The phrase “Ten Commandments” doesn’t seem within the New Testomony. Not as soon as. Which is likely to be stunning for Gentile believers right now who’ve been steeped in a Judeo-Christian heritage, and have come to undertake a distinctively Judeo mind-set.
Journey by all the valuable phrases and teachings now we have within the New Testomony — by the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, addressing such quite a lot of circumstances and desires — and Jesus and his impressed spokesmen by no means make the attraction that’s develop into instinctive for some Christians right now: hold the Ten Commandments. If “obeying the Ten” have been important to Christian morality, and even an expressly vital part of it, then Jesus and his males appear to have finished us a terrific disservice. Think about how otherwise the entire New Testomony would learn, starting with the Sermon on the Mount, if the Ten Commandments, as they seem in Exodus 20 (or Deuteronomy 5), have been to be adopted as is into the lives of new-covenant Christians.
Furthermore, the phrase “Ten Commandments” (or “Ten Phrases”) seems simply 3 times within the Outdated Testomony (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; 10:4), which could clue us in that the Ten have assumed a spot within the minds of some that’s not solely overseas to the Christian side of our heritage however even the Judeo half.
Good Ten
Within the Hebrew Scriptures, we discover a couple of additional references to the 2 “tablets” on which the Ten have been written, however not rather more — and never on the degree of hermeneutical prominence we’d assume. And after we flip to the New Testomony, we discover Paul stating, in very clear phrases, that Christians as Christians don’t dwell by these tablets, carved in letters on stone, however by the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:3, 6–7; additionally Romans 2:27–29). He might hardly communicate plainer than he does in Romans 7:6: “We serve within the new approach of the Spirit and never within the previous approach of the written code.”
In such passages, the distinction between previous and new seems so stark that we’d ask, How might such a dramatic shift occur from Moses and the letter, to Christ and the Spirit? The quick reply is that the climax of historical past got here. Messiah himself, not solely David’s son however the divine Son, got here amongst us in absolutely human flesh and blood, taught and discipled, and died and rose once more.
Jesus got here to satisfy what “the previous” anticipated and to usher in a new covenant and basically new period of historical past. His followers wouldn’t be underneath the earlier administration that had guarded God’s folks since Moses. Jesus himself says he didn’t come to destroy the Regulation and Prophets, however to do one thing much more putting: fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). That’s, fulfill like prophecy. Not merely hold the Ten in place, or stay underneath them, or go away them untouched, however fulfill them — first in his personal individual, after which by his Spirit in his church. He got here to not forged off Moses, however to fulfill Jeremiah, and in doing so, he achieved what’s much more radical: establishing himself because the supreme authority, placing God’s regulation inside his folks (reasonably than on tablets), writing it on their hearts (reasonably than stone), and making all his folks to know him (Jeremiah 31:31–34).
As a result of Jesus lived and taught on the climax of historical past, on this once-for-all transition from previous to new, from the age of Israel to the age of the church, we have to fastidiously observe the contemporary and generally delicate variations in emphasis in his ministry and instructing, and ensure our readings within the teachings of his apostles.
As a chunk of this bigger image, let’s right here take up the restricted focus of how Jesus handles the Ten Commandments. Granted, he doesn’t consult with them as a bundle known as “the Ten Commandments,” however he does, at numerous key factors in his instructing, consult with particular person instructions from the Ten, and so we get a way of his bigger orientation by pondering his numerous remedies.
1. However I Say to You (Instructions 6, 7, and 9)
We flip first to the Sermon on the Mount and the so-called “six antitheses” of Matthew 5:21–48. That is Jesus’s most programmatic instructing associated to commandments from the Ten, within the sweeping context of “the Regulation and the Prophets.”
Doubtlessly, Jesus’s early listeners might sense the winds of change in his message, as he taught “as one who had authority, and never as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28–29). So, in his most celebrated sermon, Jesus clarifies that he has not come to destroy the previous or jettison the commandments, per se. Relatively, he has come to fulfill what the Regulation and Prophets have lengthy anticipated, and that success in himself (as we’ll see) will deliver a salvation-historical maturation and completion, not devolution.
In reality, Jesus’s new-covenant folks will come to dwell with the assistance of such religious energy that they all will surpass those that have been thought of the elites of the earlier period: “I inform you, until your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you’ll by no means enter the dominion of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Jesus echoes this epochal growth within the concluding declare of the antitheses: “You due to this fact should be excellent [complete, teleioi], as your heavenly Father is ideal” (Matthew 5:48). The earlier period embodied an actual however modulated expression of God’s requirements; the brand new will, in some sense, elevate the requirements (Matthew 5:31–32; 19:7–9; Mark 10:4–9; Luke 16:18) and supply far better Assist (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7).
