Episode 205 – Ten Commandments – Part 1 – Transcendent Moral Principles
Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.
Script:
You saw what I did in Egypt, and you know how I brought you here to me … Now if you will faithfully obey me, you will be my very own people. The whole world is mine …
Exodus, Chapter 19, verses 4 and 5, Contemporary English Version

********
VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re excited to be with you. And we pray that you are having a year filled with joy and blessings, especially the joy of having a closer fellowship with our Lord Christ Jesus. Today on Anchored by Truth we’re going to start a new series. As just about everyone knows, the Christian faith in America has been subjected to more challenges in the last decade than probably in the first two centuries of the country’s existence. But, frankly, the challenges being brought against the Christian faith are nothing new. They started the moment the first believers began testifying about the risen Christ almost 2,000 years ago. But, as Jesus promised, the Christian faith has survived all the challenges brought against it. And it will survive those of today. Why? Because the Christian faith is true. So, to continue our exploration of the reason and evidence that demonstrate that Christianity is true, today in the studio we have RD Fierro who is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, what is this new series that you have decided to launch?
RD: Well, today I want to begin a discussion of a part of the Bible that is familiar to most people: the Ten Commandments. But I want to look at the commandments from a slightly different perspective. I think most people view the Ten Commandments as exactly that – commands given to us by God. But I wonder how many of stop and contemplate that God didn’t give us the commandments for His benefit. He gave them to us for our benefit. God gave us the Ten Commandments not just because He wanted to put restrictions or limits on His people but because He wanted His people to know how to live godly, productive, and joyful lives. And if we follow and obey the commandments they will enable us to do exactly that.
VK: I think that is a very different perspective from the one that most people bring to the commandments. Eight of the Ten Commandments are generally phrased as negatives – “do not” or as in the King James Bible “thou shalt not.” In other words eight of the ten are prohibitions. They tell us what we’re not allowed to do. Only the 4th and 5th commandments are usually phrased as positive commands. In the King James Version the 4th commandment tells us to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” and the 5th commandment says to “Honor thy father and thy mother.” But all of the others are some form of “thou shalt not” such as the 6th commandment which is “Thou shalt not kill.” So, all those “thou shalt nots” sure sounds like God is just putting limits on people.
RD: But there are two important things that we should note right away. First, scholars and commentators have long noted that all of the commandments are both prescriptive and proscriptive regardless of how they are phrased in a particular Bible translation. Said slightly differently, all of the commandments tell us to do certain things even if the commandment is normally phrased as a “do not.”
VK: I think we’re going to need an example of what you’re thinking about.
RD: Well, let’s take a look at the 6th commandment which you quoted from the King James Version. In the KJV it says “thou shalt not kill.” In most of the modern translations like the New International Version or the English Standard Version that commandment is more accurately stated, “You shall not murder.” The prohibition is not that we are never to take a life but rather we are never to take an innocent human life. We are never to take a life where there is no just cause for doing so. Christian commentators and theologians have long noted that God even commanded capital punishment for certain crimes in the Old Testament so the KJV use of the word “kill” instead of “murder” is somewhat misleading in our day and age.
VK: And Christian commentators and theologians have also often talked about a “just war” theory – that sometimes it is necessary for a nation to take up arms and use deadly force to defend itself or an innocent neighboring nation. But the point of the 6th commandment is that no one, governments included, are permitted to take the lives of human beings who have done nothing wrong – and that includes babies in the womb. Not even a government has the legitimate power to take away the life of a person who has not committed an act that merits the loss of their individual life. And certainly there is no way an unborn baby could ever do anything to warrant having its life sacrificed.
RD: At any rate, the 6th commandment is usually phrased “you shall not or must not murder.” But this prohibition carries with it a clear prescription that we must do whatever is in our power to protect human life. So, the person who fails to throw a life preserver to someone who is drowning, when they have the capacity to do so, is violating the 6th commandment even though they may not have pushed the person into the water. The 6th commandment, like all the commandments, must be viewed as having both negative and affirmative aspects.
VK: In effect, the 6th commandment is what underscores most, if not all, so-called “social justice.” We must endeavor to feed the hungry and provide care for those unable to care for themselves because to not do so would imperil their lives.
