Part VII in The Theology of the Pentateuch
An Abstract System of Oppressive Rules?
The Old Testament laws are one of the most difficult portions of Scripture to engage with. These laws can feel arbitrary and disjointed or even harsh and backwards: an abstract moral code of 613 laws dropped on us from above. A heavy system of morality that is old-fashioned and oppressive. It can be difficult for us to understand how this law is good, and yet Scripture presents it in the most glowing terms (Ps 19:7; Prov 30:5).
The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1–17 stand as a summary and introduction to the law. To unlock their freedom and beauty, we must see that they flow from who God is. God is our system of morality. And he is not abstract. Right and wrong flow from God’s character and promote relationship with him. That’s what the Ten Commandments are about: they liberate you to live with the LORD.
Establishing a Relationship
Perhaps the thing that is most often misunderstood about the Ten Commandments is that they are not a law code as we might think of it. Instead they are part of a story—the unfolding narrative of the relationship between God and his people.
At the beginning of the book of Exodus the people of Israel are enslaved to a tyrannical ruler. Pharaoh is the ultimate symbol of oppression. He does not remember past relationships (Exod 1:8) and he imposes impossible tasks on his people (Exod 5:6–8). But the LORD remembers his relationship with Abraham and his children and he hears the cries of his people (Exod 2:24–25). So he moves to save them. In an incredible display of power the LORD dominates Pharaoh and all the gods of Egypt in order to deliver his people (Exod 15). He brings them into the desert to his Holy Mountain and makes a unique commitment to them (Exod 19:4–6). This is the context where God reveals the Ten Commandments (Exod 19:9; 20:1–21). It is not an arbitrary moral code to earn a deity’s approval, but a set of characterizations to establish a relationship.
The Ten Commandments show us how to be a community that reflects God’s character. To put it in contemporary terms, if we want to live in his house and rep his brand, we have to absorb his “DNA.” His commandments illustrate his fundamental qualities of holiness, wisdom, and justice and invite us to live in keeping with who God is so that we might experience true freedom (Exod 34:6–7).
The Perfect Law of Liberty
So, if we read the Ten Commandments this way, what do they teach us about God and ourselves?
The first five commandments of the law relate to our relationship with YHWH, while the second five commandments turn to consider our relationship with others. Church Fathers like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Augustine have tied these two tables of the Ten Commandments to the way that Jesus summarizes the law with a pair of commandments, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:17; cf. Matt 22:37; Mark 12:30; Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18).
Viewed in this light, the Ten Commandments become an interwoven whole that summarizes righteous living. Peter Leithart has this excellent mini-exposition:
“Each of the Ten words addresses an area of human life: worship, time-keeping, family, violence, sex, property, speech, desire. Yet they overlap and interpenetrate. Each word implies all the others. To obey the First Word, you must also refuse images; bear God’s Name; keep Sabbath; honor parents; and refrain from murder, theft, adultery, slander, greed, and lust. We keep the Sabbath to honor the one God, to glorify his Name, to give life and protect property, to cultivate contentment and thankfulness. Idolatry is a kind of theft, a form of material infidelity to the divine Husband, false witness about the living God. Every commandment is a window through which we view the whole Decalogue” (Leithart, 17).
If we restate the Ten Commandments as positive affirmations, it might help us to see this in a new way.
First Table: Love God
Honor YHWH exclusively.
Honor YHWH properly, in keeping with his true character and nature.
Honor YHWH’s name, that is, his reputation.
Honor YHWH by protecting the holiness of the Sabbath.
Honor and glorify your parents as representatives of God’s authority.
Second Table: Love your Neighbor
Protect innocent life.
Protect pure relationships and families.
Protect security and prosperity.
Protect trustworthy communication.
Protect your heart/desires.
Imagine a person who lives this way. They would be a pillar of their community, a boon to all who knew them. Who wouldn’t want that person for a friend? You can think of this description as the results of God’s StrengthsFinders test or his Myers-Briggs profile. But because he made us and the world we live in, it’s also a theological mirror, a profile of your best self, the goal of righteous living. Conforming to God’s character brings us into contact with our best humanity.
As Peter Leithart emphasizes, “A community dominated by disrespect for parents, workaholism, violence, envy, theft, and lies isn’t free” (Leithart, 5). We are not free when we can do whatever we want, we are free when we are doing what we were made to do (Ps 119:45).
This is why the Apostle James calls the law “the perfect law, the law of liberty.”
James 1:22–25
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Keeping the Law Perfectly
The person that we described when we stated the Ten Commandments positively is Jesus Christ. St. Ireneaus said, “Christ fulfills the law that he spoke from Sinai.” This is crucial for us to live the Ten Commandments. You see, the problem with the Old Covenant is not the law—the law is a reflection of who God is—the problem with the Old Covenant is the sinful human heart (Jer 17:9; Ezek 36:26). Israel was called to look to the law giver and embody the law, but at Sinai Israel could not bear to hear God’s voice and pulled away. Their hearts remained hard, they were a stiff-necked people, a rebellious son. Although YHWH was dwelling among them, it was as if he was still too far away. So the LORD himself embodied his law in Jesus Christ, the faithful son of Israel. He came and dwelt with us to model the life of holiness for us. By doing this he unlocked a level of access to God’s presence through faith that ancient Israel did not know.
The difference between the Old and New Covenants lies chiefly in the fact that Christ has fulfilled the law and poured out his Spirit. The Spirit transforms our hearts so that God writes his laws on them. Our hearts become the two tables of the law (Jer 31:33; 2 Cor 3:3). We do not aspire to law keeping, but rather living in keeping with the law—in keeping with God’s character—because he has transformed us.
By living with Christ in faith we live in relationship with God. Thus we press into keeping the law as a grace and a freedom and a life-giving call.
LORD, we thank and praise you for teaching us how to live. Thank you for the liberty we find in living toward you and toward your character. Guard us from trusting in our own power and thus experiencing your law as a weight or a burden rather than a joy. May we trust and follow your Son faithfully and experience your freedom.
Alex Kirk is the Visiting Professor of Old Testament at William Tennent School of Theology. He has been married to Meghan for over ten years, and currently lives in Durham, England, where he is nearing the completion of his Ph.D.. Alex is most passionate about leading people deeper into the literature of the Old Testament as the living and active word of the LORD to his people.