Of the six antitheses that comply with, the primary 4 are tied to one of many Ten Commandments. First is command 6, “You shall not homicide” (Matthew 5:21). The notice Jesus strikes isn’t continuity however completion: “However I say to you [the I is emphatic] that everybody who’s indignant along with his brother might be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22). Right here, we’d say, he escalates, deepens, or attracts out of the unfavorable command (“you shall not”) a timeless ethical entailment that God’s personal character enjoins on his creatures. Beforehand, God had expressed in a extra accommodated kind the ethical implications of his character; now, with the approaching of Christ, the requirements of righteousness, anticipated by the regulation, come into full flower. And critically, Jesus doesn’t draw it out by interesting to earlier Scripture, however he declares it on his personal authority: “I say to you.”
“Jesus neither bows to the regulation, nor burns it down, however attracts consideration to himself because the surpassing authority.”
Equally, the second antithesis begins with command 7: “You shall not commit adultery.” Once more, Jesus says, “However I say to you that everybody who appears to be like at a girl with lustful intent has already dedicated adultery along with her in his coronary heart” (Matthew 5:28). It might appear at this level that Jesus is just “deepening” the regulation, however the remaining antitheses don’t match so simply into this sample. Within the third, he expounds the regulation: “It was additionally stated, ‘Whoever divorces his spouse, let him give her a certificates of divorce.’ However I say to you . . .” (Matthew 5:31–32).
Each “deepening” and “expounding” are insufficient descriptions of the fourth antithesis, which summarizes a number of Outdated Testomony texts that develop command 9. Once more he says, “However I say to you . . .” and in doing so, he “merely sweeps away the entire system of vows and oaths that was described and controlled within the Outdated Testomony” (Douglas Moo, “The Regulation of Christ because the Achievement of the Regulation of Moses,” 349). The fifth and sixth antitheses forged the online even wider, displaying that Jesus is ready to communicate with authority over a combination of old-covenant regulation and widespread interpretation in his day.
What emerges, then, isn’t a standard precept for what Jesus is doing to old-covenant instructions to place his followers underneath them, however the radical authority he claims for himself over each human traditions and old-covenant commandments alike. That is, in any case, what Matthew stories (and teaches us) on the shut of the Sermon:
When Jesus completed these sayings, the crowds have been astonished at his instructing, for he was instructing them as one who had authority, and never as their scribes. (7:28–29)
The scribes attraction to the authority of Scripture, however Jesus, daringly, asserts his personal authority time and again. The important thing assertion is “I say to you.” The prevailing impact is Jesus’s new supremacy over all different commandments (“you’ve got heard that it was stated of previous”), be they the seemingly authoritative maxims of the day and even the genuinely authoritative instructions of God as expressed within the earlier period.
Not at all does the rise of Jesus’s authority imply the destruction of the previous, such that Jesus’s followers are actually turned free to homicide, commit adultery, and bear false witness. Relatively, now, with the approaching of Christ, he surpasses Moses and turns into the non-public channel of God’s ethical authority for his folks within the new period and covenant. This he’ll declare climactically within the Nice Fee, on the premise of his having “all authority,” and the usual of worldwide disciple-making being “all that I [not Moses!] have commanded you” (Matthew 28:18–20).
2. Out of the Coronary heart (Instructions 8 and 10)
In Mark 7, Jesus makes passing reference to instructions 8 and 10 (together with 6, 7, and 9). In verses 1–13, he solutions the problem of the scribes about his disciples consuming with unwashed palms and so not dwelling “in response to the custom of the elders” (verse 5). After rebuking their “advantageous approach of rejecting the commandment of God to be able to set up [their] custom” (verse 9), he gathers a wider viewers to talk along with his authority to a associated problem:
Hear me, all of you, and perceive: There’s nothing exterior an individual that by going into him can defile him, however the issues that come out of an individual are what defile him. (Mark 7:14–15)
Associated to the Ten, it is a double-edged sword. First, as Mark feedback, Jesus thus “declared all meals clear” (verse 19), one other astounding revelation of his authority, which, because the God-man’s, surpasses even the divine instructions issued within the earlier period. Second, Jesus clarifies, “From inside, out of the center of man, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, homicide, adultery, coveting [that is, commands 6, 7, 8, and 10], wickedness, deceit [command 9], sensuality, envy, slander, satisfaction, foolishness” (verses 21–22). Disobedience to commandments 6 by 10 — and eight different sins apart from — reveals the unseen coronary heart, which Jesus comes to deal with, convict, and rework.
