One day, in an effort to entertain my terrorizing toddler, I decided to make oatmeal cookies. She stood on a chair next to me to “help.” As I was in the middle of mixing the dough, my toddler started peeing. We were potty training and she wasn’t wearing anything from the waist down. “Ah!!! Stop it!!!” I screamed.
A few minutes later the mess was cleaned up. The cookies were safe. At least they tasted fine to me after they were baked.
The recipe for my oatmeal cookies did not call for toddler pee. This is an extreme example, but in general recipes are designed to create safe and delicious food.
A recipe for success
The Ten Commandments are kind of like a recipe too. They lead to “living not only well and wisely but [living] with joy and deep contentment.”[1] This might sound strange when thinking about the Ten Commandments and the whole Old Testament Law (in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), but I’ve begun shifting my thinking.
Before, I used to be confused by the Commandments, and viewed them negatively. I felt like they were condemning me because I couldn’t possibly live up to them all. Now, I think the Ten Commandments are actually life-giving. They have the ability, in the right hands and the right people, to encourage God-centred communities, where people live for the sake of others.
Think of a group of people called and gathered together by God through the Holy Spirit. This could be a church, a Christian small group, a discipleship group on campus, or whatever. This group of people is committed to worshipping and serving God with their entire lives and being. It’s a group of sinners, though, in need of reforming. They will hurt each other and need reconciliation. Each person in the community needs guidelines to ensure the well-being of the community.
That’s where the Ten Commandments come in.
Rather than telling us we’re bad, God gave the Ten Commandments to offer a vision for something better than the status quo. Yes, the whole human race is in rough shape, but can be transformed—that’s really good news! Because God is a God of deep love, through the Commandments he shows what restoration to his image can look like. Human beings are able to embody God's own character!
I’m not talking about a strict, graceless adherence to the rules (“Follow these, or else!”). For those who fail and wish to do better, there is grace. They’re guidelines or, better yet, promises of something that can actually be better. When the Ten Commandments are upheld and followed by individuals within the community, the community demonstrates a transformation that leads to further transformation. Certainly there is inner transformation as the Holy Spirit works in people’s hearts. But we can’t forget the outer transformation of the community, as each member starts actually living at peace with one another.
Life together isn’t going to be good without this recipe called the Ten Commandments.
A recipe for honouring God
The Ten Commandments starts with, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3 ESV), because the highest value of any community ought to be worshipping and honouring God as the one and only true God of heaven and earth. It’s an acknowledgement that God’s ways and wisdom are best for the human race, since he created us. The Ten Commandments are a recipe for honouring God, because from the start they remind us to keep God front and centre in our lives.
When God is replaced by a person or object within the community, things go sideways. Like when:
The leader of the community takes all the power, causing coercion and division.
Keeping the community financially afloat is all that matters, causing money to be the end in itself.
The group adopts an “us” versus “them” kind of attitude, causing hate-filled and reactionary tendencies.
The group tries to appease everybody’s beliefs, and ends up watering down the truth.
Usually when anything like this happens, it means our duty to others is replaced by our unhealthy desires, to the detriment of our neighbours. To me, the other commandments are about trusting God and finding contentment in what he’s about. When we grow weary and discontent with God’s good ways, we start to replace God with something else, and our actions will likely go off the mark too. We will love others less, and love ourselves more. That isn’t a good place to be.
Similarly, the second commandment is also related to life in community. Idols must be set aside and no longer worshipped, because the true God is not a material object. Because his image is made known in the human race, respecting people as divine-image bearers becomes a way of worshipping the one, true God. Thus cultivating good and healthy relationships with one another is an expression of true worship.
A recipe for positive change
The Ten Commandments, then, are for our good, and help us to live in service of God. But the Commandments are also for our good because they enable a healthy trajectory within our communities.
Ideally, in a community established in worshipping and serving God, no competition or discord would exist. Only peace, compassion, and selfless love would reign among God’s people, as the embodiment of God himself. That’s the hope anyway, or the ideal to which we strive as Spirit-filled people living in common life with another.
A community cannot function if relationships are not valued and upheld. When any of the commandments are broken, it’s disruptive. That’s why the Ten Commandments are good—a beneficial recipe—because they actually set up healthy norms for a Spirit-filled community, leading toward a transformation of the whole community.
Each piece of the recipe (all the Ten Commandments) provides a way for positive change. For example:
Having a day of rest (Sabbath): We aren’t built to work, work, work. It’s important to take time off and be refreshed for more work. If members of the community are burning out, the work won’t get done or it won’t get done well, and each person will be more strained and stressed. God has given the work to be done, and it will be accomplished in his good timing.
Honouring parents: It’s worth considering what parents and elders of our community have for us in every stage of life. A society that disregards or throws away people is not a healthy one. Young and old, everyone is made in God’s image and has value.
No murder: Ending a human life, having value as somebody made in God’s image, is the opposite of embodying God, who is the Lord and giver of life. And imagine the impact on society if people went around killing each other. The community would shrink, and everyone would have a level of fear and mistrust toward one another. God as the creator of all things and people is the judge, and we can trust that justice will ultimately happen, so we don’t need to take matters into our own hands.
Avoiding adultery: Honouring vows is important. Having sexual relationships outside of the marriage vows causes ripples throughout the whole community, as trust is broken among many parties, whether that be the spouses affected or even children. It’s important to trust God in your sexual desires.
Giving up coveting: Being content with what you have, and trusting God for your needs. How awful if everyone in a community was always eyeing and comparing each other's things and circumstances!
Refraining from false words: Truth matters. What you say is important, because it has an effect on the whole community. It can tear down or build up many people.
No longer stealing: Leave alone what isn’t yours, and like with the command against coveting, trust God for your needs and know that a community of trust is far better than gaining through theft.
When any of the commandments are broken, disruption takes place within the community. But by following the Ten Commandments, the members of the community become who they were created to be.
A recipe for a new way of life
In the communion service of the Book of Common Prayer, the worship leader will sometimes recite the Ten Commandments, and after each command is said the people respond, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep thy law.” I really love this practice because I know full well that I can’t actually follow through on upholding the Ten Commandments without God’s grace.
Through this exercise within the worship service I’m reminded that I fall short of God’s ways and I am not condemned or abandoned. There is grace to keep trying and failing, knowing that improvement comes through time and surrender to God’s transforming Spirit.
Though I’m not perfect, thankfully through Jesus I can contribute to the health of the communities I’m in. He fulfilled the Ten Commandments and the entire Law, through the life he lived, his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. And so he is able to help me live out the commandments too.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus didn’t throw out this recipe, but taught the intent behind it by showing that the Law points to a deeper reality: the desires of the heart form our habits and actions, and these desires need to be transformed. And by God’s grace they can be.
I don’t need to give in to the desire to work, work, work; or to disrespect my parents; or end the life of another; or break my marriage vows; and so on (fill in the blank for yourself). You have the freedom to live according to God’s recipe, through Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, to take a rest, to cultivate family relationships, to have contentment in what God has given you, etc.
Jesus embodied the Ten Commandments throughout his whole life—by honouring God and all his relationships. He did this on behalf of all who are united to him through faith. And through this, Jesus created and continues to create new communities centred around God and others.
Footnotes
Joseph Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament: The Ordering of Life in Israel and Early Judaism (Oxford University Press, 1995), 86.
