The Christian life
The Ten Commandments
The commandments one by one, why the traditions number them differently, and what each requires as well as forbids.
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The Ten Commandments - the Decalogue, literally the ten words - were given to Moses at Sinai and are recorded twice, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. All four traditions teach them as binding, and three of the four build their catechisms around them.
Their structure is two tables. The first concerns our duty to God; the second our duty to our neighbour. Christ summarises both: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
They are not arbitrary rules. They describe how a creature made in God's image actually flourishes, which is why breaking them damages the breaker as surely as the victim.
Two things to understand before starting.
They cut deeper than behaviour. Christ's exposition in the Sermon on the Mount takes murder back to contempt and adultery back to the look. Luther's method is to read each commandment as forbidding and requiring - thou shalt not kill forbids killing and requires helping your neighbour in every bodily need.
The traditions number them differently. Catholics and Lutherans follow Augustine's division; Orthodox, Anglicans and the Reformed follow another. Both arrive at ten and both contain the same material. The difference is where the lines fall, and it is worth knowing so that you are not arguing about commandment numbers when you mean something else.
The numbering
Hebrew tradition counts I am the Lord thy God as the first word. Christians divide the remaining material in two ways.
| Catholic & Lutheran (Augustinian) | Orthodox, Anglican & Reformed | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | No other gods (includes images) | No other gods |
| 2 | Not take the Lord's name in vain | No graven images |
| 3 | Keep the sabbath holy | Not take the Lord's name in vain |
| 4 | Honour father and mother | Keep the sabbath holy |
| 5 | No killing | Honour father and mother |
| 6 | No adultery | No killing |
| 7 | No stealing | No adultery |
| 8 | No false witness | No stealing |
| 9 | Not covet your neighbour's wife | No false witness |
| 10 | Not covet your neighbour's goods | No coveting (one commandment) |
Both reach ten. The Augustinian scheme folds images into the first commandment as an aspect of idolatry, and splits coveting in two, following Deuteronomy 5:21, which uses different verbs for coveting a wife and coveting goods. The other scheme keeps images separate and treats coveting as one.
A charge you will meet: that Catholics removed the second commandment to protect statues. It is untrue and easy to answer. The material is present in the first commandment in every Catholic catechism, including the current one, which quotes the prohibition of graven images in full and expounds it. The division is Augustine's, from the fifth century, centuries before any controversy over images in the West.
The first table
I am the Lord thy God... thou shalt have no other gods before me
Everything else rests here. Note that it begins with a fact before it issues a command: I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. The commandments are given to a people already rescued. Obedience is response, not the price of rescue.
No other gods is not chiefly about Baal. Luther's Large Catechism gives the definition everyone since has used: a god is that to which you look for all good and in which you take refuge in every trouble. Whatever you actually trust to make life work is your god. On that definition the commandment has a great deal of current application.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
The prohibition is of making images to worship them, not of art. God commanded images in the same book: cherubim on the ark, a bronze serpent, pomegranates and palms in the temple. The Israelite objection to the golden calf was not that it was a sculpture but that they said these be thy gods, O Israel.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council settled this for East and West in 787: images may be venerated, since honour paid to the image passes to the prototype; worship belongs to God alone. The decisive argument was from the incarnation - the invisible God has made Himself visible, so depicting Him is no longer a lie about His nature.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
Broader than swearing. It covers perjury, false oaths, invoking God to lend weight to your own purposes, blasphemy, and the casual use of His name as a filler.
Positively, it requires reverence - calling on God's name in prayer, praise and thanksgiving, and teaching it truly.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
The longest commandment, and the one whose Christian application is most debated.
Christians worship on the first day, not the seventh, from the beginning - the day of the resurrection, called the Lord's Day in Revelation 1:10. This is not a transferred sabbath in most of the four traditions' teaching; it is a new day with a new reason.
What the commandment continues to require, on any account: regular public worship, and rest. The second half is widely ignored and is not optional. A culture that works seven days is disobeying a commandment, and the damage is visible.
Pause and thinkPause: Christ says the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. Is that a relaxation of the commandment or an intensification?
Both, and the order matters.
It is a relaxation of the rabbinic apparatus. Christ heals on the sabbath, defends His disciples for picking grain, and asks which of them would not pull an ox out of a pit. Rules that made the day a burden had inverted its purpose.
It is an intensification of the commandment itself. The sabbath is a gift - a day in which you are commanded to stop, and in which your worth is not measured by production. That is a far heavier demand on a modern person than on an ancient one. Ancient people did not need persuading to rest; we do. Most of us find it easier to keep the commandment against murder than the one about stopping, and the reason is that stopping requires trusting that the world continues without us.
The second table
Honour thy father and thy mother
The first commandment with a promise attached - that thy days may be long upon the land.
It is not addressed primarily to small children. Its original setting is adult children caring for ageing parents, which is why Christ attacks the practice of declaring property corban to avoid supporting them (Mark 7:9-13).