RD: Exactly. Protecting innocent human life is a natural and necessary extension of the 6th commandment. Yet, how often do we hear the social justice warriors acknowledge that?
VK: But even this simple example starts to show the real depth, breadth, and width of what the Ten Commandments are really all about. And when we start to approach the Ten Commandments from that perspective I begin to see what you are talking about. We often view the Ten Commandments as if God just wanted to put a limit on our ability to somehow be free or happy. But what God was really doing in the Ten Commandments was setting up the basis for people to have peaceful, productive, and purposeful lives and to be able to build supportive families and communities.
RD: And that’s one of the big things that we want to get into during this series. God gave us the Ten Commandments for our benefit, not for His. God is infinite. He is without limits except those of His own righteous and holy character. Because God is perfectly righteous He cannot do anything evil or violate His own laws. His laws reflect His character. He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfect in all His attributes. God is quite literally beyond need. God doesn’t need anything. God doesn’t lack anything. No one can give God anything He doesn’t already have.
VK: After all, if you can speak the entire universe into existence with just a word what is it that anyone or anything could give you?
RD: Exactly. So, God did not need to issue the commandments to somehow make His existence better. He gave the Ten Commandments to us to make our world and our lives better. And that is the reason that, while other parts of the ancient Hebrew laws are no longer necessary or applicable to our lives today, the Ten Commandments still are.
VK: I think that this is an area where there is a lot of confusion among Christians. Many people may not know that the laws that God gave to Moses on the mountain go beyond the Ten Commandments. They may not know that Levitical code addressed a wide variety of subjects that applied to the lives of the ancient Hebrews with a great deal of specificity. I think many people may be generally aware that the Old Testament contains prescriptions and proscriptions beyond those in the commandments but I don’t think many people know much about them. And, frankly, even when we read about them in our Bibles they just seem so odd or strange to modern readers we just have a tendency to gloss over them. What is the modern reader to make of the extensive instructions for building the tabernacle in the latter chapters of the book of Exodus or the instructions to priests about checking mold in houses in Leviticus?
RD: Agreed. There are many parts of the Old Testament that are strange to us when we read them the first time. But all of them are important for our understanding of the Bible and many of them provide solid evidence that the books of the Bible are accurate historically and consistent with what we know about human history. Broadly speaking the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, are often called the “Law” when referring to the composition of the Old Testament. The Jews divided what we call the Old Testament into 3 sections: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The first five books were the “Law” but obviously they contain subjects beyond rules and regulations such as history and even poetry.
VK: And, apart from the first five books of the Old Testament, there is a different order between the books of the Hebrew Bible and that of most current Bibles. The subdivision called the “Prophets” consisted of eight books in the following order: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the Twelve which we call the Minor Prophets. The “Writings” consisted of eleven books in this order: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Daniel, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. The Book of Ruth moved around. It was originally placed before the Psalms, but in the Middle Ages it was relocated next to the other smaller books, such as Song of Solomon and Esther.
RD: So, the term “Law” sometimes is used to refer to the first five books of our Bible. In that sense “law” was essentially a literary organizational term. But the term “law” also applied to the fairly large body of specific rules and regulations that governed the daily lives and their religious practices of the ancient Hebrews. In that sense it was a legal term though of course their law governed religious practices in addition to prescribing civil codes of conduct (which is how we typically think of the word “law” today). And it is from that use that much of the confusion arises about what rules and regulations were applicable only to the ancient Hebrews versus what rules continue to apply today. Broadly speaking, the Old Testament “law” consisted of 3 different bodies of regulations: ceremonial laws that governed religious practices, civil laws that governed their society in a manner similar to how our civil law applies today, and enduring or transcendent moral and ethical principles.
