Theology Matters

 Lesson 32: Questions 78, 79, and 80

In our last lesson we considered the seventh commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” We saw that it requires the preservation of our own and our neighbor’s chastity in heart, speech, and behavior, and forbids all unchaste thoughts, words, and actions. The seventh commandment therefore governs the whole realm of human sexuality according to God’s good created order. As we move through the second table of the Law, a pattern is emerging: God governs and protects the fundamental relationships and goods of human life:

Question 78: What is the eighth commandment?

“You shall not steal.” (Exodus 20:15, ESV)

Like the sixth and seventh commandments, the eighth is remarkably brief. And like those commandments, we would badly misunderstand it if we restricted it only to the most obvious outward act named.

“You shall not steal” certainly means that we may not take something belonging to another person without lawful right. Burglary, robbery, shoplifting, and direct theft clearly violate the commandment. But the commandment comprehends an entire moral category concerning property and material possessions.

We have already established this interpretive method. 

“You shall not murder” does not merely prohibit first-degree murder.

It places human life under the protection and preservation of God’s Law.

“You shall not commit adultery” does not merely prohibit one particular sexual act.

It places human chastity and marriage under the protection and preservation of God’s Law. 

The eighth commandment works the same way.

“You shall not steal” places property and possessions under the protection and government of God’s Law. It therefore governs not only whether I physically take my neighbor’s possessions, but how property is acquired, preserved, used, exchanged, increased, diminished, and transferred.

This is an important feature of the second table. Each commandment establishes duties I owe to my neighbor, but because that same law binds my neighbor, it also establishes something I may rightly expect from him. I may not unjustly take his life, violate his chastity, or diminish his property, and neither may he do those things to me. God’s Law governs the relationship in both directions.

The commandment also necessarily recognizes the legitimacy of private property. If nothing may properly belong to one person rather than another, then stealing becomes an incoherent category. Scripture routinely distinguishes what belongs to one person from what belongs to another (Acts 5:4).

But private property does not mean absolute ownership independent of God. The earth and everything in it ultimately belongs to the Lord (Psalm 24:1). Whatever we possess, we possess as creatures and stewards under His authority. God may command what we do with what He has entrusted to us.

So the eighth commandment protects real human property without turning property into an idol.

Our possessions belong to us in relation to our neighbor.

Our possessions belong to God in relation to Him.

That distinction will matter as the catechism develops both the positive duties and the negative prohibitions of this commandment.Question 79: What does it require?

The catechism now draws out the positive duty contained in the commandment. Notice its careful wording: “the lawful procuring and furthering the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others”.

“Thou shalt not steal” does not mean merely, “Leave everybody else’s stuff alone.” It commands active faithfulness concerning material goods. Just as the sixth commandment requires lawful endeavors to preserve our neighbor’s LIFE, and the seventh requires us to preserve our neighbor’s CHASTITY, the eighth requires appropriate concern for our neighbor’s PROPERTY. And because this law binds my neighbor as surely as it binds me, I may rightly expect him to pursue his material good lawfully rather than increasing his estate through my unjust loss.

FIRST, we are required lawfully to procure and further our own outward estate.

Jacob asks Laban, “when shall I provide for my own household also?” (Genesis 30:30). Paul later states the duty of household provision with tremendous seriousness (1 Timothy 5:8). Scripture does not treat responsible provision as greed. Providing food, shelter, clothing, and other legitimate necessities for ourselves and those entrusted to our care is part of ordinary Christian faithfulness.

That normally requires work. God placed Adam in the garden to work it before the fall (Genesis 2:15). Paul commands Christians to work quietly and earn their own living (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). Work is therefore not merely an unfortunate means of obtaining money. Honest, productive labor belongs to God’s good ordering of human life.

But notice the word “lawful”. The eighth commandment does not merely tell us to increase our estate. It tells us to do so lawfully. Profit does not sanctify the means by which it is obtained. A man may not enrich his household through fraud, exploitation, theft, sexual immorality, dishonest business, or some other violation of God’s law and congratulate himself for being a good provider.

Christian provision must remain Christian.

We must also steward what God provides. Scripture commends diligence and prudent care while warning repeatedly against wastefulness. Wisdom considers resources, prepares for the future, pays what is legitimately owed, and uses material blessings rather than consuming them thoughtlessly.

SECOND, the commandment requires us to further the outward estate of others.

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. (Leviticus 25:35, ESV)

Here Scripture commands assistance to a brother who becomes poor. That is a genuine moral obligation, but we should keep our categories clear. Family provision, private generosity, ecclesiastical mercy, contractual obligation, and civil justice are not interchangeable things. Poverty by itself does not prove that someone else has committed theft, and inequality of possessions by itself does not prove injustice. But neither may the Christian use the legitimacy of private property as an excuse for hard-hearted indifference. The eighth commandment requires love.

Remember, the sum of the 2nd table is “love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Old Testament case laws make this beautifully concrete with respect to fellow Israelites.

“You shall not see your brother’s ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother. And if he does not live near you and you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall restore it to him. And you shall do the same with his donkey or with his garment, or with any lost thing of your brother’s, which he loses and you find; you may not ignore it. You shall not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen down by the way and ignore them. You shall help him to lift them up again.” (Deut. 22:1-4, ESV, emphasis added)

Exodus 23 goes even farther. If you encountered the lost ox or donkey of your enemy, you were to return it. If his donkey collapsed under its burden, you were to help him with it (Exodus 23:4-5).

Think about what God is teaching.

It is not enough to say, “I did not steal my enemy’s donkey.”

Love says, “His donkey is lost. Though he is my enemy, I will love him by returning it.”

It is not enough to say, “I did not damage my enemy’s property.”

Love says, “His property is endangered. Though he is my enemy, I will love him by preserving it.”

That is the positive force of the eighth commandment.

The catechism also cites Genesis 47:14,20, an initially unusual proof text. Joseph was entrusted with the economic administration of Egypt during the famine, and in that calling he managed resources in such a way that Pharaoh’s estate was increased. The point is not that every feature of Egyptian famine policy becomes a universal model for civil government. Rather, Scripture recognizes that faithfully managing and furthering material interests entrusted to us can itself be a legitimate duty. The Westminster Larger Catechism similarly places these verses under our duty, by just and lawful means, to procure, preserve, and further the outward estate of others.

That principle reaches ordinary modern life.

Employees should care for company property. 

Employers should pay agreed wages faithfully.

Borrowers should return what they borrow and pay what they owe. 

Lenders should exercise their rights justly and mercifully.

Sellers should represent goods honestly. 

Buyers should pay what they agreed to pay.

Neighbors should protect rather than damage one another’s property.

And where we have wrongfully taken or withheld what belongs to another, biblical justice ordinarily requires RESTITUTION.

Exodus 22 requires thieves to restore what they stole, sometimes with additional restitution proportionate to the injury caused (Exodus 22:1-4). Leviticus likewise requires restoration when property has been obtained through robbery, oppression, or fraud (Leviticus 6:1-5).

We do not mechanically reproduce every penalty of Israel’s civil administration. But the general equity is clear. Where possible, justice repairs the material wrong. Repentance seeks to preserve our neighbor’s property by restoring whatever was taken unlawfully. 

Question 80: What is forbidden in the eighth commandment?

The negative requirement is deliberately broad. The eighth commandment forbids “whatsoever doth or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbor’s wealth or outward estate.”

FIRST, the commandment forbids unjustly hindering our own outward estate.

This may sound strange at first. How can we steal from ourselves?

The catechism’s point is not that every foolish purchase, failed investment, expensive hobby, or bad financial decision becomes theft. Scripture does not give us permission to label every form of economic foolishness an eighth-commandment violation. But we are stewards of what God gives us, and our material decisions affect duties we owe to others.

Paul’s warning concerning failure to provide for one’s household appears again here (1 Timothy 5:8). Proverbs commends productive labor while warning that chasing worthless pursuits brings poverty (Proverbs 28:19). The man devoted excessively to pleasure consumes his estate rather than governing it wisely (Proverbs 21:17). Gluttony and drunkenness likewise tend toward poverty (Proverbs 23:20-21).

These passages are not teaching that Christians must maximize wealth.

They are teaching that waste, idleness, addiction, and irresponsible consumption may eventually make us unable to perform duties God has actually given us.

At the same time, we must distinguish poor stewardship from actual injustice. 

The catechism says “unjustly”.

That word matters.

SECOND, the commandment forbids every unjust means by which we hinder our neighbor’s outward estate or enlarge our own at his expense.

Direct theft is the obvious example, but Scripture repeatedly identifies less obvious forms.

Dishonest weights and measures are condemned because the transaction appears legitimate while secretly cheating the other party (Leviticus 19:35-36; Proverbs 11:1). Fraudulent representation is theft wearing business clothes. Withholding lawful wages is likewise condemned.

Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. (James 5:4, ESV)

An employee may steal from his employer, and an employer may steal from his employee.

The employee steals when he takes property, falsifies hours or expenses, intentionally claims payment for work he did not perform, or deliberately misuses resources entrusted to him. This does not mean that every unproductive minute is theft. Human beings are not machines. But deliberate deception concerning labor for which we are being paid is an eighth-commandment matter.