The traditions extend it to all legitimate authority - in the family, in the church, at work, in the state - and, correspondingly, to the duties of those in authority. Luther's catechism treats the whole ordering of society under this commandment, and so do the Catholic and Anglican catechisms. Honour is not unconditional obedience: where an authority commands sin, we ought to obey God rather than men.
Thou shalt not kill
The Hebrew ratsach means unlawful killing - murder - which is why the same Torah prescribes capital punishment and regulates warfare. Thou shalt do no murder is the Prayer Book's rendering, and it is more precise.
Christ extends it inward: whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. The prohibition reaches contempt, and raca - the word for calling someone worthless - is named specifically.
Positively, it requires the protection of life: the unborn, the old, the disabled, the suicidal, the enemy. All four traditions have historically opposed abortion from the earliest period - the Didache, written in the first century, says thou shalt not murder a child by abortion - and that continuity is worth knowing, because it is often assumed to be a modern position.
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Christ extends this one too: whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
The commandment protects marriage, and behind marriage the whole structure within which children are received and raised. The traditions read it as covering all sexual activity outside marriage, and positively as requiring chastity - which is not the same as celibacy, and means the right ordering of sexuality according to one's state of life.
Thou shalt not steal
Beyond theft: fraud, dishonest dealing, unjust wages, exploitation of the desperate, failure to pay debts, and the wasteful use of what has been entrusted to you.
Positively, it requires work, honest trade, generosity, and the recognition that property carries obligations. All four traditions hold that ownership is real and that it is not absolute - the goods of creation are destined for all, and what is superfluous to one is owed to the one in need.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
Originally a courtroom provision, and a matter of life and death in a legal system built on testimony. Extended to lying generally, and further to gossip, slander, detraction - revealing true faults without necessity - and rash judgement.
Positively, it requires truthfulness, and also the defence of a neighbour's reputation. Luther's explanation is characteristically generous: we should defend our neighbour, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.
Thou shalt not covet
The commandment that proves the whole law is about the heart. Coveting harms nobody externally. It is forbidden anyway, and Paul says it was this commandment that convicted him: I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet (Romans 7:7).
Covetousness is not the desire for good things. It is resentment at another's having them, and the restless conviction that what you have is not enough.
Where the four traditions stand
Catholic
The Catechism of the Catholic Church devotes its entire third part to the moral life and expounds the commandments one by one at length, using the Augustinian numbering. Catholic moral theology develops from the commandments through natural law - the conviction that the moral order is written into human nature and is in principle knowable by reason, so that moral claims can be argued in public without appeal to revelation. The Church distinguishes mortal from venial sin: grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent make a sin mortal. She also teaches the precepts of the Church - attend Mass on Sundays and holy days, confess at least once a year, receive communion at least during Easter, observe the days of fasting and abstinence, provide for the needs of the Church - as the minimum, not the measure. The commandments are read as a floor rather than a ceiling: above them stand the beatitudes and the counsels of perfection.
Orthodox
Orthodoxy uses the numbering that keeps the prohibition of images separate, and has historically given the Decalogue less prominence as an organising structure than the West does. Eastern moral teaching is framed less around law and more around the passions and the virtues: sin is disease, the commandments describe health, and the aim is not compliance but transformation. The classical scheme of the eight logismoi - gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, dejection, despondency (acedia), vainglory and pride - catalogued by Evagrius and passed to the West through Cassian as the seven deadly sins, does much of the work the commandments do in Western catechesis. Fasting is treated as a primary moral discipline rather than a devotional extra, and the Church's fasting seasons occupy a large part of the year. On images, Orthodoxy reads the second commandment in the light of the Seventh Ecumenical Council: to refuse images after the incarnation is to deny that God truly took flesh.
Lutheran
Luther's Small Catechism opens with the Ten Commandments - before the Creed and the Lord's Prayer - and the order is theological: law first, so that one knows one's need; then faith; then prayer. His method is the tradition's great pedagogical achievement. Each commandment is explained with we should fear and love God so that... followed by both what is forbidden and what is required. We should not hurt or harm our neighbour in his body, but help and support him in every physical need. We should not tell lies about him, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way. Lutheran theology also teaches the three uses of the law: a civil use, restraining evil in society; a theological use, which is the chief one, showing us our sin and driving us to Christ; and a third use, guiding the Christian life - the extent of which has been debated within Lutheranism, since the law must never become a way of earning what Christ has given.
Anglican
The Prayer Book places the Ten Commandments at the beginning of the Communion service, read aloud by the priest with the congregation responding after each one: Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law. The effect is that an Anglican hears the whole Decalogue before approaching the altar, which is a striking piece of liturgical catechesis. The Catechism requires every child to learn them and then asks what dost thou chiefly learn by these Commandments?, answering in two duties: my duty towards God, and my duty towards my neighbour - both set out in full and among the finest brief statements of Christian ethics in English. Article 7 addresses the standing of the Old Testament law, distinguishing ceremonial and civil precepts, which do not bind Christian commonwealths, from the moral commandments, which no Christian is free from. Anglican moral theology has drawn on both natural law and casuistry - Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium - while the Anglican temper has generally preferred pastoral application to systematic elaboration.
