Non occides
These are my notes from last night on the sixth commandment. At this rate, I think I might finish before the end of the year.
In many ways, this is a remarkably easy commandment to overlook. When was the last time any person here committed homicide? At first glance this commandment seems to only be concerned with something so extreme as to not be applicable to where we are at.
As always, God?s Word comes to overturn and dismantle both our pre-conceptions and our self-righteousness. Tonight we?ll look at some of the ways that the Bible itself interprets this commandment. We?ll try and put that together in to a coherent picture of what this means. Lastly, we?ll discuss possible points of application.
First, we have some elements from within the Pentateuch itself. Leviticus groups several prohibitions in what seem to be an exposition of this commandment: Lev. 19:14-18
It is difficult to determine which of these exactly point to the sixth commandment since parts of Leviticus seem almost jumbled together. But note some of the things that this points out as prohibited: mocking the weak, oppressing the poor, slandering your brother, hating your brother, seeking vengeance, and bearing a grudge. Instead, the injunction is to ?love your neighbor as yourself.?
Second, we have the famous words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: Mt 5:21-26
Note here what is being spoken against. Jesus teaches that not only will outright homicide be worth of the judgment, but even personal attacks against another qualify as hell-worthy. Instead, Jesus advocates reconciliation of broken relationships. Simply because you haven?t killed your brother whom you are fighting does not mean that you are then innocent of murder.
Lastly, one of the letters in the New Testament that deals most explicitly with love is I John: I John 3:15
This is an implied logical argument. The first premise is that, if you hate your brother, you are a murderer. The second is that if you are a murderer, you do not have eternal life. The conclusion, then, if you hate your brother, you do not have eternal life. Rather harsh stuff, all that.
From this we can see that this commandment, like the other nine, has both a positive and negative element. Calvin put it this way: ?There are, consequently, two parts in the Commandment, -- first, that we should not vex, or oppress, or be at enmity with any; and, secondly, that we should not only live at peace with men, without exciting quarrels, but also should aid, as far as we can, the miserable who are unjustly oppressed, and should endeavor to resist the wicked, lest they should injure men as they list.?
Thus, negatively, it not only prohibits murder, but all hurt or wrongdoing towards others. We are to do everything that we can to avoid the taking of life or causing harm. Positively, we are to do all that we can to promote the life and well-being of those around us, to seek to truly love our neighbor. And, as Jesus? parable of the Good Samaritan showed, our neighbor can include people far beyond our own personal preferred culture or race.
Doing all this will obviously have many positive social benefits and will lead to a much more enjoyable life-experience for all involved (imagine the Beltway if everyone sought to live this way). But this should not be an opportunity for moralizing. We seek life because Christ gives life and, more particularly, has given life to us. In Christ, we find the greatest fulfillment of this, since he took death itself upon him in order to give life - and life abundantly at that. Our motivation and our means for obeying go far beyond mere social order, but are rooted in the fact that Christ, who is life, dwells in us.
So what does all this mean for the rest of the week? What does living life according to the life that has been given us look like? For starters, there are the personal requirements: love and compassion towards our neighbors, avoiding gossip and slander, and seeking reconciliation at every opportunity.
And then there are the broader implications. The most obvious application nationally is abortion, since this is the anniversary of Roe v Wade. That millions of people are killed each year in our own nation should be a matter of great sorrow and something to motivate us to do what we can to remove this.
But, while not diminishing the importance of fighting abortion, we should also be careful to not be singularly focused. As some recent Reformed writers have stated, the evangelical community has done well at opposing the destruction of life before birth, but it has often been lacking in seeking to uphold life after birth. We may decry the sin of abortion, but what do we do to try to help those who are in circumstances when abortion seems like the only alternative? Scripture is full of declarations emphasizing the importance that God places on helping the oppressed, poor, and weak. Seeking life in our country means a great deal more than sitting in our chairs in comfortable white, middle-class suburbia and railing against the pro-choicers. Seeking life involves following the radical path of Jesus himself, who put down his own life so that we would be saved.
January 17, 2005 09:46 AM