The employer steals when he knowingly withholds wages owed, cheats workers concerning agreed compensation, manipulates accounts to avoid legitimate obligations, or uses superior power to defraud those dependent upon him.

The same principle governs contracts and commerce.

We may not lie about what we are selling.

We may not conceal defects we are morally obligated to disclose.

We may not alter measurements, quantities, invoices, or records in our favor.

We may not exploit another person’s ignorance or desperation through deception.

We may not damage another person’s property or livelihood simply because we dislike him.

We may not knowingly receive or retain stolen property (Proverbs 29:24).

And we may not treat another person’s labor and time as though they have no value merely because the property taken was not a physical object. A useful question for self-examination is: 

Do I value my neighbor’s time in the same way I desire him to value mine?

The point is not to keep an account of every inconvenience others cause us, but to examine whether we ourselves presume upon their time as though it were ours to spend.

Scripture also condemns economic oppression. Amos rebukes merchants who manipulate measures and prices in order to exploit the needy (Amos 8:4-6). James condemns wealthy men who withhold the wages of laborers (James 5:4). Micah condemns those who covet fields and then seize them through superior power (Micah 2:1-2).

Notice how other commandments often cooperate with the eighth.

Abuse of authority (5th) may enable theft. 

Violence (6th) may accompany theft. 

Sexual immorality (7th) may coerce theft.

False witness (9th) may conceal or facilitate theft. 

Covetousness (10th) may motivate theft.

Ahab’s theft of Naboth’s vineyard required abuse of royal authority (5th), murder (6th), false accusation (9th), and covetousness (10th) before the property finally changed hands (1 Kings 21).

Sin rarely respects the neat boundaries of our catechism headings.

But the distinctive concern of the eighth commandment remains clear: we may not unjustly seize, withhold, destroy, diminish, or manipulate what God has lawfully placed in another person’s stewardship.

This requires careful judgment in modern economic questions.

Scripture recognizes differing possessions, inheritance, labor, profit, poverty, wealth, gifts, obligations, generosity, and voluntary exchange. And it places these under God’s sovereignty.

The moral question is whether property is acquired, retained, transferred, and used righteously.

This is why Paul’s command to former thieves is such a beautiful summary of the eighth commandment:

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. (Ephesians 4:28, ESV)

Notice the complete transformation.

Stop taking. Start working. Then start giving.

The gospel-shaped opposite of theft is not merely hands that stop stealing. 

It is hands that start working so they can start giving.

Question 80 therefore leaves very little room for a respectable church member to say, “I have never robbed a store, so this commandment has little to do with me.”

It examines the way we work, the way we buy and sell, the way we borrow and repay, the way we treat employees and employers, the way we use entrusted resources, the way we respond to our neighbor’s need, and the way we handle whatever material goods God places into our hands.Conclusion

Questions 78 through 80 teach us that God governs our property, possessions, labor, and material dealings with one another.

Take this lesson with you in three ways.

That is why Ephesians 4:28 is such a fitting Christian pattern: 

The eighth commandment calls us to become people who can be trusted with property, money, work, contracts, debt, possessions, and responsibility.

We are to pursue productivity without greed, prosperity without exploitation, justice without harshness, and generosity with cheerfulness.

And in all of it, we remember that everything we possess is ultimately a gift from God and must be used under His authority for His glory and the good of our neighbor.

 Lesson 31: Questions 75, 76, and 77

In our last lesson we considered the sixth commandment. We saw that God forbids murder and requires “all lawful endeavours” to preserve our own life and the lives of others. The commandment therefore reaches beyond the outward act of murder to suicide, hatred, reckless behavior, and everything tending toward the destruction of life (Q72-Q74). Now the catechism turns from the protection of human life to the protection of chastity, marriage, and the proper use of our sexuality.

Question 75: Which is the seventh commandment?

You shall not commit adultery. (Exodus 20:14, ESV)

Like the sixth commandment, the seventh is remarkably brief. And like the sixth commandment, we would badly misunderstand it if we restricted it only to the particular outward act named.

We have already seen this pattern throughout the moral law. The commandments are comprehensive summaries of entire categories of righteousness and sin. “Thou shalt not kill” certainly forbids murder, but it also requires the preservation of life and forbids hatred, cruelty, and everything tending toward unjust destruction. In the same way, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” explicitly forbids adultery, but it also governs the whole realm of human sexuality.

Jesus makes this unmistakable in the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Jesus is not correcting Moses, as though the Old Testament prohibited adultery while permitting lust. He is exposing shallow interpretations of Moses. The seventh commandment always reached the heart. The God Who gave the commandment is the God Who sees the heart, and His concern has never been limited to whether our bodies technically crossed a particular line. 

This shows just how ungodly the “how far is too far?” discussion is.

This is why the catechism will speak in Questions 76 and 77 about our “chastity, in heart, speech, and behavior” and about “all unchaste thoughts, words, and actions.” Those are not additions to the seventh commandment. They draw out what the commandment comprehends.

Chastity is a useful word that our culture rarely uses anymore. Or at least rarely in a positive light. It means the proper ordering of our sexuality according to the place God has given it. Chastity is therefore not merely abstinence from forbidden sexual acts. It is the virtue of embracing God's design for sexuality and consciously ordering our lives and encouraging others according to that standard, for God's glory and our own flourishing.

Scripture does not treat sexuality as dirty, embarrassing, or inherently sinful. God created mankind male and female (Genesis 1:27). He instituted marriage before the fall (Genesis 2:18-25). He commands husbands and wives to give themselves faithfully to one another (1 Corinthians 7:2-5). Sexuality is God's creation, and therefore God, not our desires, determines its righteous use.

The seventh commandment consequently does more than tell married people not to cheat on their spouses. It places the whole of our sexual lives under the lordship of God.

Question 76: What does it require?

Notice that the catechism does not merely say, “Do not commit adultery.” It asks what obedience positively requires and answers with the word “preservation”.

FIRST, we must preserve our own chastity, pursuing holiness in both the inward and outward dimensions of our sexuality, what Paul describes as being “holy in body and spirit” (1 Corinthians 7:34).

For married people, this includes faithful sexual devotion to one's own spouse.

But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. (1 Corinthians 7:2-4, ESV)

Paul's answer to sexual immorality is not that sexual desire itself must be rejected. Within marriage, sexual intimacy is good and belongs to the mutual duties of husband and wife. Neither spouse possesses unilateral authority over this part of the marriage relationship, and neither should use sexual intimacy selfishly as a weapon, reward, or means of manipulation. Paul continues:

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (1 Corinthians 7:5, ESV)

Even temporary abstinence within marriage is to be by mutual agreement, for a spiritual purpose, and for a limited time. Scripture is remarkably positive about marital intimacy while also insisting that it remain within God's appointed boundaries.

For unmarried people, chastity requires abstinence from sexual activity. An unmarried person may serve the Lord faithfully as an unmarried person (1 Corinthians 7:7-8). And when marriage is desired and appropriate, marriage is honorable rather than spiritually inferior (1 Corinthians 7:36).

But the basic sexual ethic does not change according to marital status. Before marriage, outside marriage, or after marriage, chastity requires abstinence. Within marriage, chastity requires exclusive faithfulness to one's spouse. Sexual desire does not become morally authoritative merely because it is strong, persistent, or sincerely felt.

SECOND, we must preserve our neighbor's chastity.

This is an especially important phrase in the catechism. Christian sexual ethics cannot be reduced to asking, “How far may I go without technically sinning?” Love asks another question: “Am I helping my neighbor remain faithful to God?” 

Just as the sixth commandment requires us to seek lawful means to preserve the life of our neighbor, the seventh commandment requires us to preserve the chastity of our neighbor. We should encourage one another toward faithfulness, strengthen marriages rather than undermine them, counsel purity rather than compromise, and help one another flee rather than rationalize temptation.

That includes how we speak.

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. (Colossians 4:6, ESV)

Speech should be gracious and fitting. Sexual jokes, suggestive conversation, flirtation with someone else's spouse, deliberately provocative messages, and language designed to awaken sexual desire outside marriage do not preserve our neighbor's chastity. Ephesians explicitly joins sexual immorality to corrupt sexual speech:

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. (Ephesians 5:3-4, ESV)

It also includes our conduct.

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

Peter is speaking specifically about the conduct of Christian wives, but the principle is clear: purity is visible in behavior. We should not knowingly place ourselves or others into circumstances calculated to weaken sexual faithfulness. We should establish wise boundaries, flee temptation rather than negotiate with it, and refuse to make ourselves an occasion for another person's sin (2 Timothy 2:22; Romans 13:14).

This brings us to an important example from the case law.

“If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins.” (Exodus 22:16-17, ESV)

This law concerns a man who seduces an unbetrothed virgin and lies with her. Chastity has already been violated. The question is now: what does justice require after sexual sin has occurred?

Notice first that Scripture refuses to treat the act as a private matter having no consequences beyond the two people involved. The man has created real obligations. He may not take sexual privileges and then simply walk away.

If the woman's father permits the marriage, the man must provide the customary bride-price and take responsibility for her as his wife. But the sexual act does not give him a right to the woman. Her father retains authority to refuse the marriage.

