This new series, Jesus and the ten commandments, is a conversation on how

Jesus embodies – and helps us to embody – the kind of life we are built

for, and the kind of life framed by the Ten Words.

Bill starts with a re-framing of the Ten Words – which we mistakenly call

Commandments – as more about relationship and reality than about rules and

restrictions. When the Ten Words are reduced to rules restricting what we

think of as our freedom, we will try and find ways to do end-runs around

them – and discover that they were actually protections put in place to

enable human thriving the way God intended.

Because Jesus is fully aware of this, He invites us to learn our lives from

Him – to follow in His way. As we do so, allowing Him to shape us by

alignment with Him, we discover that we live in the center of the Ten Words

naturally and without thinking about it. They have become part of what it

means for us to be human.

By Bill Dogterom