Introduction
We have now discussed the first five of the Ten Commandments. Before we look at commandments six through ten, I’d like to briefly review what these commandments mean for us, Christians. The Ten Commandments are often called “universal moral law”, which means that they state principles of right and wrong that apply to everybody, everywhere and at all times. Certainly, everybody recognizes that we cannot go about killing others, or violating marriage vows, or disrespecting property of other people.
But Christians may not be content with this negative baseline. We have a much higher ideal, a positive direction in which we implement the commandments. The Lord Jesus has delivered us from our sin and from the slavery to evil, and his Holy Spirit lives with us and gives us wisdom and power. We are free to live a truly holy life, to do much better than the rest of the world. Our calling, said Jesus, is to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
The freedom we have is an active freedom; it is freedom to love. In previous lessons we have focused on the freedom to love the Lord as he is; now we focus on the freedom to love other people for God’s sake. This Christian love is a very practical love; it fulfills the commandment “you shall not kill” by doing the exact opposite of killing, that is, working hard to improve the life of others. Something similar applies to the other commandments as well, “you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony”. The Ten Commandments with: don’t do anything against your neighbor, but they really teach us to do everything for our neighbor. As we will see, this is the approach the Heidelberg Catechism also takes in LD 40 through 43.
Living this active life of positive, giving love makes no sense unless we understand what the Lord Jesus has done for us. The only reason we can live a meaningful life, and enjoy the blessing of the free children of God, is that he loved us first, so much that he completely gave himself for us. He was willing to suffer death on a cross, so that we could have a blessed life. That is our example, and therefore our standard. We, too, should be willing to suffer many things for the sake of others. Jesus set us free; let’s use that freedom, then, to love others deeply and practically, to give ourselves away for the sake of people around us.
With this in mind we turn to the sixth commandment: “You shall not kill.”
Freedom to love others
1. Recognizing human life as precious
2. Respecting others as persons
3. Realizing Christian love in practice
Recognizing human life as precious
“You shall not kill!” Because killing a human being is a terrible thing. Hurting a human being is a terrible thing. God said immediately after the Flood: if anyone—be it man or beast—kills a human being, I will avenge it on the killer.
Two Bible texts give a deep theological reason why harming someone else is particularly bad: Gen. 9:6 and Jas 8:9 mention that people are made in the image of God. And that is why they are more precious than anything else in the world. You may not harm the image of God. Instead, it deserves all your care and respect.
This is the basis for the Christian doctrine of the dignity of human life. It teaches that everyone is very important, because everyone is designed and made to reflect who God is (in so far that is possible in the world). Therefore everyone must be valued deeply, cared for, and protected.
Our modern scientists look at human beings and see an intricate machine, a biological supercomputer that is still much more complex than they can understand, but ultimately just another configuration of matter; for them, people are eventually a clump of cells, a bag of organic matter. If that is how you see it, human life has no value in itself. A century ago this led to appalling actions by individuals and even whole countries. The persecution of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and so on during the Second World War was justified by the idea that they were less-than-ideal humans, and should therefore not contribute to the gene pool of mankind. Today, the same ideas make it easy for people to justify the abortion of babies, and to push for assisted suicide. If a fetus is incomplete yet, or if an adult is worn out, sick, or depressed, why not simply put an end to it? The “quality of life” is then judged based on a purely material, biological view of what people are.
The Bible teaches us to see much more. Every person, in his very essence as a human being, is deliberately created by God to represent him in this world. When we deal with others, it is as if we deal with God himself; that is why he takes it so seriously when a human being is harmed or killed.
Because of our fall into sin, a curse lies on the world. People get sick, they may be disabled, they may be weak, deformed, ugly, and so on. Eventually we all die, and that is a terrible tragedy—that the glorious image of God is snuffed out by the power of darkness. Sickness and death are not things to be stoic about, as if it’s just part of life; they are evil things because they disfigure and destroy bearers of the image of God. They are an offense to him, and should therefore be an offence to us.
Most Christians I know believe in the dignity of all human life, and will therefore oppose abortion, euthanasia, and other such policies. The challenge for us is to live out that belief in everyday life. When we meet a sick or old or disabled person, do we view him and her as just as just as precious as ourselves, just as much a bearer of God’s image, just as loved by God and as redeemable by the blood of Jesus? What about people that are very different from us? It comes naturally to all of us to favor those who are like us over those who are different. People all over the world tend to look down on those who have a different skin color, a different language, different customs, who are less intelligent, less cultured, less successful. But while that is a natural thing to do, it is not right.
In this area, Christians should be leaders in the world today, by carefully keeping racism and other prejudiced attitudes toward others out of our lives. Not that we should be color-blind, or blind to all the other things that makes another person different from us; but we should see, first and foremost, that this person too is made in the image and likeness of God, made with the same calling to serve the Lord in this world, made with the same dignity, and also subject to the same curse that we lie under. Let us show, in how we treat others, that we truly believe in the dignity of all human life.
Respecting others as persons
Because it is not just about human life in the abstract sense of the word. We don’t object to murder just because it kills a working body and mind; we don’t oppose abortion just because we must keep a fetus alive. The sixth commandment is not just about biological life, but about persons, including their character, their feelings, and so on. All that a person is must be respected. That is why the Heidelberg Catechism in q&a 99 looks much farther than bodily harm.