And if her father refuses, the man does not escape financial responsibility. He must “pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins.” Exodus does not specify the amount here. Deuteronomy 22:28-29, which apparently deals with similar behavior, specifies fifty shekels of silver, a very substantial sum in the ancient world. It can be difficult to parse out every detail in both passages, but the central point of Exodus 22 is clear: sexual sin is not cheap.

He does not get to sin and leave the woman and her household to absorb all of its consequences.

There is grace even in the severity of that law. God builds deterrence into justice. The young man contemplating sexual sin is supposed to know beforehand that fornication may create costly obligations that he does not get to define afterward.

We do not live under the civil administration of Old Testament Israel, so we should not mechanically reproduce every feature of Israel's case law. But neither should we discard it. Its general equity continues to teach us what God regards as just. 

Question 76 therefore calls us to active chastity:

Question 77: What does it forbid?

Question 77 now states the negative side with tremendous breadth: all unchaste thoughts, words, and actions.

To understand that answer, we must first know the boundary God has established for sexual activity. Scripture presents marriage as the lifelong covenantal union of one man and one woman.

God establishes that pattern at creation, before sin enters the world:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24, ESV)

Jesus appeals directly to that creation order when questioned about marriage:

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6, ESV)

Notice the categories Jesus receives rather than invents: God made humanity “male and female”; the man leaves father and mother; he holds fast to his wife; the two become one flesh; and God joins them together. Marriage is therefore heterosexual, monogamous, covenantal, and lifelong.

Hebrews states the corresponding sexual boundary plainly:

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. (Hebrews 13:4, ESV)

Sexual activity belongs inside marriage. 

Outside that covenant, chastity requires abstinence. 

That standard applies equally to everyone.

Our circumstances may differ, but God's standard does not.

FIRST, the commandment forbids unchaste thoughts.

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

Sexual sin does not begin with the body. It proceeds from the fallen heart. Jesus therefore identifies adultery and sexual immorality among the evils arising from within us. And again:

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:28, ESV)

Lust deliberately cultivates sexual desire toward someone to whom we are not married. This is why pornography is so directly contrary to the seventh commandment. Its entire purpose is to invite us to look upon another person for sexual gratification. It trains the eyes, imagination, and desires to consume sexually what God has not given to us.

There are differences of degree between lust and physical adultery, just as there are differences of degree between hatred and murder. We should not flatten those distinctions. But neither should we use differences of degree to deny that they belong to the same moral family. The adulterous act grows from an adulterous heart.

SECOND, the commandment forbids unchaste words.

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. (Ephesians 5:3-4, ESV)

Paul places “filthiness”, “foolish talk”, and “crude joking” alongside sexual immorality and impurity. The mouth can violate chastity even when the body does not.

Sexual humor is often treated as harmless because everyone understands that it is “only a joke”. Scripture does not permit us to dismiss speech so easily. Vulgar joking can normalize what God calls shameful. Explicit conversation can awaken desires that should remain dormant. Flirtation can cultivate an intimacy that belongs elsewhere. Digital communication has made such sins easier to conceal, but secrecy does not make them chaste.

Christians should be able to speak honestly about sex. Scripture certainly does. Pastors, parents, husbands, wives, physicians, and friends sometimes need direct language. Chastity does not require prudishness. The question is whether our words serve truth, holiness, love, and appropriate intimacy, or whether they turn sexuality into entertainment, provocation, or corruption.

THIRD, the commandment forbids unchaste actions.

This includes adultery, but it cannot stop there. Scripture repeatedly condemns sexual immorality, or porneia, as contrary to Christian holiness (1 Corinthians 6:18; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). Fornication, adultery, prostitution, pornography, homosexual acts, and every other sexual act outside the marriage covenant violate the boundary God has established.

Paul speaks particularly clearly about homosexual activity in Romans 1:

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:26-27, ESV)

The biblical prohibition is not based upon hostility toward people experiencing same-sex attraction. It rests upon the same creation order governing everyone else. It rests upon God’s hostility toward sin. This is why we speak out against LGBTQ activity: it violates the seventh commandment. 

God created male and female and appointed their one-flesh union within marriage. A heterosexual desire does not become righteous merely because it is heterosexual; if it seeks sexual expression outside marriage, it too must be denied. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender desires do not receive a different standard. Every one of us is required to submit our sexual desires to God's revealed will.

Paul makes the seriousness of sexual sin unmistakable:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11, ESV)

We must hear both halves of that passage.

The warning is real. Sexual immorality is not an insignificant matter over which God shrugs. We may not redefine what God calls sin because our culture celebrates it, because we experience it deeply, or because obedience is costly.

But the mercy is also real. “And such were some of you.” The church at Corinth contained people with sexual histories. Adulterers, sexually immoral people, and practicing homosexuals were not beyond the saving power of Christ. They were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

The gospel does not make sexual sin righteous.

The gospel makes sexual sinners clean.

That distinction is essential. Christian compassion never requires us to tell people that their sin is not sin. True compassion tells the truth about sin while pointing sinners to a Savior mighty enough to forgive, cleanse, and transform them.

Question 77 therefore leaves none of us outside its examination. It confronts the adulterer and the fornicator, but also the wandering eye. It confronts homosexual acts and heterosexual immorality. It confronts pornography on a hidden screen, suggestive messages, crude jokes, cultivated fantasies, and every attempt to seize sexual pleasure outside the place God has appointed for it.

God claims our thoughts, our words, and our bodies.

Conclusion

Questions 75 through 77 teach us that God is Lord over our sexuality.

Take this lesson with you in three ways.

Our bodies belong to Him because He purchased us at tremendous cost (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Therefore, whether married or unmarried, whether our sexual history is comparatively clean or deeply shameful, the Christian calling is the same:

 Lesson 30: Questions 72, 73, and 74

In our last lesson we considered the fifth commandment. We saw that God commands us to honor father and mother, and that this duty extends to every lawful relationship in which we are superiors, inferiors, or equals. We also saw that the commandment forbids neglecting or opposing the honor and duties of those relationships, and that God ordinarily blesses faithful obedience with life and stability, as far as those blessings serve His glory and our good (Q68 through Q71). Now the catechism turns to the protection of human life.

Question 72: What is the sixth commandment?

[13] You shall not murder. (Exodus 20:13, ESV)

The commandment is short, but its reach is enormous. God places a fence around human life: “Thou shalt not kill.” The ESV identifies the prohibited act as “murder”. That wording helps us avoid a common misunderstanding. The sixth commandment does not forbid every taking of human life in every circumstance. The same Law that prohibits murder also distinguishes murder from accidental killing, recognizes necessary defense, and entrusts public justice to lawful authority:

If a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him, but if the sun has risen on him, there shall be bloodguilt for him. He shall surely pay. If he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. (Exodus 22:2-3, ESV)

Here the Law is clearly distinguishing lawful self-defense killing from culpable homicide.

Numbers 35:9-34 is an extended passage dealing with accidental death, manslaughter, and murder. It is too long to cite here in full, but here are a few pertinent verses:

“But if he struck him down with an iron object, so that he died, he is a murderer. The murderer shall be put to death. And if he struck him down with a stone tool that could cause death, and he died, he is a murderer. The murderer shall be put to death. Or if he struck him down with a wooden tool that could cause death, and he died, he is a murderer. The murderer shall be put to death. The avenger of blood shall himself put the murderer to death; when he meets him, he shall put him to death. And if he pushed him out of hatred or hurled something at him, lying in wait, so that he died, or in enmity struck him down with his hand, so that he died, then he who struck the blow shall be put to death. He is a murderer. The avenger of blood shall put the murderer to death when he meets him.” (Numbers 35:16-21, ESV, emphasis mine)

The commandment forbids the unauthorized and unjust destruction of human life. The avenger of blood held a lawful and recognized role in the execution of justice within Israel’s covenantal order.

Why is murder so serious? Human life belongs to God. We are creatures, not owners of ourselves or of one another. God gives life, sustains life, numbers our days, and alone possesses absolute authority over life and death.

“See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” (Deuteronomy 32:39, ESV)

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. (Acts 17:24-25, ESV)Murder is therefore not merely injuring another person. It is seizing authority God has not given us.

Human life is also sacred because every human being bears God’s image. After the flood, God declares that the shedding of human blood is especially accountable because He made man in His own image.

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

Human worth is not earned by intelligence, independence, productivity, strength, age, health, social usefulness, or moral achievement. The unborn child, the frail elderly person, the profoundly disabled person, the stranger, the enemy, and the person whose sins repel us all possess a dignity given by their Creator. Sin has terribly defaced us, but it has not erased the image of God.

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind,  but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. (James 3:7-10, ESV, emphasis mine)

The position of the commandment is instructive. After securing the honor due within human relationships (5th), God’s Law guards life (6th) before it guards marriage (7th), property (8th), reputation (9th), and contentment (10th). Those later goods ordinarily depend upon life itself. Yet life is not sacred merely because it is useful. Even when illness removes productivity, age removes independence, or suffering imposes cost, the person remains God’s image bearer. We may never reduce a neighbor to the value we think he contributes.

