other. God knows now, as He has always known, that loving our fellow human beings can be the hardest thing that any person can ever do – sometimes, because we live in a fallen world where sin and the Devil rule, human beings can be very difficult to love.

The first of the Ten Commandments is relatively simple, on the surface.

"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  You shall have no other gods before me.”  Firstly we know that in the original language, Hebrew, is should more properly be read “We are the Lord your Gods…you shall have no other gods before us”.   Yet as simple as this Commandment seems to be it does beg several questions.

Why does God stress that it was He who brought the Israelites out of Egypt?  Simply because He was speaking to a group of people who for hundreds of years had become accustomed to the concept of multiple gods, one for all occasions almost.  Also because He was reminding the people that the Egyptian gods, when confronted with the power of the True God, had failed miserably in their attempts to either match or divert God’s power.  Each one of the ten plagues that was visited upon Egypt was a direct assault by the True God against the false pantheon of Egyptian gods.

Thus God wanted to stress that He and He alone is the Divine Spirit Being, the Creator and therefore the only god worthy of worship.  He also makes plain in that statement, however, that many of the people were still worshipping, either directly or indirectly, the more comfortable gods they were familiar with and this remains relevant to this day.

In the modern world we have many gods, although we may not necessarily call them that, that we worship over and above the True Creator God.   In our society today we worship money, fame, power and even celebrities; raising them to a standard of godhood that the True God tells us explicitly is unacceptable.  God and Jesus alone are worthy of our adoration and worship.  Regardless of how attractive the other gods can be; and many of them appear on the surface to be very attractive.  For example the habit of many people of giving adoration to those who perform extensive charity works or good deeds.  But never forget, it is only God and Jesus who are entitled to our worship.

If we make God and Jesus first in our hearts and our thoughts then we are on the beginning of the right road towards true Christianity.

In peace and love,

Tracey