Jesus and the Ten Commandments

Our Lord, in the interview with the rich young ruler, gave a recapitulation of the commandments treating of duties to men (Mar 10:19; Mat 19:18 f; Luk 18:20). He quotes the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th commandments. The minor variations in the reports in the three Synoptic Gospels remind the student of the similar variations in Ex 20 and Dt 5. Already in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had quoted the 6th and 7th commandments, and then had gone on to show that anger is incipient murder, and that lust is adultery in the heart (Mat 5:27-32). He takes the words of the Decalogue and extends them into the realm of thought and feeling. He may have had in mind the 3rd commandment in His sharp prohibition of the Jewish habit of swearing by various things (Mat 5:33-37). As to the Sabbath, His teaching and example tended to lighten the onerous restrictions of the rabbis (Mar 2:23-28). Duty to parents He elevated above all supposed claims of vows and offerings (Mat 15:4-6). In further extension of the 8th commandment, Jesus said, “Do not defraud” (Mar 10:19); and in treating of the ethics of speech, Jesus not only condemns false witness, but also includes railing, blasphemy, and even an idle word (Mat 15:19; Mat 12:31, Mat 12:36 f). In His affirmation that God is spirit (Joh_4:24), Jesus made the manufacture of images nothing but folly. All his ethical teaching might be said to be founded on the 10th commandment, which tracks sin to its lair in the mind and soul of man.

Our Lord embraced the whole range of human obligation in two, or at most three, commands: (1) “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”; (2) “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mat 22:37-40; compare Deu 6:5; Lev 19:18). With love such as is here described in the heart, man cannot trespass against God or his fellow-men. At the close of His ministry, on the night of the betrayal, Jesus gave to His followers a third commandment, not different from the two on which the whole Law hangs, but an extension of the second great commandment upward into a higher realm of self-sacrifice (Joh 13:34 f; Joh 15:12 f, 17; compare Eph 5:2; Gal 6:10; 1Jo 3:14-18). “Thou shalt love” is the first word and the last in the teaching of our Lord. His teaching is positive rather than negative, and so simple that a child can understand it. For the Christian, the Decalogue is no longer the highest summary of human duty. He must ever read it with sincere respect as one of the great monuments of the love of God in the moral and religious education of mankind; but it has given place to the higher teaching of the Son of God, all that was permanently valuable in the Ten Commandments having been taken up into the teaching of our Lord and His apostles.


This biblical study was taken from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co