What is the importance of the 10 Commandments if we can live by 2 rules, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself"?
Good question. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this. As for my thoughts, I think I can best convey them through an illustration that I hope to show you all on Wednesday.
Until then, I will leave you with just one question in return. How do you know what love is and what it looks like? See what you can find in the Word.
Grace and Peace,
Patrick
When God formed the covenant nation of Israel, He gave Moses 'the Law' - a sort of Divine Constituion for a nation to be governed by law as opposed to being governed by popular opinion or by human monarchy. I would say that the Ten Commandments are comparable to the amendments of our own national Constitution. They declare Himself as the author of the Constitution (Law), His authority to declare it (He is the Lord their God), and how His chosen nation was to determine their moral conduct. They were the foundation of the Old Covenant that set the limitations of 'human rights'.
ReplyDeleteThe 'Great Commandment' that Jesus declared so elequantly is the foundational statement of the New Covenant - our covenant of grace (NOT law). Not only does it cover the limitations of human rights of the Old Covenant amendments, it declares the unlimited activity of GOD-LOVE (grace)- against which there is no law. It was the shed blood of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that made this grace available to all who will truly believe and trust Him. He enables us ti live 'The Great Commandment'.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" come from the words of Jesus as he's addressing the Sadducees and Pharisees, the keepers of the Law. It's found in Matthew 22:37-39. But Keep reading to verse 40 and you'll see that Jesus doesn't say that these replace the 10 commandments, instead he tells them that these sum up the ten commandments and the entire Law that God gave them to live by! They'd strayed so far from the truth - that God simply wanted them to treat Him and Others with love and respect - that Jesus was attempting to explain to them what all their Laws were aimed at.
ReplyDeleteSo on to Patrick's question, what is Love and what does it look like. I'd suggest looking in I Corinthians 13 and then go on to I John 4:7-21. Then see if you can find other references on your own.
See you guys Wednesday.
Steve
I think that those two commandments just sum it up as all the commandments if you think about it . The other commandments just are for detail that we use and know and our own world.
ReplyDeleteMONICA