God’s Laws
What do we think of when we hear the words “laws”, “rules”, and “regulations”? As a child I remember disliking the “rules” very much. I viewed them as restrictions which hindered me from attaining what I wanted. Rules shortened my recess times, regulated the amount of sugar I consumed, and forced me to go to bed when I didn’t want to. However, in retrospect, I can easily see that each supposed rule was indeed for my personal benefit so that I didn’t stay out playing all day, have poor health, and wasn’t exhausted the next day.
The Ten Commandments are also “rules”, or “laws” with the same purpose, except with much better consequences than merely good health. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they were coming out of 400 years of not only slavery over their bodies, but also over their minds. Egyptian culture, religious beliefs, and law dominated the Israelite community. So when God led His people out of Egypt, He was leading out not the largest refugee nation of 2 million people, He was leading out a mass group of spiritual refugees as well. When God gave the 10 commandments to His people, He was not only giving them laws, He was giving them an identity. God was making a covenant with His people to distinguish them among all of the other pagan nations that the Israelites were His people. God blessed them with laws which no other nation shared, a unique system of guidelines designed to fulfill the maximum blessings of freedom over the Israelites. On the Ten Commandments, Plantinga writes:
“What God carved in stone at Sinai was a recipe for real freedom. I know it sounds paradoxical to say that we get freedom by obeying God’s commandments, but that’s actually the way things go. Sin traps people and makes them wilt; godly obedience liberates people and helps them flourish. The Ten Commandments are guides for a free and flourishing life…God’s commandments are all pro-life.”
Often the words “laws” and “Ten Commandments” connotes feelings of strictness, of an intolerably angry God pointing a finger saying “Do what I say!...Or else!”. However, we Christians need to remember the context for which God gave us those laws. God gave us those laws to obey because they would ultimately teach us to live in the purest and most righteous ways possible. God was actually giving us one of His greatest blessings when He gave us the Ten Commandments. In fact, when God commands us to obey them, not only is He commanding our moral righteousness, but He’s also commanding us to be blessed and to be a blessing. Fulfilling the Ten Commandments will only lead us along good paths, and those good paths will stand as examples to the other nations of the world and the glory of God will truly be known to others. Finally, as God’s people, it is our duty to live according to the good ways of God not only to save ourselves, but to be a blessing to others as well.
“…Ten Commandments, a set of requirements that people have to fulfill not in order to be rescued by God from slavery, but because they have been rescued”.
Nice intro! You it read like a story. Also your take on the back round of the ten commandments helped me to look at them in a new way. You focused in on a topic close enough so that you were able to delve into it enough. Good use of plantinga quotes to support your argument. Its Important to remember that they are commands that should be obeyed. After all the Israelites were breaking the one about graven images even as moses was receiving them.
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