VK: And the Ten Commandments are enduring transcendent moral principles. In other words when God pronounced them God intended for them to apply to all people at all times. But this differentiated them from the ceremonial laws that governed the ancient Hebrew religious practices especially their system of sacrifices and festivals. The sacrificial system that was codified after the Israelites left Egypt had one specific purpose. It pointed forward to the ultimate sacrifice that God Himself would make when He sent His only begotten Son to die on a cross to save His people from their sins. During the Old Testament period the sacrificial system was necessary to point to an ultimate atoning sacrifice that was still forthcoming. But, as the writer of the book of Hebrews takes such pains to point out, Christ Jesus fulfilled perfectly the need for that atoning sacrifice. So, the old sacrificial system is no longer necessary. It has fulfilled it purpose. The writer of Hebrews put it this way: “The Law teaches that offerings and sacrifices must be made because of sin. But why did Christ mention these things and say that God did not want them? Well, it was to do away with offerings and sacrifices and to replace them. This is what he meant by saying to God, ‘I have come to do what you want.’ So we are made holy because Christ obeyed God and offered himself once for all.”
RD: Right. Christ’s life and death fulfilled the requirements of the Old Testament sacrificial system so the ceremonial portions of the law are no longer necessary. Similarly, the civil portions of the Old Testament law were largely intended to provide a basis for the civil government of the Israelites after they left and Egypt and settled into the Promised Land in Palestine. Speaking precisely the civil portions of the law was intended for a theocratic amphictyony and then a theocratic monarchy.
VK: A what?
RD: A theocratic amphictyony – broadly speaking an amphictyony is an association of neighboring states or tribes that act cooperatively for their common interest. Specifically, AMPHICTYONY most often referred to the association of neighboring states in ancient Greece to defend a common religious center. Remember, that for the first four-hundred years after the Israelites left Egypt there was no king in Israel. The individual tribes based on the patriarchal sons of Jacob/Israel largely governed themselves and they only came together when threatened by common enemies.
VK: In fact, Judges, chapter 21, verse 25 tells us “In those days [after the exodus] Israel wasn't ruled by a king, and everyone did what they thought was right.”
RD: Well, we don’t live in either a theocratic amphictyony or a monarchy. We live in a constitutional republic. As such our civil laws are enacted and enforced by elected representatives and executives not by appointed priests or hereditary descendants of a particular family. As such many of the laws that applied directly to the lives of the ancient Israelites no longer apply to us today.
VK: And we should note that many of the those laws were specifically intended for an agrarian culture where the overwhelming bulk of economic activity centered on farming and animal husbandry. Our economy still has an important agricultural component and we have some civil laws that govern it. But we need laws that govern modern forms of transportation, information acquisition and delivery, health care, etc. Our civil laws certainly mimic or echo some of what applied in ancient Israel but the specifics have obviously changed to accommodate changes in technology.
RD: Yes. And we should note that one of the reasons that we are going to such pains to explain the different components of the Old Testament law is because many critics of Christianity will try to take parts of the Bible out of context to denigrate and denounce Christianity. I’ve heard or seen mockers say something like, “well, I’d like to be a Christian but I’m not sure I can be because I often wear clothes made of polyester and cotton and I like to plant peppers and tomatoes in the same bed.”
VK: You’re alluding to Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 19 which says, “Breed your livestock animals only with animals of the same kind, and don't plant two kinds of seed in the same field or wear clothes made of different kinds of material.” That’s from the Contemporary English Version. The mocker wants to demean all of Christianity by taking admonitions that were given to a very specific group for a very specific purpose and then trying to turn those narrowly intended instructions into broader moral principles
RD: Yes. The mocking and the criticism can be easily refuted when you understand the composition of the Mosaic law and the Levitical code but I’m afraid not many Christians in our day and age can draw the necessary distinctions. But the big point that we need to focus on for today is that the Ten Commandments were never designed to be set aside. There will never come a time when they have outlived their purpose because their purpose was to establish the basis by which people should relate to God and to each other. In fact, I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that the Ten Commandments – or at least the truths set forth in them - form the value structure for all stable civil society.
VK: That’s a big statement and, especially today, there would be a lot of people who disagree with it. I mean the first commandment is “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” That’s from the English Standard Version. But, there are obviously billions of people around the world who don’t worship the God of the Bible yet who live in communities that many classify as being stable.

RD: That’s true that they would say their communities are stable even though they don’t worship the God of the Bible. And while we don’t have time today to get into all the nuances of the first commandment let’s at least take a moment to consider some. In the first commandment God was certainly proclaiming that He was the one True God but that was not all He was doing. He was also establishing a basis for His authority and, in turn, for all earthly authority structures. Note that God gave the Hebrews an immediate reason that should obey the commandments and in giving that He alluded to the ultimate reason for all authority.