The sixth commandment therefore confronts both violence and contempt. We often imagine ourselves safely outside its reach because we have never physically killed anyone. Jesus will not let us stop there. In the Sermon on the Mount, He traces murder back to its roots in unrighteous anger, contemptuous speech, and hostility toward a brother.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:21-22, ESV)

John is equally direct: hatred belongs to the moral family of murder.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3:15, ESV)

The hand may be clean while the heart is bloody.

This does not mean that every feeling of anger is identical in degree to homicide. Scripture itself distinguishes sinful anger from righteous anger, accidental killing from intentional murder, and private vengeance from public justice. But the distinction of degrees must not become an excuse to protect the same poisonous root. Malice desires another person’s harm. Contempt mentally strips away his dignity. Revenge longs to make him suffer. Murder is the mature fruit of seeds we may already be watering.

The command also restrains private vengeance. Because God establishes civil authority to punish evildoers, individuals are forbidden to make themselves judge, jury, and executioner.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19, ESV)

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.

The sixth commandment therefore requires careful moral distinctions. It forbids the unjust taking of human life, not every taking of life under every circumstance. Because unborn children and those weakened by age, illness, or disability remain human beings made in God’s image, abortion and euthanasia violate this commandment (Psalm 139:13-16; Luke 1:41-44). Yet the God Who forbids murder also permits the necessary defense of endangered life and commands the lawful magistrate to punish murder with death (Exodus 22:2-3; Genesis 9:6; Romans 13:4). This is not hypocrisy. Abortion and euthanasia intentionally destroy innocent life without divine authorization; self defense, by definition, has preservation of life as its goal; capital punishment, when justly imposed by lawful authority, administers the public justice God has ordained. Far from treating life cheaply, this distinction declares that innocent life must be protected and that its willful destruction is a crime of the highest gravity.

So Question 72 teaches us to receive human life as holy stewardship. Our neighbor is not an inconvenience, a rival, a statistic, or a disposable object. He is a creature made by God and placed within the protection of God’s law. The sixth commandment begins with a prohibition, but beneath that prohibition is a positive declaration: human life is precious to God.

Question 73: What is required in the sixth commandment?

The answer cites Ephesians 5:28-29 for the preservation of our own life and 1 Kings 18:4 for the preservation of the lives of others.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. (Ephesians 5:28-30, ESV)

And Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the household. (Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly, and when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water.) (1 Kings 18:3-4, ESV)

The catechism now draws out the positive duty contained in the command. Biblical commandments do more than forbid an outward act of murder. If God forbids the unjust destruction of life, He also requires “all lawful endeavours” to preserve life. We must not merely avoid becoming agents of death. We must become neighbors who seek to protect, nourish, rescue, and bring peace.

FIRST, we must use lawful means to preserve our own life.

Paul observes that a husband ought to love his wife as his own body because people ordinarily nourish and cherish their own flesh (Ephesians 5:28-29). The immediate subject is marriage, but the argument assumes the propriety of ordinary care for ourselves. Our bodies are not embarrassing containers for the soul. God created us as embodied persons, and our bodies belong to Christ.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

This requires sober attention to food, sleep, work, exercise, medicine, personal safety, and needed rest. It requires avoiding reckless danger and destructive habits. Seeking medical care is not necessarily unbelief, and taking reasonable precautions is not cowardice. Hezekiah prayed, and a practical treatment was applied to his illness (Isaiah 38:1-5, 21). Paul advised Timothy to use an ordinary remedy for recurring ailments (drinking wine for his stomach) (1 Timothy 5:23). God’s providence ordinarily works through means.Notice, however, the catechism’s word “lawful”. Preserving oneself is a duty, but it is not the highest duty. We may never preserve our life by denying Christ, betraying the innocent, or committing some other sin. The martyrs did not violate the sixth commandment when they accepted death rather than renounce their Lord (Revelation 12:11). Jesus teaches that whoever would save his life by abandoning Him will lose it, while the one who loses his life for His sake will find it (Matthew 16:25). We preserve life under God’s authority, not in rebellion against Him.

SECOND, we must use lawful means to preserve the lives of others.

Obadiah hid one hundred prophets in caves and sustained them with bread and water when Jezebel sought to destroy them (1 Kings 18:4). He did not personally create the danger, but love required him to act. He used position, courage, planning, food, and shelter to protect threatened lives. This is a beautiful picture of the catechism’s phrase “all lawful endeavours”.

Scripture repeatedly makes this duty concrete. Israelite homeowners were required to build a parapet around a roof so that preventable death would not bring bloodguilt upon the household (Deuteronomy 22:8). The wise are commanded to rescue those being taken away to death rather than hide behind ignorance (Proverbs 24:11-12). The Samaritan interrupts his journey, treats wounds, transports an injured man, pays for his care, and arranges continuing help (Luke 10:33-35). Preserving life may require warning, advocacy, money, inconvenience, physical courage, or long patience.

This duty begins near us but is not limited to people like us. We preserve life when we protect children, care for aging parents, bring meals to the sick, drive someone to treatment, make a dangerous property safe, oppose abuse, help a despairing friend obtain immediate care, defend the weak, and refuse to inflame a quarrel. Peacemaking belongs under this commandment because unchecked conflict can grow into grave harm (Romans 12:18).

No individual can prevent every death or meet every need. “All lawful endeavours” does not mean that we are omnipotent, nor does it make us responsible for outcomes controlled by God. It means we use the lawful means actually available to us, according to our callings and opportunities. A parent, physician, magistrate, pastor, neighbor, and church member will have different duties, but none may say, “Human life is none of my concern.”

Question 73 therefore replaces passivity with active love. The sixth commandment asks more than, “Did I hurt anyone?” It also asks, “Whom did I protect? Whose burden did I help carry? What foreseeable danger did I address? What suffering did I refuse to ignore?” Love does no wrong to a neighbor, but biblical love also seeks his good (Romans 13:10).

Question 74: What is forbidden in the sixth commandment?

The published online text of this answer prints the references Acts 26:28 and Genesis 9:9, but I believe they intend to reference Acts 16:28 and Genesis 9:6 (cited above).

But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” (Acts 16:28, ESV)

FIRST, the commandment forbids taking away our own life.

Our lives belong to God, so we do not possess moral authority to end them. Suicide (including physician-assisted suicide) is a grievous violation of the sixth commandment. Yet this truth must be taught with both clarity and compassion. A person fighting suicidal thoughts is not an enemy to be scolded but a neighbor in danger to be protected. He or she should speak immediately to a trusted pastor, family member, physician, counselor, or emergency service and should not remain alone with the crisis. Paul’s words to the jailer embody the church’s urgent posture: prevent harm, remain present, and bring hope.

We should also avoid declaring that suicide is beyond the reach of Christ’s atonement or presuming to know the final spiritual state of every person who dies by suicide. It is a terrible sin, but Scripture does not name it as the unforgivable sin. Those grieving such a death need truth, patient care, and permission to entrust hidden matters to the Judge of all the earth, Who always does right (Genesis 18:25).

SECOND, the commandment forbids unjustly taking the life of our neighbor.

This includes murder, the intentional killing of unborn children, euthanasia, abuse that results in death, terrorism, private revenge, and every other intentional assault upon innocent human life. The word “unjustly” matters. The catechism does not collapse murder, accidental killing, necessary defense, lawful war, and public justice into one category. 

But neither does it provide a convenient label by which private violence may be baptized. The burden is always on us to act under God’s revealed authority, with justice, necessity, restraint, and grief rather than hatred.

THIRD, the commandment forbids whatever tends toward unjust destruction.

The command reaches beyond the act of murder or suicide to “whatsoever tendeth thereunto”. It therefore forbids reckless behavior, destructive intoxication, needless exposure to grave danger, and deliberate neglect of ordinary means needed to sustain life. Not every unhealthy choice carries equal guilt, and illness can limit a person’s responsibility in ways known perfectly to God. Still, we must not excuse patterns that knowingly destroy the life He entrusted to us.

Jesus identifies sinful anger and contemptuous speech as violations of the commandment in seed form (Matthew 5:21-22). John includes hatred in the moral category of murder (1 John 3:15). James condemns the inconsistency of blessing God while cursing people made in His likeness (James 3:9-10). The sixth commandment therefore forbids malice, revenge, dehumanizing language, bullying, cruelty, oppression, provoking quarrels, and refusing reconciliation when it may lawfully be pursued.

It also forbids sins of omission. Negligence, concealment, exploitation, withholding necessary aid, or encouraging another person’s violence can bring real bloodguilt. Cain, who was guilty of actual murder (a sin of commission), evasively denied responsibility for his brother, but Scripture answers that within the bounds of our calling, we are responsible to seek our neighbor’s life and good (Genesis 4:9-10). So, through the extreme example we see in Cain, God gives instructions for the whole spectrum of human relationships. 

Cain asks the rhetorical question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The rest of the Scriptures scream the answer “YES!” at us. 

Question 74 therefore searches motives, words, habits, systems, and omissions as well as outward acts. The commandment confronts the weapon in the hand, the hatred in the heart, the cruelty on the tongue, and the indifference that walks past suffering. God forbids the whole road that leads toward unjust death.

Conclusion

Questions 72 through 74 teach us that God is the Lord of life. 

