Those of you following the Bible Unity Reading Plan read the Ten Commandments this last week. How is that Law relevant for us today?  Why did God give the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel? Did God give these commandments so that the people could enter into a relationship with Him by keeping them?

How can we answer questions like this?

We must look at the context of the commandments:

• Including the immediate context of the passage,
• Including the context of the storyline of the book of Exodus,
• Including the context of the overall storyline of the Bible,
• Including what the New Testament has to say about these commandments.

Consider first the immediate context and the storyline of Exodus. The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt. While they were still slaves, God said, “Israel is my firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22).  Not after they kept the Law. Before they even received the Law, Israel was in the family of God.

God then rescues the people from slavery and brings them to Mt Sinai. He states: “I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus 19:4). Then in introducing the Ten Commandments, He says, “ I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2, emphasis added). The people were already with Him, they belonged to Him, He was their God prior to Him speaking the Ten Commandments. The relationship preceded the Law.

Subsequently, the people explicitly violate several of the commandments in the incident of the golden calf (Exodus 32). God punishes the people via the Levites, and many are killed. But He reveals His very nature:

Merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty (Exodus 34:6b-7a).

How can he both forgive iniquity and not clear the guilty? The story of the Bible eventually tells us: The sacrificial system provides hints; the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 develops the idea more fully; the perfect sacrifice occurs at the cross; and the Apostle Paul tells us that God is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:25).

And so God does not say to His disobedient, rebellious people, “That’s it! You broke the Ten Commandments! You’re no longer my people!” Instead, in the latter chapters of Exodus He commands them now to build the tabernacle – the picture of His presence in the midst of His people.

The point is this: We do not enter into a relationship with God by keeping the Ten Commandments, or any other law, or any other rules. Nor do we remain in relationship to God by keeping His law or by keeping rules. We enter into a relationship with Him by His grace and mercy through the cross. And we remain in relationship with Him by His grace and mercy through the cross. This is the very center of biblical Christianity.

What then is the role of the Ten Commandments? What is the role of Law?

The Nature of the Ten Commandments: Life in a Family

When we hear the word “law,” we normally think of some set of restrictions on our behavior. A sign on I-85 says that there is a law prohibiting you from driving faster than 65mph. If you see a police car in your rearview mirror, you will restrict your driving speed. You will not drive 80mph.

But God’s Law is not fundamentally a set of restrictions on our behavior. Instead, God’s Law fundamentally is a revelation of His character. Through the Law, He tells us what He loves and what He hates: “I Yahweh love justice; I hate robbery and wrong” (Isaiah 61:8). God in His very essence hates and despises sin, He despises evil; in His very essence, he loves righteousness and justice.

Now, connect this with the idea of God’s people being His family. When we had six little children running around the house needing correction, we would sometimes say, “We’re Pinckneys – we don’t act that way. Instead, in this family, this is how we behave.” That’s similar to what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Thus, when God tells us to obey His Law, He is saying, “Become like Me! I have brought you to Myself! You are part of my intimate family! This is your identity; this is who you are. So act like it’s true! Act like me!”

So God does not give us the Ten Commandments, saying, “Obey these and you will be in My family.” Nor does He say, “Obey these in order to remain in My family.” Instead, He says to the Israelites, “You are in the family. And this is how those in my family live. This is how they reflect my character.”

Four Implications of the Ten Commandments Revealing God’s Character

If the Ten Commandments tell us how to take on God’s character, then there are at least four implications we can discern from Scripture:

First, these are all positive commands, not just prohibitions

For we don’t become like God by avoiding certain behaviors!

Consider the seventh commandment: Do not commit adultery. Lots of people never commit the physical act of adultery, but they are filled with lust. As Jesus points out, such people have broken the commandment without engaging in the physical act (Matthew 5:28).

But we are not to simply expand the command, saying, “Do not commit the physical act of adultery or lust.” Rather, we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. We are to take on His character. Thus, with regard to the seventh commandment, we are to honor all marriages, we are to build up our own marriages and the marriages of others to the glory of God.

So each commandment both prohibits some attitudes and behaviors, and commends others.

Second, no one will succeed in fully taking on the character of God

As 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” None of us will reach perfection in this life. God’s Spirit will work in those He has saved so that we bear the fruit of the character of God:

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

But in this life that work remains incomplete. We can never say, “At long last: Now I am like God!”

Third, Jesus fully displayed the character of God

He said He came to fulfill the Law (Matthew 5:17) – and He did. He showed us what God is like: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Fourth: How then can we fulfill the commandments and be holy? By union with Christ!

Through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, God not only saves us from our rebellion, wiping out the negatives in our accounts. He also adds positives – He credits us with the righteousness of Jesus Himself. In union with Christ, we along with all other believers are counted righteous:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Jesus fulfilled the Law. We fulfill the Law not by perfectly keeping the Law, but through union with Christ, through being credited with Christ’s righteousness. And we learn practically how to take on the character of God, how to take on His family likeness in our day to day lives, via the Law.

How then is the Law, and the Ten Commandments in particular, relevant for us today?

The Ten Commandments are not a law code for ancient Israel in our modern sense of “law code.” Nor are the Ten Commandments primarily restrictions on our behavior. Rather, the Ten Commandments are a revelation of the character of God, so that those in His family might know Him better, love Him more, and become like Him by His grace. And this only happens in and through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

(Parts of this devotion are taken from a sermon on Exodus 20:1-3 preached May 9, 2010, “Having Been Saved By Grace, Do You Put God First?” The audio is available here.)