VK: The immediate reason He gave them for obeying Him was because He had just delivered them from being slaves to cruel masters. What you’re saying is that before God ever gave the Ten Commandments He said, in effect, to them “Look I’ve just delivered you from slavery in Egypt. That proves my love and concern for you. Now I’m going to give you some commands that will make your lives better and you can be sure of my desire for you live good lives because I’ve just shown you that’s what I want to do.” In other words, God proved His love for them before He presented His commands to them. The commands God gave were, and are, no less a manifestation of God’s love than His delivery of them from slavery.
RD: Yes. God delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt because He loved them. He gave them the Ten Commandments because He loved them. And one display of His love was His concern that they understand that life is best lived in acknowledging Him as the source of all order and blessing. The first commandment points out that the God who delivered them was also the God that created them, their world, and the universe. The first commandment should draw our attention to the fact that all things in creation originate with God and frankly will ultimately have to give an account to Him. The first commandment was a succinct way of saying “don’t content yourself with worshipping any lesser beings or things. Confine your worship to the One who can actually help you and to the one that orders all things on the earth as well as in heaven.”
VK: The Apostle Paul made it abundantly clear that all authority on earth originates with God. In Romans, chapter 13, verse 1, Paul said “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” That’s from the New International Version.
RD: Yes. So, even people who live in communities or countries that do not worship the God of the Bible still have governmental authority structures. They have to if they want to remain stable. Countries without functioning governments always descend into anarchy which is never good for ordinary people. Some governments are tyrannical and others are benign. But some kind of authority structure is necessary for human beings to live in reasonable peace, safety, and harmony. So, when God gave the commandments He established that principle right up front by saying that He was the ultimate authority for all human affairs whether religious, family, social, civil, or economic.
VK: I see why you want to do this series on the Ten Commandments. We tend to think of them as just being a list of a couple of “do’s” and mostly “do not’s.” But the implications of the commandments literally affect every area of our lives.
RD: Absolutely. And the fact that the commandments transcend time, cultures, and nations is powerful evidence that they were given by an omniscient God who knew what was best for the creatures He created. And that’s an idea we’re going to stress over and over in this series.
VK: So, the big idea that we wanted to introduce today is that God did not proclaim the Ten Commandments to make our lives more difficult or His existence better. He gave us the Ten Commandments so that we will know how to live better, more joyful, and more meaningful lives. And, frankly, if we’re so foolish as to disregard the commandments the only ones that we will be hurting will be ourselves. Well, sounds like we’re in for another thought-provoking expedition. Hopefully, not too many headaches. This sounds like a great time to pray. Since we have just been talking about the fact that all earthly authorities are established by God, today let’s listen to a prayer for our government officials especially that they would be good stewards of the authority that God has placed in their hands. They, like all of us, will ultimately have to give an account to God for how they used that authority.
---- PRAYER FOR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”
(Opening Bible Quote from the Contemporary English Version)
Exodus, Chapter 19, verses 4 and 5, Contemporary English Version

Why Is There a Threefold Division of the Hebrew Canon? (Law, Prophets, Writings) by Don Stewart (blueletterbible.org)

You Might Like

The Spiritual Podcast
The Spiritual Podcast
Mahant Govind Das Swami
Shiva - Narrated by Jackie Shroff
Shiva - Narrated by Jackie Shroff
Fever FM - HT Smartcast
Mahabharat
Mahabharat
Fever FM - HT Smartcast
Bhagavad Gita (English)
Bhagavad Gita (English)
Swami Adgadanand
एकांतिक वार्तालाप
एकांतिक वार्तालाप
Shri Hit Premanand Govind Sharan Ji Maharaj
Joel Osteen Podcast
Joel Osteen Podcast
Joel Osteen, SiriusXM
The Ramayana Podcast
The Ramayana Podcast
Adithya Shourie
Krishna Bhajans
Krishna Bhajans
Shemaroo Entertainment
Quran in English
Quran in English
Goodword Books
Bajrang Baan
Bajrang Baan
Hubhopper