Life in God’s Family: The Basis and Nature of the Ten Commandments

How would you describe an ideal family?

Is it a family in which the children always obey every rule the parents make?

We know that is not the case. Indeed, outward obedience to parents can co-exist with deep anger and resentment, as displayed by the older son in Luke 15.

Instead, love and trust characterize the ideal family. There is obedience to parents, yes – but that obedience flows out of love, out of trust, out of a feeling of security and acceptance.

Just so in the family of God. God’s family members surely obey – but not with the outward, formal obedience of the Pharisees. Their obedience instead is joyful and willing, flowing from confidence in the loving character of God.

Consider the Ten Commandments in this regard. These commandments summarize God’s torah, His instructions to His people. Many misunderstand both the nature and implications of these commandments. So let’s examine, first of all, the basis and nature of the Ten Commandments. From these we’ll draw out four implications for all the Commandments. In future devotions we’ll consider the Commandments one by one.

The Basis of the Ten Commandments: Relationship with God

The people of Israel do not come into a relationship with God by obeying the Ten Commandments; they are already in a relationship with Him when He speaks the Commandments.

  • When Moses first approaches Pharaoh, God says, “Israel is my firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22).
  • God told Moses at the burning bush that the people would worship Him at Sinai (Exodus 3:12).
  • God reiterates that plan multiple times in words spoken to Pharaoh (Exodus 4:23, 5:1, 5:3, 8:1, 8:20, 9:1, 9:13, 10:3).
  • When they first arrive at Sinai, God says, “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus 19:4, emphasis added).
  • Immediately prior to speaking the Commandments, God says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2, emphasis added).

So the Israelites’ relationship with God precedes the giving of the Law. They enter into a relationship with God through His love, by His grace (Deuteronomy 7:6-8).

Furthermore, they do not remain in relationship with God through keeping the Law. In Exodus 32, they explicitly break the Commandments. God’s judgment falls on a small percentage, but He reveals Himself as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, … forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7).

Now, He goes on to say He “will by no means leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:7 NIV) – He is the God of both grace and justice. We only understand fully how God’s grace and justice both hold when we see Jesus’ death on the cross.

But our point for today is this: Neither the Israelites nor we today enter into a relationship with God through obedience to the Law. Neither the Israelites nor we today remain in a relationship with God through obedience to the Law. We enter into a relationship with Him by grace through faith. We remain in that relationship by grace through faith.

 

The Nature of the Ten Commandments: Life in God’s Family

When we hear the word “law,” we normally think of some set of restrictions on our behavior. A sign on I-485 says that there is a law prohibiting you from driving faster than 70mph. 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 the LORD love justice; I hate robbery and wrong” (Isaiah 61:8). God in His holy essence hates and despises sin, He despises evil; in His 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.” We then explained 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 – and to us! – “You are in the family. And this is how those in my family live. This is how they reflect my character.”

 

Four Implications for Understanding the Ten Commandments

a) The Ten Commandments are positive, not only negative

We don’t become like God simply by avoiding certain actions – we must change positively!

For example, consider the seventh commandment: “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). Many never commit the physical act of adultery, but lust after others. Jesus tells us these too break the commandment (Matthew 5:28). But we can’t just modify the commandment to include a prohibition of lust! Rather, the Commandment exhorts us to take on the character of God. We positively are to honor marriage, to build up own, to assist others to strengthen their marriages, all to the glory of God.

So, in general, each commandment forbids some attitudes and behaviors while commending others.

b) No one will succeed in fully taking on the character of God

Those at the moment outside God’s family are “dead in trespasses and sin” (Ephesians 2:1). God graciously brings the redeemed into His family, making us “alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5). He grants us His Spirit, enabling us to “put to death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13), providing a way of escape from temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13) and producing in us Christlike character (Galatians 5:22-23). Yet we all fail; “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

The Day is coming after Jesus returns when He does away with sin forever. We will be like Him, seeing Him as He is (1 John 3:2). But until that Day, we will stumble and fall. However much we grow – and we should grow! – we will never be perfect as our heavenly Father.

c) Jesus fully displayed the character of God

Jesus 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). He loved God with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength every minute of every day. He loved every person He encountered as He loved Himself.

d) How then can we be like God? Though union with Jesus!

When we come to God by grace through faith in Jesus, God not only saves us from our sins, wiping out the negatives from our accounts; He also credits us with the righteousness of Jesus – in Him we become “the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). His active obedience to the entirety of the Law is credited to us.

 

Thus, the Ten Commandments do not constitute a law code for ancient Israel (in our contemporary sense of law code). Rather they are a revelation of the character of God, so that those in His family might know Him better and become like Him by His grace. And that happens only via Jesus.