The approaching of Christ, along with his supreme authority, brings the top of Israel’s peculiar meals legal guidelines, but it surely doesn’t undo the timeless requirements of morality based mostly on the character of God. In reality, now the internal individual, “the center of man,” comes extra clearly in view because the supply of full obedience to commandments 6 by 10, in addition to in areas unaddressed by the Ten. And all this with Christ himself within the place of supreme Lawgiver, not as mere trainer of Moses.
3. The First and a Second (Instructions 1 and a pair of)
We’ll look in useless for exactly instructions 1 and a pair of (Exodus 20:3–6) within the ministry of Jesus; nonetheless, we discover him mentioning a “nice and first commandment” and a “second.” But remarkably, Jesus goes exterior the Ten when he makes such superlative claims.
Throughout his Ardour week, when a lawyer from among the many Pharisees asks him, “Instructor, which is the good commandment within the Regulation?” Jesus replies not with Exodus 20 however Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18:
You shall love the Lord your God with all of your coronary heart and with all of your soul and with all of your thoughts. That is the good and first commandment. And a second is prefer it: You shall love your neighbor as your self. On these two commandments rely all of the Regulation and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37–40)
Related to our focus, Jesus doesn’t elevate the Ten above the bigger Torah, however truly, he elevates different elements of the Torah over the Ten! Jesus dares to make the interpretive judgment that Deuteronomy 6:5 represents God’s before everything requirement of his folks, even higher than the primary commandment of the Ten. Then, on his personal authority, to call the second as an obscurely positioned Leviticus 19:18 actually ought to make us shake our heads. Jesus thus demonstrates (1) a wholeness in his strategy to the Torah, which doesn’t elevate the Ten above the remainder of Scripture, however truly (2) identifies the defining realities as greatest expressed elsewhere, and all this (3) on the premise of his personal authority, not an exegetical argument based mostly on Moses’s authority.
4. Stay Lengthy within the Land (Command 5)
Now we come to the primary of the three particular person instructions that stay: command 5, “honor your father and your mom” — which comes not solely with a promise, but additionally a particular context: “that your days could also be lengthy within the land that the Lord your God is supplying you with” (Exodus 20:12).
This provides us a chance to acknowledge how plainly the Ten are embedded in a selected historic second and era: “I’m the Lord your God, who introduced you out of the land of Egypt, out of the home of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). The Ten go on to say female and male servants, livestock, sojourners, metropolis gates, and your neighbor’s ox or donkey. Command 5 refers to “the land” to which these newly liberated slaves within the wilderness are heading: Canaan. To make certain, the functions to later intervals of historical past are intuitive sufficient (as Paul demonstrates in Ephesians 6:1–3), however we nonetheless notice that Exodus 20 is unapologetically embedded in a sure second and doesn’t fake to be in any other case.
Command 5 additionally provides us the prospect to revisit Jesus’s trade with certainly one of his most well-known interlocutors: the wealthy younger ruler. He approaches Jesus and asks, “Instructor, what good deed should I do to have everlasting life?” (Matthew 19:16). We count on Jesus to shortly right the plain error: a sinful human can not safe everlasting life with any good deed! But, just like the antitheses in Matthew 5, Jesus turns the encounter masterfully towards his personal individual. First, explicitly: “Why do you ask me about what is nice?” Then, implicitly: “There is just one who is nice” (verse 17).
Then Jesus comes on the man’s error by instructions 6, 7, 8, 9, and 5 — and thru Leviticus 19:18 (verses 18–19). With surprising presumption, and maybe endearing honesty, the person solutions, “All these I’ve saved. What do I nonetheless lack?” (verse 20). Now Jesus circles again to the place the trade started, and the prevailing lesson of his Sermon on the Mount: me. “In case you can be excellent [complete, teleios, same as 5:48], go, promote what you possess and provides to the poor, and you’ll have treasure in heaven; and are available, comply with me” (verse 21). Jesus is the primary and last reply to the person’s question, and to open his hand to grab Jesus, the wealthy younger man should launch his grasp on his many possessions.
Right here Jesus exhibits the inadequacy of the commandments to save lots of. The person claims to have saved all of the commandments, however that’s not adequate. One factor he lacks: Jesus himself.
5. Hallowed Be His Title (Command 3)
Discovering command 3 (“You shall not take the title of the Lord your God in useless,” Exodus 20:7) in Jesus’s instructing appears tough at first. No precise citation seems, although we’d see a connection to the fourth antithesis. However after we broaden our lens to Jesus’s concern with “the title of the Lord,” we discover the associations pervasive. We’re arduous pressed to search out many phrases extra often on the lips of Jesus than title. Most memorable of all is the opening request of Jesus’s mannequin prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your title” (Matthew 6:9).