Work with it
Check yourself
Why do Catholics and Lutherans number the commandments differently from the Orthodox, Anglicans and Reformed?
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Correct, and both schemes contain the same material and reach ten. The charge that the prohibition of images was removed is false - the current Catholic catechism quotes and expounds it in full.
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Untrue, and easily checked. The division is Augustine's, from the fifth century, and Lutherans use the same numbering.
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The text is the same; only the division into ten differs.
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No tradition has added a commandment.
Check yourself
What is distinctive about Luther's method of explaining each commandment?
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Yes. Read this way the Decalogue turns out to be mostly positive obligation, which surprises people who think of it as a list of prohibitions.
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The positive half is the distinctive contribution.
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Christ's summary in two is taught alongside, not instead of, the ten.
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Lutheran theology teaches the law's civil, theological and third uses; it does not discard it.
Check yourself
Which commandment does Paul say convicted him, and why is it significant?
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Correct. Romans 7:7. Coveting harms no one externally and is forbidden anyway, which is what showed Paul that outward compliance was not the standard.
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Paul mentions his persecution elsewhere, but Romans 7:7 names coveting.
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Not the commandment cited.
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Paul treats sabbath observance as a matter of liberty, not as what convicted him.
Objection drill
The Ten Commandments were given to Israel under a covenant that Christ fulfilled and ended. We are under grace, not law. Insisting on them is exactly the legalism Paul spent Galatians attacking - and if you were consistent you would keep the sabbath on Saturday and stop eating shellfish.
A model answer
The consistency challenge is fair and the traditions have an answer that is centuries old, so let me start there.
The Church distinguishes three kinds of precept in the Mosaic law. The ceremonial - sacrifices, the priesthood, dietary rules, purity regulations - which pointed forward to Christ and are fulfilled in Him; this is the argument of Hebrews, and Acts 10 and 15 settle the food question explicitly. The civil or judicial - the penalties and arrangements of Israel as a nation state - which bound that commonwealth and do not bind others; Article 7 of the Thirty-Nine Articles says exactly this. And the moral, which expresses how a creature made in God's image is to live, and which no covenant change can repeal, because it was never arbitrary in the first place.
That distinction is not a convenient modern device. It is in Aquinas, it is in the Articles, it is in the Lutheran Confessions, and its roots are in the New Testament's own practice - which is the decisive evidence.
Look at what the apostles actually do. Paul, writing to Gentile Christians under grace, quotes the commandments as binding: honour thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise (Ephesians 6:2). In Romans 13:9 he lists adultery, murder, theft, false witness and coveting and says they are summed up in loving your neighbour. James says that whoever keeps the whole law and offends in one point is guilty of all, and cites two commandments to prove it. Nine of the ten are quoted or assumed as binding on Christians somewhere in the New Testament - all except the sabbath, which is the one the traditions say has changed.
On what Paul is attacking in Galatians: read what the actual dispute was about. It was circumcision, and food laws, and whether Gentile converts had to become Jews to be Christians. That is the ceremonial law, and Paul is furious about it because making it a condition of salvation makes Christ's death unnecessary. He is not saying the moral commandments no longer apply - in the same letter he lists the works of the flesh, including adultery, idolatry, murder and drunkenness, and says those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
On the sabbath, this is where the objection is at its strongest and deserves a straight answer rather than a dodge. Christians met on the first day from the very beginning - Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, and Revelation 1:10's the Lord's day. Ignatius, writing around 107, describes Christians as no longer sabbatising but living according to the Lord's Day. And Paul twice says the day is a matter of liberty: let no man judge you... in respect of a holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days (Colossians 2:16), and one man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind (Romans 14:5). Those are difficult verses to write if sabbath observance were still binding on its original day.
What the traditions hold is that the commandment's moral substance - regular corporate worship, and rest from work - continues, while the day has moved, for the best of reasons: Christ rose on the first day.
On legalism, the definition matters. Legalism is not taking the commandments seriously; it is attempting to be justified by keeping them. The four traditions all teach that no one is saved by obedience. Luther - who is not usually accused of softness on grace - put the commandments first in his catechism, before the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, precisely because their function is to show you that you cannot keep them and to drive you to Christ. That is the law's chief theological use in Lutheran teaching.
And the question to leave with them, which is usually the end of the conversation: which of the ten is a Christian now free to break? Nobody wants to answer the ones about murder and theft. The objection, pressed, turns out to be about the sabbath and the food laws - which is a much narrower argument, and one the Church settled in Acts 15.
Memory work
Turn each card over, then say honestly whether you knew it. Cards you miss come back sooner.