Take this lesson with you this week in three ways:

Human life is precious because God made it. 

Human life is guarded because God commands it. 

And human life is served most faithfully when we

under the lordship of Christ.

 Lesson 29: Questions 68, 69, 70, and 71

In our last two lessons we considered the fourth commandment. We saw that God claims one whole day in seven as holy to Himself, that the first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath, and that the day is to be ordered around worship, rest, fellowship, and works of necessity and mercy. We also saw that the Sabbath is both duty and gift, a command to be obeyed and a blessing to be received (Q62 through Q67).

Now the catechism turns from the first table of the law to the second. The first four commandments teach us our duty toward God. The final six teach us our duty toward our neighbor. But we should not separate these two tables too sharply. We love our neighbor because we love God, and we cannot claim to love God while refusing the duties He commands toward other people. Jesus summarized the Law by basically saying “Love God with all that you are and your neighbor as yourself.” John reinforces the 2nd table of the Law:

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21, ESV)

The fifth commandment begins with the most basic human relationship, the relationship between children and parents. From there, the catechism draws out a broader principle concerning honor, authority, responsibility, and the duties belonging to every lawful relationship.

Question 68: What is the fifth commandment?

The commandment is simple enough for a child to understand: honor your father and your mother (Exodus 20:12). Yet it is broad enough to govern the whole structure of human society.

Notice first that God commands honor. Honor includes respect, gratitude, obedience, care, and the willing recognition of a God given relationship. Father and mother are appointed by God to nurture, instruct, correct, protect, and govern the child.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

A child who obeys only when he agrees with the instruction has not yet learned obedience. Submission and honor are proved when we obey another person who has the lawful right to direct us, especially when we disagree with the commands they give. 

But the commandment says honor, not merely obey. Obedience is especially required while a child remains under parental authority, but honor continues throughout life. An adult child may no longer be required to obey every parental instruction, but he must still speak respectfully, show gratitude, receive wise counsel, protect his parents’ good name, and care for them in weakness or old age.

The commandment names both father and mother. Children must honor both, and neither parent should train the children to despise the other. Both stand under God.

Of course, parental authority is not absolute. The commandment does not require anyone to obey a command to sin. God alone possesses unlimited authority. Every human authority is delegated, bounded, and accountable to Him. When human authority directly contradicts God, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

Fallen people often seize that qualification as an excuse, so we must distinguish real wickedness from wounded pride. Yet the fifth commandment does not protect cruelty, manipulation, sexual sin, violence, or tyranny. God never grants authority so that a sinner may use it against His law.

Jesus Himself honored this commandment. As a child, He submitted to Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:51). Throughout His earthly ministry, He perfectly honored His heavenly Father (John 8:49). Even from the cross, He made provision for His mother (John 19:26-27).

Christ obeyed not because His earthly authorities were perfect, but because He was perfect.

So Question 68 gives us the commandment itself. We must honor father and mother. The family is the first school of authority, obedience, responsibility, gratitude, and love. A person who never learns faithful submission in the home will usually carry that rebellion into every other relationship.

Question 69: What does the fifth commandment require?

The catechism now expands the commandment beyond parents and children. It teaches that the fifth commandment requires two things: 

This is important because Scripture does not imagine human life as a collection of isolated individuals. God places us into families, churches, governments, workplaces, friendships, and communities. The fifth commandment covers the paradigmatic, foundational relationship of civilization and society (parents and children), then expands out to ALL relationships we encounter. In those relationships, we are sometimes superiors, sometimes inferiors, and sometimes equals.

All people have equal worth as image bearers, but not all have equal roles. Paul commands:

submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:21, ESV)

Many have thought of this as a trump card for egalitarianism, but it’s just the opposite, for Paul immediately defines what he means in the following sections, describing the roles of: 1) wives and husbands, 2) children and parents, and 3) slaves and masters. So equality of worth does not erase differences of role, office, responsibility, age, experience, or authority. A parent and child are equal in dignity, but do not have equal authority. This also applies in the home, the church, and civil society.

FIRST, those under authority must preserve the honor of those over them and perform the duties belonging to their place.

Wives must submit to husbands:

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. (Colossians 3:18, ESV)

Children must honor and obey parents:

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. (Colossians 3:20, ESV)

Workers must serve honestly and sincerely rather than only when watched:

Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. (Colossians 3:22, ESV)

Church members must respect and submit to elders:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17, ESV)

Citizens must honor lawful civil authority, pay what is owed, and obey lawful commands:

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

Paul says the same in Romans 13, calling everyone to be in subjection for the sake of conscience.

Submission is not the surrender of conscience. Respectful appeal may be lawful, and an authority may be resisted when he commands sin or acts outside his lawful office. But even necessary resistance should be carried out with truth, sobriety, and as much honor as the situation allows.

SECOND, those in authority must perform the duties belonging to their place.

Husbands are to love their wives:

Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. (Colossians 3:19, ESV)

Parents, especially fathers, must parent with love and kindness:

Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. (Colossians 3:21, ESV)

Masters (in our situation, employers) must be just and fair to those under them:

Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.

Elders must shepherd kindly and by example, not domineering over those entrusted to them:

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. (1 Peter 5:1-3, ESV)

Civil rulers are called to reward good and punish evil, not to use office for oppression:

Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! (Isaiah 10:1-2, ESV)

And in that same Romans 13 passage, Paul commands rulers to punish evil and reward good.

The fifth commandment also tells every authority: your position belongs to God, your power is limited by God, your duty is defined by God, and your conduct will be judged by God.

THIRD, equals must preserve one another’s honor and perform the duties of mutual love.

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:9-10, ESV)

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3-4, ESV)

Equals have no office by which one may command the other, but they still owe truth, kindness, patience, faithfulness, and respect.

The fifth commandment therefore opposes contempt. But honor is not flattery. It is the truthful recognition of the place, dignity, gifts, and duties God has assigned.

So Question 69 teaches us to ask, “Where has God placed me, and what faithfulness belongs to my place?” We are not responsible for performing another person’s calling. We are responsible for honoring others rightly and performing our own duties faithfully.

Question 70: What does the fifth commandment forbid?

The negative requirement follows naturally. Because we owe one another the continuing debt of love (Romans 13:8), the commandment forbids neglecting the honor and duty of our relationships, and it forbids acting against them.

FIRST, inferiors (in a lawful relationship) violate the commandment through rebellion, contempt, disobedience, ingratitude, slander, and needless resistance.

Children violate this through disobedience to parents, as shown in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 and here:

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Jesus directly condemned those who used religious excuses to avoid caring for their parents:

For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. (Matthew 15:4-6, ESV)

They claimed that resources which might have supported father or mother were devoted to God. Christ did not praise their religious seriousness. He called it a violation of God’s command. Worship that excuses neglect of clear family duties is false worship.

Church members may violate the commandment by despising faithful shepherds, resisting biblical correction, or spreading accusations carelessly (1 Timothy 5:17-19). Citizens violate it through lawless rebellion and contempt for lawful office. Workers violate it through laziness, theft, and deception.

A sneering answer, habitual defiance, public mockery, or cold ingratitude is not merely a personality problem. It is sin against God’s order.

SECOND, superiors (in a lawful relationship) violate the commandment through neglect, harshness, partiality, exploitation, cowardice, and abuse. Eli sinned because he failed to restrain his wicked sons (1 Samuel 3:13). The shepherds of Israel were condemned because they fed themselves rather than the flock, ruled harshly, and failed to strengthen the weak or seek the lost (Ezekiel 34:2-4).

Authority may sin by doing evil, but it may also sin by refusing to do necessary good.

Parents sin when they neglect or provoke their children, show favoritism, or model hypocrisy. 

Elders sin when they are domineering, fail to shepherd, or seek to control consciences. 

Magistrates sin when they pervert justice. 

Employers sin when they exploit workers.

The sins of superiors are especially serious because authority magnifies influence. 

When a father sins, a household suffers. 

When an elder sins, a church may be wounded. 

When a ruler sins, many people may be oppressed. 

Greater authority brings greater responsibility (Luke 12:48).

THIRD, equals violate the commandment through rivalry, envy, gossip, partiality, contempt, and selfish ambition.

Scripture commands mutual honor. We sin when we diminish another person to enlarge ourselves, rejoice at his failure, resent his gifts, or treat him as an obstacle rather than a neighbor.

This commandment reaches the heart, home, church, workplace, and public square. It condemns tyranny and rebellion, cowardly leadership and arrogant resistance, honor demanded without service and service demanded without honor.

Question 70 calls every person to repentance. The child must ask whether he obeys. The parent must ask whether he nurtures. The wife must ask whether she submits. The husband must ask whether he loves. The member must ask whether he respects. The elder must ask whether he shepherds. The citizen must ask whether he submits lawfully. The ruler must ask whether he governs justly. Every person must ask whether he gives the honor and performs the duty God requires.

Question 71: Why the fifth commandment?

The fifth commandment comes with a promise: “that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16). Paul calls it “the first commandment with a promise” (Ephesians 6:2-3). The catechism describes this as a promise of long life and prosperity, but then adds an essential qualification: “as far as it shall serve for God’s glory and their own good”.