Jesus clearly reverences the divine title, and in his life and ministry he not solely “takes the title of the Lord” with out self-importance, however even fills it up fully in his personal individual. On Jesus, “the title” isn’t obtained as an empty shell, however stuffed with all of the fullness of deity in full humanity. He’s the primary to take up the title with none self-importance or lack in anyway, and so, remarkably, he speaks not solely of his Father’s title but additionally, inimitably, and much more usually, of his personal. He warns his disciples that they’ll go away “homes or brothers or sisters or father or mom or kids or lands, for my title’s sake” (19:29) and “might be hated by all for my title’s sake” (10:22; 24:9). “Whoever receives one such baby in my title receives me” (18:5), and “the place two or three are gathered in my title, there am I amongst them” (18:20). Examples could possibly be multiplied from the Gospels, particularly John.
Most provocatively, Jesus places himself, as Son, alongside his Father and the Spirit, as sharing within the singular divine title in his Nice Fee: “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the title of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
6. Lord of the Sabbath (Command 4)
Lastly, and most scandalously, is command 4: “Bear in mind the Sabbath day, to maintain it holy” (Exodus 20:8, together with verses 9–11). Of the Ten, this one is most conspicuous within the tenor of its New Testomony dealing with, together with within the ministry of Jesus, in addition to within the wrestling of the church for twenty centuries. Basically, you’ll not discover cautious, affordable Christian arguments in such rigidity with any of the opposite Ten of their central ethical thrust. Many people are desirous to affirm a six-and-one precept in creation, even when command 4, in its Mosaic expression, isn’t binding on the new-covenant believer.
Right here, we want not deal with the query “Ought to Christians Preserve the Sabbath?,” addressed ably elsewhere. As a substitute, we emphasize the astonishing approach wherein Jesus handles command 4 and, just like the antitheses and the Nice Fee, freshly declares his supremacy over all that got here earlier than — and within the strongest phrases of all.
Having simply captured the beloved invitation, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden” (11:28), Matthew stories, “At the moment Jesus went by the grainfields on the Sabbath . . .” (12:1). As Scott Hubbard observes, “The seventh day marks the setting of so many clashes between Jesus and the Pharisees that after we learn one thing like, ‘Now it was a Sabbath day . . .’ (John 9:14), we count on hassle.” And so it begins.
The hungry disciples pluck and eat some heads of grain, and true to kind, the Pharisees, whereas someway conserving Sabbath themselves, are proper there on the spot to register their disapproval: “Look, your disciples are doing what isn’t lawful to do on the Sabbath” (12:2). Jesus replies magnificently at a number of ranges. David’s males have been exempt on the premise of their being with God’s anointed. So too, within the regulation itself (Numbers 28:9–10), “the monks within the temple profane the Sabbath” — performing a burnt providing each Saturday — “and are guiltless” (Matthew 12:5).
“Jesus is certainly Lord — Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all.”
Jesus then does what we now may need come to count on: he neither bows to the regulation, nor burns it down, however attracts consideration to himself because the surpassing authority. And he does so twice. Each are partially veiled expressions within the second, and boldly conspicuous on reflection. Verse 6: “I inform you [note that language again], one thing better than the temple is right here.” Verse 8: “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
Removed from Sabbath’s servant, or its saboteur, Jesus is its Lord. He’s Lord of the temple, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all that got here earlier than (whether or not divine instructions or human traditions), and all that may comply with. And so, we see how his invitation in Matthew 11:28–30 leads easily into this episode “at the moment” (12:1):
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I offers you relaxation.
Christ himself is and provides the climactic relaxation. Command 4, and instructions 1 by 10, certainly all of the Regulation and Prophets, prophesied (Matthew 11:13) of this better one to come back — better than the temple, than David, than Solomon, than Jonah, and better than Moses, the Sabbath, and the Ten.
Lord of All
These of us raised with a heightened appreciation for the Ten, or maybe with a diminished view of the remainder of Scripture, and even Christ himself, might really feel ourselves in ethical freefall to first ponder the implications of Jesus’s lordship over the Ten. However the unsettled feeling passes shortly, and shortly we discover our ft, and ethical stability, on even firmer floor, and our admiration for Jesus elevated apart from. And in that enhance is our appreciation for Jesus’s authority and his phrases.
Jesus not solely outshone the Pharisees in his understanding of Moses, however he himself generously issued instructions, and commissioned his church “to watch all that I have commanded you.”
He’s certainly Lord — Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all.