“I am not to dishonour, hate, injure, or kill my neighbour.” This list goes from small, internal sin to big, external sin; that is very deliberate, as we see in the next phrase: “by thoughts, words, or gestures, and much less by deeds.” As with the other commandments, the sixth commandment highlights the worst negative, “you shall not murder”; but we must realize that the ideal is not to go into that direction at all, not even in a small way. Question and answer 100 make this very explicit. “By forbidding murder God teaches us that he hates the root of murder, such as envy, hatred, anger, and desire of revenge, and that he regards all these as murder.”
When God tells us: “You shall not murder,” how well do we keep this commandment? On the surface, we are doing pretty good; I am not aware of killers among us. But in light of this explanation in the catechism, we have all been murderers. Who of us have not envied, hatred, been unjustly angry at another person? “God regards all these as murder”?! This may sound extreme, but the catechism is simply echoing and applying the teaching of our Lord Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5), he said in so many words that even if you insult your brother by calling him names, you are guilty as a murderer.
Does this make you feel bad about yourself? It should. If this teaching of our Lord Jesus does not stir your conscience, you have not understood his teaching, or you are completely blind to your own faults, or you have hardened your heart. But the point is not to make us feel bad; the point is to drive us to Jesus Christ, who did not only forgive murderers (including his own!) but also leads us on the way of a new life, in which the Holy Spirit teaches us to be the opposite of murderers.
The power of Jesus’ blood and spirit sets us free from the murderous, hateful, disrespectful thoughts and actions that naturally bubble up inside our sinful hearts. It is not just about keeping us away from the edge of actually murdering someone—most unbelievers manage that—but to bring us into the freedom of doing the exact opposite.
What is that exact opposite? It is love for all human beings. It is a desire to see every person flourish, to see in them the image of God expressed in all its glory. Jesus often spoke about this, and especially two of his instructions stand out: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and: “Do good even to your enemies.” That is the direction in which the sixth commandment points us. As Christians we make it our priority—top priority, along with worshipping the Lord—to do whatever we can to see others do well, to bless them in thoughts, words, and deeds, to invest in their flourishing.
Realizing Christian love in practice
What does this look like in practice? Much can be said about this. In question and answer 107, the catechism mentions a few things. It repeats Jesus’ instruction of loving your neighbor as yourself, and of doing good even to your enemies. I don’t need to tell you what that looks like practically; you know how you would like to be treated—treat others the same way! The difficulty in doing this is our motivation. To love our neighbor as ourselves, we must first learn to respect him as just as precious and important as we are, and to overcome the selfishness that lives so deep inside our sinful hearts. To do good to our enemy, we must overcome our hatred, and forgive him in a very real way, so that we respect him as an equal in spite of what he has done to us.
The catechism says: I am to put away all desire of revenge—but is that fair? If someone has harmed us, shouldn’t justice be done? Yes, there must be and there will be justice. But as the Bible explains: “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” (Rom. 12:19) So we leave it to him, and trust that not we, but he will resolve any injustice done against us. That is why the injured, threatened believers in the Old Testament did not retaliate but pray; there are many psalms in the Bible of such prayers, where the Lord is asked to avenge his people. All of this is very difficult for sinners! We can learn this only in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we must pray fervently for growth in this area.
One practical way in which we love others as ourselves is, as the catechism says, that we protect our fellow man from harm as much as we can. Not only do we treat others right, but we also stand up for them when others treat them poorly. At the very least, in our society Christians should speak up clearly for the rights and needs of all, especially the weak; and speak up against injustice. One of the challenges in modern politics is that care for the poor and disadvantaged is often associated with the liberal left, many of whom have a thoroughly pagan, Marxist view of society; our knee-jerk reaction can be to oppose any actions or programs intended to help those in need. There are too many people who think that traditional Christians, especially conservative Reformed ones, don’t really care about other people! Let us prove that this is not the case, by clearly opposing exploitation of others, by helping others to find justice, and so on.
But the most practical starting point is that middle clause in question and answer 107. God commands us … to show patience, peace, gentleness, mercy, and friendliness toward others. These are not specific actions, but basic attitudes in our dealings with people. If you ever thought that keeping God’s law was a matter of checking a few boxes, of doing a bunch of good deeds to keep him happy, this is where you see how wrong that is. In every interaction with others, we are called to be positive in all these ways. This is only possible if your heart is in it; if you genuinely learn to love and deeply care for others, if you really learn to see them as precious, just as they are precious in God’s sight.
This is hard to learn. But let’s not forget that patience, peace, gentleness, and so on are fruit of the Spirit, as Paul explains in Galatians 5. As long is we live our natural, unredeemed life, we may be able to imitate some of these qualities, but in the end we will fail. Only the Holy Spirit can teach us to truly love each other. He actively works in believers individually as well as in the church community to teach us all these things, and much more.
In our living out the sixth commandment, the church plays an important role. For this is the community of people who are free; free from slavery to hatred and anger, free to love others because the Lord has loved them first. The church is where forgiven people forgive one another; where people with whom God is patient, are patient to each other; where men and women who know the mercy of Jesus Christ, show mercy to one another. The church is where Jesus’ practical love shapes everything. Not only among ourselves, although that is where it starts; but also toward others around us.
In a world where retaliation is considered normal, where hatred is common, and where hurting and killing go on and on, let us live as the free children of God. Instead of dark hatred, we pursue beautiful love. Instead of fighting for our own advantage, we seek the benefit of others. We can do this, because the Lord has given us all that we need. He keeps our lives in his care for eternity, and secure in that love we can then lovingly bless others, in thoughts, words, gestures, and deeds.