This is not a mechanical guarantee that every obedient child will live to old age, become wealthy, or avoid suffering. Scripture gives many examples of faithful saints who suffered greatly and died young. Christ Himself perfectly fulfilled the law and was crucified in the strength of manhood.

The promise describes God’s ordinary blessing upon rightly ordered relationships. Homes marked by honor, instruction, care, and gratitude ordinarily promote life and stability. Churches marked by faithful shepherding and willing submission ordinarily flourish. Nations marked by just authority and lawful obedience ordinarily enjoy greater peace.

Sin tears apart. Honor builds up.

Yet even temporal blessings remain under God’s wise providence. He may withhold length of days because a shorter life better serves His glory and the believer’s good. He may allow poverty, persecution, sickness, or martyrdom without breaking His promise. No true good is ever withheld from those who belong to Christ.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. (Psalm 84:11, ESV)

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28, ESV)

The promise also points beyond temporal life. The land promise develops within the larger biblical hope of inheritance. Believers look for the lasting inheritance secured by Christ.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (Hebrews 11:13-16, ESV)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5, ESV)

Obedience does not earn eternal life, but it identifies those God has redeemed.

So the promise should encourage us without turning obedience into a transaction. We do not honor father and mother so that God owes us a comfortable life. We honor them because He is God, His order is good, and His promises are trustworthy.

Conclusion

Questions 68 through 71 teach us that God governs human relationships.

Take this lesson with you in three ways.

The fifth commandment brings order, but not cold hierarchy.

It brings honor, but not flattery.

It brings authority, but not tyranny.

It brings submission, but not servility.

It brings responsibility before God.

Honor the place God has given to others.

Perform the duties God has given to you.

And in every relationship, serve under the authority of Christ.

 Lesson 28: Questions 64, 65, and 67

In our last lesson we considered the basics of the fourth commandment. We saw that God commands one day in seven to be kept holy to Himself, that the day is for worship, rest, fellowship, mercy, and necessity, and that the commandment forbids neglect, careless performance, idleness, sinful use of the day, and worldly employments or recreations that crowd out Sabbath duties (Q62, Q63, Q66). This week we are intentionally returning to the questions skipped last time. We now consider the more advanced questions: which day is the Christian Sabbath, how the Sabbath is to be sanctified, and what reasons God Himself attaches to the commandment.

Question 64: Which day is the Christian Sabbath?

Question 64 addresses the transition from the 7th day Sabbath to the 1st day Christian Sabbath.

Before the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the 7th day of the week to be the weekly Sabbath. 

We saw this last week. It was grounded in creation, commanded in the moral law, and reinforced in Deuteronomy with a redemptive emphasis: Israel had been slaves in Egypt, the Lord had redeemed them, and therefore they were to give rest even to those under their authority (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15). So the weekly Sabbath is not a casual ceremonial detail. It is rooted in God’s creation pattern, His moral government of man, and His mercy to His people.

But the catechism also teaches that since the resurrection of Christ, the 1st day of the week is the Christian Sabbath, to continue to the end of the world. Here we need to be careful. The New Testament does not give us one verse that says, in so many words, “The Sabbath has now moved from the seventh day to the first day.” Instead, it gives us a biblical pattern tied to the resurrection, the gathering of the church, apostolic practice, and the Lord’s Day.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:22-24, ESV)

In its original setting, that text is about the Lord’s saving work and the day of His triumph. In light of the resurrection, Christians have seen this as fulfilled in Christ’s victory. The day of resurrection is the day of new creation joy. All 4 Gospels emphasize that Jesus rose on the 1st day of the week. 

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. (Matthew 28:1, ESV, emphasis added)

And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. (Luke 24:1 ESV, emphasis added)

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. (John 20:1, ESV, emphasis added)

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19, ESV, emphasis added)

Eight days later [also a Sunday], his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:26, ESV, emphasis added, with explanation)

These verses do not by themselves prove everything about Christian Sabbath practice, but they contribute to the pattern. The risen Lord meets with His gathered disciples on the first day.

Acts continues the pattern. 

When the day of Pentecost [also a Sunday] arrived, they were all together in one place.

Later, the church gathered on the first day of the week to break bread, and Paul preached to them:

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.

Paul also instructed the churches to set aside contributions on the first day of every week: 

Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. (1 Corinthians 16:1-2, ESV, emphasis added)

I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.” (Revelation 1:9-11, ESV, emphasis added)

That phrase, “the Lord’s day”, matters. The overwhelming historic Christian understanding is that “the Lord’s day” refers to the 1st day of the week, the day of Christ’s resurrection. That understanding appears immediately and universally where the matter is addressed in post-NT Christian writings.

That historical witness does not settle the doctrine for us. Church history is not our final authority. Scripture is. But church history is useful as corroboration. The earliest post-apostolic Christians did not think Sunday worship was a late innovation. 

Again, those men are not Scripture. They cannot bind the conscience. But they do show us that from the earliest centuries, Christians understood the 1st day of the week as the day of Christian assembly, resurrection celebration, and Lord’s Day worship. 

This was not invented in the Middle Ages. 

It was not a later Roman Catholic corruption. 

This was not imposed by Constantine (who seems to be the bogeyman for everything).

It was the received practice of the early Christian church.

Jesus Himself teaches an abiding Sabbath:

And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28, ESV)

That matters. Christ does not abolish His lordship over the Sabbath. As the risen Lord of the Sabbath, He reorients the day around His resurrection. The 7th day looked back to creation rest. The 1st day celebrates new creation in the risen Christ.

So Question 64 teaches that the Christian Sabbath is the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day. This is not because the church invented a convenient tradition. It is because the resurrection of Christ changed the calendar of worship. The church gathers on the day of resurrection, under the lordship of the risen Christ, looking forward to the eternal Sabbath rest that remains for the people of God.

As the original Sabbath celebrated the original creation, so the Christian Sabbath now celebrates and remembers the New Creation, inaugurated by Christ at His resurrection.

Question 65: How do we sanctify the Sabbath?

Question 65 asks how the Sabbath is to be kept holy. The answer gives us four basic categories: 

FIRST, the Sabbath is sanctified by holy rest. Exodus commands God’s people to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, and says that on the Sabbath they shall not do ordinary work (Exodus 20:8,10). This rest is not mere inactivity. It is holy rest. It is rest unto God, rest ordered by worship, rest that reminds us we are creatures, not machines, and children, not slaves.

SECOND, the catechism says we rest even from worldly employments and recreations lawful on other days. Exodus 16 shows Israel being taught not to gather manna on the Sabbath, because the Lord had provided for them beforehand (Exodus 16:25-28). Nehemiah later rebuked buying, selling, trading, and burden-carrying on the Sabbath, even shutting the gates of Jerusalem to preserve the day from ordinary commerce (Nehemiah 13:15-22). Those passages teach that ordinary lawful work must be set aside, not because work is evil, but because the day is holy.

THIRD, the Sabbath is sanctified by public and private exercises of God’s worship. Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath as was His custom:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. (Luke 4:16, ESV)

The church gathered on the first day of the week to break bread and hear apostolic preaching (Acts 20:7, see above). Psalm 92 is identified as “A Song for the Sabbath” (Psalm 92:title). Isaiah looks forward to all flesh coming to worship before the Lord:

For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord. (Isaiah 66:22-23, ESV)

The Sabbath is not merely a day to sleep late and avoid chores. It is a day for worship.

FOURTH, the Sabbath allows works of necessity and mercy. Jesus defends His disciples when they pluck heads of grain because they are hungry, and He heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:1-13). 

He shows that mercy is not a violation of Sabbath holiness. Necessity and mercy fit the day because the Sabbath is made for man, and the Lord of the Sabbath is merciful.

Now, as with Question 66 last week, I want to be explicit about my own wording. The original catechism says the Sabbath is sanctified by “spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.” My own revised answer is this:

Here is the change laid out clearly:

As I did last week, I want to be very clear: I am making a change. I am softening the catechism slightly at this point. But I am not doing so because I take the Christian Sabbath lightly. I take it very seriously. I simply do not find in Scripture a requirement that the entire day be given to unceasing acts of worship in such a way that all lawful recreation is excluded absolutely.

The Sabbath is repeatedly presented as rest. It is made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). Jesus presents the Sabbath as a gift, not as a crushing burden, though it remains a duty. Therefore, I believe it is lawful to allow some recreation that does not impede worship, fellowship, rest, and works of mercy and necessity. 

This is not a free-for-all. 

The day is not about recreation. 

The day is about rest and worship first. 

If recreation competes with gathered worship, weakens fellowship, crowds out family discipleship, encourages worldliness, distracts the heart from God, or makes us less ready for mercy and necessity, then it should be refused.

But if the duties of the Sabbath have been joyfully prioritized and fulfilled, then some restful recreation may be received as a blessing from God.

The key is priority and direction. Is the day Godward or selfward? Are we calling the Sabbath a delight, or are we merely using holy time as another pocket of personal autonomy? That is the pastoral question. The Sabbath should be holy, restful, worshipful, merciful, and joyful.

Question 67: Why the 4th commandment?

Question 67 asks what reasons God attaches to the fourth commandment. This is one of the striking features of the commandment. It is the longest of the Ten Commandments, and God Himself gives reasons for it. That should make us slow to dismiss it. (Especially since we don’t dismiss the others.)