So salvation is not primarily about saving us from hell – it is that, but also much more. Salvation is primarily about being in God’s family, credited with Jesus’ righteousness, transformed to become like Him – partially in this life, completely in the next.

(This devotion is based on the first half of 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. An earlier blog post covering some of the same material is here.)

“Linism” and Resisting Evil

In our journey through the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, we have reached chapter 13, in which he discusses our submission to government. We know – as Paul did! – that governments often do evil acts. An evil man might succeed in killing hundreds; it takes a government to kill millions.

On February 11, we considered Paul’s injunction to submit to the governing authorities, and whether or not we should ever resist them. But along with that teaching, consider today our Lord Jesus’ command in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matthew 5:39). Does this settle the issue? Should we never do anything to stop evil? (more…)

God’s Law and Life in His Family

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. (more…)

Old Testament Elaborations on the Sixth Commandment

Here is a selection of verses in the Old Testament that elaborate on Exodus 20:13, “Do not murder.” I summarized these verses in Sunday’s sermon.

Manslaughter falls under this commandment, but leads to a different penalty: Exodus 21:12-14, Numbers 35:10-15. Numbers 35:22-25. Deuteronomy 19:4-6. The perpetrator must flee to and remain in a “city of refuge” and remain their until the death of the High Priest (Numbers 35:33-34). This serves as a picture of the need for atoning blood, even in the case of manslaughter.

The proper penalty corresponds to the harm done: Leviticus 24:19-20; see Exodus 21:18-19 and Exodus 21:26-27 for examples.

When a person kills a thief who has broken into his house at night, the killer is innocent. If this happens during the day, his is guilty (Exodus 22:2-3).

Kidnapping is treated similarly to murder (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7).

Negligence that leads to the harming or death of another leads to guilt and the need for compensation: An ox goring (Exodus 21:28-32), someone falling off an insecure roof (Deuteronomy 22:8), an animal being injured by an unsafe hole (Exodus 21:33-34), an animal grazing in another’s field (Exodus 22:5), a fire that spreads to another’s field (Exodus 22:6).

Concern for others extends particularly to those who are weak and defenseless, and thus easily oppressed:  the sojourner, the widow, the fatherless child (Exodus 22:21-23, Exodus 23:9), aliens (Leviticus 19:33-34 which include “love [the alien] as yourself”), the deaf and the blind (Leviticus 19:11). In the Exodus passage, with no person to protect them, God promises to be their protector: “I will kill [the oppressor] with the sword.”

Many cases refer specifically to the poor:

Do not lend at interest or hold on to their cloak overnight: Exodus 22:25-27, Leviticus 25:35-38

Pay their wages promptly; don’t delay just because you can get away with it: Deuteronomy 24:14-15

Lend to the needy poor, and cancel their debts at the end of seven years, Deuteronomy 15:1-11.

Leave part of harvest in fields for the poor to gather: Leviticus 19:9-10, Deuteronomy 24:19-22

Jesus’ later commandment to love your enemies is hinted at in cases referring to your enemy’s animal straying or collapsing under a heavy load. You are to help in both cases: Exodus 23:4-5, Deuteronomy 22:1-4.

Taking the Lord’s Name in Vain

The audio for last Sunday’s sermon on the Third Commandment is now posted at this link. Here is the G. Campbell Morgan quote read near the end of the sermon, from The Ten Commandments (Fleming H. Revell, 1901), p. 41-43.

The last and most subtle form of breaking the third commandment is committed by the man who says, “Lord, Lord,” and does not the things that the Lord says. Prayer without practice is blasphemy; praise without adoration violates the third commandment; giving without disinterestedness robs the benevolence of God of its lustre and beauty. Let these thoughts be stated in other words. The profanity of the church is infinitely worse than the profanity of the street; the blasphemy of the sanctuary is a far more insidious form of evil than the blasphemy of the slum. Is there a blasphemy of the church and the sanctuary? The prayer that is denied by the life, the praise offered to God which is counteracted by rebellion against Him when the hour of that praise has passed away, that is blasphemy, that is taking the name of God in vain. If a man passes into the sanctuary and preaches and prays and praises with eloquent lips and beautiful sentences and devotional attitude, even with tears, and goes home to break the least of these commandments, that man blasphemes when he prays; but if he deceives the world, he never deceives God!  . . . The form in which this third commandment is broken most completely, most awfully, most terribly, is by perpetually making use of the name of the Lord, while the life does not square with the profession that is made. . . . Unless the last name, the name of Jesus, gathering into itself all human beauty and all Divine attributes – unless, as it is used, it is the keynote of the soul, the talisman of deliverance from evil – then had the name better never be mentioned, for so it is taken in vanity. May it be to all more than that.

Note that this book is now available in its entirety online at Google Books.