Just Ten Commands?

So, you think you can rightly read the Ten Commandments? I make a similar assumption every time I follow an instruction manual. I overestimate my ability to understand the instructions, and I underestimate the complexity of what I am assembling. Inevitably, I always complete the project with spare parts that were not meant to be extras. 

Moving back to my opening line, many people assume that they can correctly read, interpret, and apply the Ten Commandments.. They are simply ten commands which forbid something, right? If you think the Ten Commandments are just ten that should be interpreted like other human law codes, then I would argue that you are not reading the commandments correctly. 

​

You may be able to read the words on the page in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. You may have the Ten Commandments memorized by heart. But you understand only their form and not their substance. You will not rightly assemble the Ten Commandments in your soul if you fail to recognize their complexity, unity, and spiritual nature. So how should we read them? 

​

A Historical Reminder 

First, it is helpful to remember the prominent role the Ten Commandments have had in church history. Their rejection today by professed Christians and denominations is a product of the Enlightenment and/or theological systems which have an anemic conception of the law of God. Apart from the novelty of our present moment, Christians have viewed the Ten Commandments as vital for Christian faith and practice. Below are two historical examples. 

​

The Didache (between AD 70 and 120), also called The Lord’s Teaching through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, is one of the earliest pieces of literature from the early church period. It is a church manual that instructs new converts in the Christian faith. Those who wrote this manual believed that new converts needed to immediately understand how the Ten Commandments directed them in the way of life. 

​

In chapter one, the Didache explains the way of life as, “First, thou shalt love God who made thee; second, thy neighbour as thyself; and all things whatsoever thou wouldst should not occur to thee, thou also to another do not do.” This is Jesus’ summary of the Ten Commandments (Matt. 22:37-39; see also Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18). The chapter goes on to further explain these two great commands with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Then, in chapter two, this church manual further explains the second table of the Ten Commandments (commands five through ten). 

​

The second example is from the Reformation and Post-Reformation period (roughly 1517-1700). In the Reformers and Reformed scholastics’ theological treatises and sermons, there was great emphasis on the Ten Commandments. You will be hard-pressed to find a Reformed theologian in this time that did not expound on them in detail. For example, you could pick up Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Petrus Van Mastrich’s Theoretical-Practical Theology, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, or Thomas Watson’s The Ten Commandments to get a taste of the tradition’s emphasis on the Ten Commandments. 

​

Additionally, even the Reformed catechism of the Reformation included lengthy treatments of the Ten Commandments. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) explains them under the heading of “Gratitude” from questions ninety-two to one-hundred and fifteen. The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647) exposits them from questions one hundred to one hundred and forty-eight. The Baptist Catechism (1695) unpacks them from questions forty-six to eighty-six. If the Ten Commandments are only ten simple commands, then why do all these catechisms spend– at the very least– double that number explaining them? The Ten Commandments’ importance to the Reformed tradition is evident by the frequency and depth in which they are treated in the tradition’s writings.   

Why did the Reformed tradition emphasize the Ten Commandments? The reason is that they believed the Ten Commandments were a summary form of God’s unchangeable and abiding moral law. This moral law reveals to us God’s righteous character and will for us. Therefore, the Ten Commandments are both binding and vital for Christian living.

​

Principles for a Right Reading 

This brings us back to where we started. If the Ten Commandments are more than just ten, how do I rightly read, understand, and apply them? This is the same question the Westminster Larger Catechism is addressing when it asks, “What rules are to be observed for the right understanding of the ten commandments?”  Reformed theologians regularly prefaced their exposition of the commandments with principles for interpreting them. Here is a summary of these principles: 

 

1. The commandments are spiritual. They address the external actions and the internal thoughts and intents of our hearts (1 Sam. 16:7b; Matt. 5:22, 28; 15:19; Rom. 7:14). In other words, they address the whole man, body and soul. 

 

2. The commandments are knitted together. To break one command is to break the whole law (Gal. 3:10; Jam. 2:10).

 

3. The first table of commandments (love for God) has precedence over the second table (love for neighbor). If a child is commanded by their parents to worship a false god, they are required to obey the first commandment over the fifth (Lk. 14:26; Acts 5:29). 

 

4. Each commandment has a positive (what is forbidden) and a negative (what is required) element. This is why the Baptist Catechism asks what is required and what is forbidden in each commandment (Is. 58:13; Eph. 4:25-29). Turretin explains this principle the following way,

 

Hence since a good precept cannot be performed by the law without its opposite evil being avoided (nor a prohibited evil be shunned without its opposite good being performed), it follows that in the affirmative precepts negative are contained, and in the negative affirmative; so that those which are expressly negative are impliedly affirmative and vice versa.

 

Additionally, what is forbidden is always forbidden. But what is required is only required according to the duty of our places and opportunity according to God’s providence in our lives. Every duty cannot be performed at all times. 

 

1. Each commandment represents categories of sin. Every sin that leads to, accompanies, and is associated with the “greater sin” mentioned in the command is included. 

 

2. The commands require us to help others obey what God has commanded and abstain from what He has forbidden. This is limited by our station in life, authority, and responsibility in relation to the person.

 

3. The commandments’ summary and substance is love (Matt. 22:38-39; Jn. 13:35; 1 Tim. 1:5; Rom. 13:10; 1 Jn. 4:20).

 

4. Every principle above assumes that the commandments must be interpreted within the context of the entire Bible, and not just by the words of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. 

 

Have you read the Ten Commandments like this? The same God who has given us His Word with its depth, unity, complexity, and spiritual vitality is the same God who spoke these commands from Mt. Sinai to Israel, and by the Holy Spirit to you. It may be  time to pick up the spare parts that you have missed in your understanding of the Ten Commandments. Read them biblically. Read them prayerfully, pleading that the Holy Spirit would help you see wondrous things in His law (Ps. 119:18). 

​

​

Sources & Notes:

​

Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., “The Lord’s Teaching through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations,” in Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies, vol. 7, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 377.

​

The Baptist Catechism is an adaption of the Westminster Shorter Catechism for Baptist Christians who subscribed to the Second London Baptist Confession (1689). For a fuller history of this catechism see my essay, “Baptist and Catechisms: A Retrieval for Communion with God” in The Confessing Baptist: Essays on the Use of Creeds in Baptist Faith and Life, 2nd edition, ed. Robert Gonzales Jr. (Greenbrier, AR: Free Grace Press, 2025).  

​

 The Bible speaks of the moral law having three uses. There are three pictures that illustrate these three uses: mirror, restraint, and a path. This law is a mirror for the sinner that exposes sin and points to Christ (Rom. 3:20; 7:7). This law is a restraint that curbs men’s depravity (1 Tim. 1:8-10). This law is a path that guides Christian how to walk in the way of righteousness (Psalm 119; 1 Jn. 5:3).

​

 The moral law is not a ladder to climb to earn justification by our obedience. Christ has climbed the ladder of obedience for us. He has pushed the ladder down so we can walk in it. Now, in Christ by the power of the Spirit, we can walk in the path of righteousness as we grow in Christ.

​

 Westminster Larger Catechism, Question Ninety-Nine. 

​

 Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 2 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 11.6.3.