The first reason is that God allows us six days for our own lawful employments. “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work” (Exodus 20:9). That is generous. God does not take six days and give us one. He gives six days for ordinary labor and claims one day in seven as holy to Himself. The Sabbath is not evidence that God is stingy with our time. It is evidence that God is Lord of all our time and merciful in His ordering of it.

This should correct resentment. Sometimes people act as though the Sabbath is God taking something away. But the commandment itself says the opposite. Six days are given for ordinary work. The Lord’s claim on one day in seven is not oppressive. It is righteous and kind.

The second reason is that God challenges, or claims, a special propriety in the seventh. The day belongs to Him in a special way. Exodus says, “the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:10). That means we do not decide whether the day is holy. God has already hallowed it. Our duty is to receive His claim and order the day accordingly.

This is where many of us need repentance. We are often willing to give God a worship service, but not the whole day. We want to own the rest. But the commandment does not merely say, “Attend a service.” It says the day is the Sabbath of the Lord our God. The whole day has a claim upon it.

The third reason is God’s own example. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11). Again, God did not rest because of fatigue. He rested as the Creator Who completed His work and established a pattern for man. Human labor and rest are to imitate, in creaturely form, God’s own creation pattern.

This gives dignity to both work and rest. Work is not a curse in itself; frustrating toil is part of the curse, but work itself belongs to creation. Rest is not laziness; holy rest belongs to the pattern God gave. A godless workaholic and a godless sluggard both violate the Sabbath. The Sabbath teaches us to work under God and rest under God.

The fourth reason is that God blessed the Sabbath day. “Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:11) God’s blessing is not empty. The Sabbath is good because God blessed it. This does not mean every Sabbath will feel emotionally powerful or physically easy. Some Sabbaths are hard. Children are restless. Bodies are tired. Meals are complicated. Hospitality takes effort. Mercy is costly. But the day is still blessed by God.

That blessing should shape how we speak. We should not speak of the Sabbath as a burden to endure. We should not train our children to think of it as the day when all pleasure dies. We should teach them that it is a holy gift. We gather with God’s people, hear God’s Word, sing God’s praise, rest from ordinary labor, enjoy fellowship, show mercy, and remember that Christ is risen. That is blessing.

So the reasons for the 4th commandment reveal the kindness and authority of God. He gives us six days. He claims one. He gives His own example. He blesses and hallows the day.

Conclusion

The 4th commandment teaches us that the Sabbath is not merely about avoiding sin. It is about receiving God’s gracious pattern for life. The risen Christ has claimed the 1st day for His church, and He calls us to sanctify it with worship, holy rest, fellowship, and works of necessity and mercy.

So take this lesson with you this week in three ways:

The Sabbath is holy. The Sabbath is a gift. 

Receive it with reverence, gratitude, and joy.

 Lesson 27: Questions 62, 63, and 66

In our last lesson we considered the third commandment. We saw that God’s Name must not be taken in vain, and that this commandment reaches far beyond obvious profanity. It requires the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, and works, and it forbids profaning or abusing anything by which God makes Himself known (Q58-61). Now the catechism turns to the fourth commandment, where God teaches us that time itself must be ordered before Him.

Question 62: What is the fourth commandment?

The fourth commandment begins with the word “Remember”. That word already tells us something important. God knows that fallen man forgets holy things. We forget God’s works. We forget God’s order. We forget that our time belongs to Him. We forget that work is not ultimate. We forget that rest is not optional. So the Lord says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8).

This commandment is not merely about stopping work. It is about keeping a day holy to the Lord. The word “holy” means set apart. The Sabbath is not ordinary time. It is time claimed, blessed, and hallowed by God. Six days are for ordinary labor. One day in seven is a Sabbath to the Lord.

That immediately challenges modern assumptions. We tend to think of time as ours. We speak of “my time”, “my weekend”, “my schedule”, “my day off”. Of course, there is a legitimate sense in which we manage our responsibilities. But, at the deepest level, time does not belong to us. We are creatures. God gives, numbers, governs, and commands how our days are to be used.

Notice also the balance in the commandment. God commands labor: “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work” (Exodus 20:9).  Laziness is not the ideal. God made man to work. Before sin entered the world, Adam was placed in the garden to work it and keep it. But man was not made for ceaseless toil. The commandment dignifies work, but it also limits work: “but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.” (Exodus 20:10a)

Man may work, but man may not become a slave to work. Work is good, but it is not god. Productivity is good, but it is not ultimate. The Sabbath is mercy because God Himself interrupts our ordinary labor and gives one day in seven for worship, rest, and refreshment. He says, in effect, “You are not sustained by your own productivity. You are My creature. You must stop, worship, rest, and remember.” Or another way: “I can prosper you more in 6 days than you can in 7.”

The reason given in Exodus 20 is creation. 

“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:11, ESV) 

God did not rest because He was tired. He rested as the divine pattern of creation. The Sabbath is built into the moral order of the world. It reminds us that creation is not ultimately ordered toward endless production, but toward God’s glory, worship, and holy rest.

So Question 62 gives us the commandment itself. God commands one day in seven to be remembered and kept holy. Work matters. Rest matters. Worship matters. Time matters. 

The Lord of creation has authority over them all.

Question 63: What does the fourth commandment require?

The catechism now opens the positive requirement of the commandment: “the keeping holy to God one whole day in seven to be a Sabbath to Himself.” 

In this lesson, we are dealing with the basics: 

Next week, Lord willing, we will deal with the more advanced questions: 

For now, notice the heart of the requirement. 

The fourth commandment requires one whole day in seven to be kept holy to God. 

Exodus gives the creation pattern: six days of labor and one day blessed and hallowed by the Lord. 

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11, ESV)

Deuteronomy repeats the command, but with a different emphasis. There, the Sabbath is tied to Israel’s redemption from Egypt: they were slaves, the Lord brought them out with a mighty hand, and therefore they must give rest even to those under their authority.

Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12-15, ESV)

Both passages teach that the Sabbath is not a loose suggestion. It is a command of God.

The phrase “to God” is crucial. 

The Sabbath is not merely a personal recovery strategy, though it is restful. 

It is not merely a family day, though it may bless a household. 

It is not merely a day to avoid work, though ordinary work is set aside. 

It is kept holy to God. 

The day belongs to Him in a special way.

That means Sabbath keeping must begin with worship. The day is for the Lord before it is for us. 

We do not ask first, “What do I want to do with this day?”

We ask, “What has God made this day for?” 

The Sabbath is for worship, rest, fellowship, mercy, necessity, and the joyful ordering of life before God. It is a day to step back from ordinary labor and worldly striving in order to remember that the Lord is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

This also means that Sabbath keeping is not supposed to be grim. Some people hear “Sabbath” and immediately think “burden”. That is not how Jesus teaches us to think. 

And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27, ESV)

That does not cancel the commandment. It explains its goodness. 

The Sabbath is a duty, but it is a gracious duty. 

It is a command, but it is a beneficial command.

We need both sides. 

If we only call it a gift, we may become careless and treat it as ours to spend however we please. 

If we only call it a duty, we may become harsh and make the day feel like a cage. 

Scripture gives us something better: the Sabbath is a holy gift from the Lord. 

It is duty and mercy together.

This is where we must examine ourselves. 

The fourth commandment requires more than attendance. 

Attendance at gathered worship is central, but the day itself is to be kept holy. That means we should think intentionally about the whole day. How can this day be ordered so that God is honored, worship is prioritized, ordinary labors are set aside, bodies and souls are refreshed, families are shepherded, mercy is shown, and fellowship is pursued?

This should not lead to anxious scrupulosity. We should not create a thousand man-made rules. That is legalism. The Pharisees received scathing rebukes for exactly that kind of Sabbath-keeping.

The point is to receive God’s rhythm as good. One whole day in seven is to be kept holy to God. 

That is not an interruption of real life. 

It is part of the pattern God gives for a rightly ordered life.

The Sabbath is intended to be the cornerstone of our lives.

Question 66: What does the fourth commandment forbid?

Skipping 2 questions, the catechism now opens the negative requirement of the 4th commandment. 

It forbids:

FIRST, the commandment forbids “the omission or careless performance of the duties required”. A rebuke from Ezekiel about profaning the day is instructive:

Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

Amos adds a rebuke related to self-indulgence:

Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?” (Amos 8:4-6, ESV)

Malachi rebukes disinterested worship:

But you say, ‘What a weariness this is,’ and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the Lord. (Malachi 1:13, ESV)

That is searching. Sabbath breaking is not only doing obviously worldly things. It may also be attending worship with a cold, resentful, bored, or dismissive heart. It may be going through the motions while inwardly wishing the holy duties were finished. The Lord is not honored by merely external Sabbath observance while the heart says, “what a weariness.”

SECOND, the commandment forbids “profaning the day by idleness”. While I agree with this sentence, it must be handled carefully. I also don’t agree with the catechism that Eutychus falling asleep during Paul’s sermon (which went until after midnight!) is a violation of the Sabbath. But the catechism is right to warn against idleness. The Sabbath is rest, but it is not spiritual laziness. Rest is not the same thing as drifting through the day without attention to God. So, while I do not think rest and idleness are at odds with one another, wasting the entire day in idleness violates the clear positive commands we have for what to do on the Sabbath.

