In the class room:
Upon summarizing the 10 commandments this last week with the 2nd form classes we set out to explain the purpose of the 10 commandments.
In the first place they were the conditions which God had set for His covenant with His people, Israel. Kind of like the ‘small letters’ in a contract.
In the second place they have also been the basis of our western, Christian / Jewish set of cultural ethics and law. God created us and therefore He certainly knows what’s good for His creation.
By way of a ‘side step’ it was then explained how the Pharisees in the time of Jesus’ sojourn on this earth believed that there were basically 2 preconditions in order to enter heaven. In the first place one was to be a descendant of Abraham, because he was the ‘Father of all believers’, and because they were descendants of Abraham, they fitted this precondition. The problem here is as follows: Water is a fluid, but not all fluids are water! (Believers at that time were Jews, but not all the Jews were believers.) In the second place they also believed that should they maintain and obey all the 10 commandments, then and only then would they be accepted by God to enter Heaven.
The pupils were unanimous on this: This wasn’t possible!
This issue, is often referred to by Christians as attaining salvation by way of the law. And, in actual fact, should anyone ever achieve this, during all his or her days here on earth, then it can safely be said that he or she would have salvation.
But, and that is an enormous ‘but’, the law of God lets us see that we can’t possibly attain the high standard set for us by God.
We then set out to make clear that we are born as sinners and that is why we sin. Not the other way round. Using a positive illustration we say an appel tree grows appels because it is an appel tree. Even before it brought fruit into existence, it was already an appel tree! In the same way we are all sinners.
Sin finds its origin in our hearts. To hate someone is a transgression of the 6th commandment: Thou shalt not kill. To desire an other mans wife with lustful thoughts, is also a transgression of the commandments.. To covet, in your heart, is a transgression. Agreed, the deed has not yet taken place, but never the less, you were ‘aiming your heart in the wrong direction’.
These 10 commandments simply let us see how we stand before God.
Everybody seems to think that they are basically good. Al Capone, who smashed the skull of some one who he ‘didn’t like’ with a baseball bat, said, later on in life, that he wasn’t a bad man.
O.K. we all make one or two mistakes, no one is perfect.
Just like a roentgen photo shows us where the bone is broken, which is causing all the pain, Gods commandments show us where we are at fault.
Once there was this king who had an enormous estate with in the middle of the grounds a beautiful palace. Every weekend he opened the grounds for the public. The people came in hundreds to view his castle. They parked their cars along the side of the road and walked across the grass to the castle. This despite the fact that there was a beautiful wide lane leading right up to the main doors.
At a great expense the king designed and made a beautiful archway through which the visitors could enter the grounds and walk along the wide lane up to the castle. Despite this great ‘investment’ on his part, the subjects just kept coming across beautifully mown grass lawn. It was then that the king decided to build a fence around the outer perimeter of his property. It was a boundary with 10 stretchers of wall. Should anyone have the mind to just step out of his or her car and cut across the lawn, then he or she would be brought to an abrupt stand still when bumping into this wall Walking along the wall he or she would eventually come to the beautiful archway through which they could then enter into the garden of the king. At first the people thought that the wall gave an unfriendly and negative impression. But once they had been through the beautiful gateway, they understood why the king had built it, and to what expense he had gone to build this archway. It had even been more expensive than the price of his castle, which the people had come to view.
Now that is what is meant when, as some people say, Jesus had fulfilled the law. You see, Gods commandments lead us eventually to Jezus, the ‘archway’. Only by way of Jezus can we ever appear as justified people in the presence of God.
Thank God for His 10 commandments!
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