THIRD, the commandment forbids doing what is in itself sinful. Ezekiel condemns those who profaned the sanctuary and Sabbaths while also committing abominations.

The Lord said to me: “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Declare to them their abominations. For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. Moreover, this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. (Ezekiel 23:36-39a, ESV)

Sin is not necessarily more sinful because it occurs on the Sabbath, but it is especially perverse to take a day set apart for God and use it for rebellion against Him.

FOURTH, the commandment forbids unnecessary thoughts, words, and works about worldly employments or recreations. Jeremiah 17 warns of judgment for Judah for profaning the Sabbath:

“‘But if you listen to me, declares the Lord, and bring in no burden by the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but keep the Sabbath day holy and do no work on it, then there shall enter by the gates of this city kings and princes who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their officials, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And this city shall be inhabited forever. And people shall come from the cities of Judah and the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin, from the Shephelah, from the hill country, and from the Negeb, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and frankincense, and bringing thank offerings to the house of the Lord. But if you do not listen to me, to keep the Sabbath day holy, and not to bear a burden and enter by the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and shall not be quenched.’” (Jeremiah 17:24-27, ESV)

Isaiah 58 has a promise for those who faithfully keep the Sabbath:

If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 58:13-14, ESV)Here I will do something that I will do very, very rarely with the Baptist Catechism. I am going to revise the wording of an answer to give what I believe to be a more biblically accurate teaching. The original catechism says the commandment forbids unnecessary thoughts, words, or works “about worldly employments or recreations.” My own revised answer is slightly softened:

Here is the change laid out clearly:

I want to be very clear: I am making a change. I am softening the catechism slightly at this point. But I am not doing so because I take the Christian Sabbath lightly. I take it very seriously. I simply do not find in Scripture a requirement that the entire day be given to unceasing acts of worship in such a way that all lawful recreation is excluded absolutely.

The Sabbath is repeatedly presented as rest. 

The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). 

Jesus presents the Sabbath as a gift, not as a crushing burden, though it remains a duty. 

Therefore, I believe it is lawful to allow some recreation that does not impede worship, fellowship, rest, and works of mercy and necessity. 

This is not a free-for-all. 

The day is not about recreation. 

The day is about rest and worship first. 

But if the duties of the Sabbath have been joyfully prioritized and fulfilled, then some restful recreation may be received as a blessing from God.

Isaiah 58 deserves frank treatment. I am not compelled to read the verse to mean, “do nothing enjoyable on the Sabbath.” The stronger reading, in my judgment, is that God is rebuking a people whose Sabbath practice is fundamentally self-directed: “All you do on the Sabbath is please yourself; you should be pleasing Me.” That interpretation still takes the text seriously. It does not absolutize all pleasure as sin. It rejects self-centered Sabbath keeping and calls us to delight in the Lord.

It is also noteworthy that the word for “pleasure” in verse 13 has an ESV footnote of “business”.

So Question 66 warns us against two errors. 

The fourth commandment teaches us that God claims our time. He gives six days for ordinary labor and one day in seven to be kept holy to Him. That pattern is not arbitrary. It is grounded in creation, repeated in the law, and given for man’s good. (It’s also reinforced in the New Testament.)

This commandment should correct our restlessness. 

Many of us live as though everything depends on us:

But the Sabbath says:

It humbles the self-important and comforts the weary.

It should also correct our casualness. 

The Lord’s Day (a synonym for the Christian Sabbath) is not disposable time. 

It is not merely a leftover day for errands, chores, entertainment, and recovery from poor planning. 

It is not a catch up day for work.

It is holy to God. 

And yet, we should not make the Sabbath gloomy. 

The day is a gift from the Lord. 

It is for delight in Him. 

The mature Christian should not ask, “How little can I do and still technically obey?”

Nor should he ask, “How can I bind consciences beyond Scripture?”

Better questions are these: 

The Sabbath is serious. 

The Sabbath is holy. 

The Sabbath is restful. 

The Sabbath is good.

 Lesson 26: Questions 58, 59, 60, and 61

In our last lesson we considered the second commandment. We saw that God must be worshiped only as He has appointed, that His ordinances must be received, observed, and kept pure and entire, that worship by images or any other unauthorized way is forbidden, and that God’s jealousy is a holy zeal for His own glory and the covenant purity of His people (Q54-57). Now the catechism turns from how we worship God to how we handle His Name. The third commandment teaches us that the God Who reveals Himself must be spoken of, confessed, worshiped, invoked, and represented with holy reverence.

Question 58: What is the third commandment?

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. (Exodus 20:7, ESV)

At first, many people hear this commandment and think almost entirely of profanity. That is included, certainly. Using God’s Name as a swear word, an exclamation, a joke, or emotional filler is wicked. It is not a small matter to drag the Name of the Holy One into careless speech. But the commandment is much broader than that. It forbids taking God’s Name in vain, and God’s Name includes everything by which He makes Himself known.

In Scripture, a name is not merely a label. God’s Name reveals His character, authority, presence, covenant faithfulness, and glory. When the Lord reveals His Name, He is not handing man a religious sound to use casually. He is making Himself known. Therefore, to take His Name is to deal with His self-revelation. To take His Name in vain is to handle that self-revelation emptily, falsely, lightly, hypocritically, manipulatively, or wickedly.

This means the third commandment reaches speech, worship, doctrine, prayer, vows, preaching, baptism, church membership, evangelism, discipline, and daily Christian conduct. If we call ourselves Christians, we bear the Name of Christ. 

Jesus commands:

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” (Matthew 6:9, ESV)

If we pray thus, we are asking that His Name be regarded as holy. If we sing His praise, confess His truth, teach His Word, swear lawful oaths, or gather as His church, we are handling holy things.

The commandment also teaches us that reverence is not optional. God does not say, “Try to be a little more respectful.” He commands us not to take His Name in vain. There is a kind of casualness that people mistake for spiritual maturity. 

They assume that:

But biblical intimacy with God never destroys reverence. The adopted child cries, “Abba! Father!” by the Spirit, but that child still approaches the Holy One.

So Question 58 introduces the third commandment as a commandment about holy reverence toward God’s revealed Name. The true God must be worshipped. 

He must be worshipped as He commands. 

And His Name must be handled reverently.

Question 59: What does the third commandment require?

The catechism now opens the positive requirement of the commandment. The third commandment does not merely forbid wicked speech. It requires something: “the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word and works.”

FIRST, it requires holy and reverent use of God’s names. Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” (Matthew 6:9). That petition should govern the whole Christian life. We are asking God to cause His Name to be treated as holy in the world, in the church, in our homes, in our speech, in our worship, and in our hearts. Deuteronomy also warns Israel to “fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 28:58). His Name is not ordinary. It is glorious and awesome.

SECOND, the commandment requires holy and reverent use of God’s titles. 

Psalm 68:4 calls God by His covenant Name and summons His people to exult before Him: 

Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him! (Psalm 68:4, ESV)

Titles like Lord, God, Father, King, Redeemer, Shepherd, Judge, Savior, and Almighty are not religious decorations. They identify Who God is and how He relates to His people and His creation. To use them rightly is to confess Him truthfully.

THIRD, the commandment requires reverence toward God’s attributes. 

And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.” (Revelation 15:3-4, ESV)

God’s attributes are not abstract theology for clever people. They are the glory of God displayed to His creatures. When we speak of His holiness, justice, love, sovereignty, mercy, wrath, immutability, omniscience, and faithfulness, we must speak as worshipers, not as technicians handling dead facts.

FOURTH, the commandment requires reverence toward God’s ordinances. 

For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. But you profane it when you say that the Lord’s table is polluted, and its fruit, that is, its food, may be despised. But you say, ‘What a weariness this is,’ and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the Lord. Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations. (Malachi 1:11-14, ESV)

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not bare symbols for man to manipulate. Public worship is not a religious stage. Church discipline is not personal revenge. Preaching is not entertainment. Prayer is not performance. The ordinances belong to God and must be handled accordingly.

FIFTH, the commandment requires reverence toward God’s Word. 

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise; I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. (Psalm 138:1-2, ESV)

Psalm 138 ties God’s Name and God’s Word closely together. God is to be thanked for His steadfast love and faithfulness, and His Word is not beneath His Name, but exalted with it. Therefore, Scripture must not be twisted, mocked, ignored, marketed, or used as a prop for our opinions. To read Scripture faithfully is to receive it reverently as the Word of the living God and interpret it soberly and rightly.

SIXTH, the commandment requires reverence toward God’s works. 

Remember to extol his work, of which men have sung.

Creation, providence, redemption, judgment, and sanctification display God’s wisdom and power. We must not speak of God’s works as accidents, inconveniences, or raw material for complaint. We may lament faithfully, but we may not despise His hand.

And this also means we must be careful how we speak of man, because man himself is one of God’s works, uniquely made in His image.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

This does not mean man is God, nor does it mean that every man bears God’s Name in the same covenantal sense that God’s people do. But it does mean that man bears the stamp of God’s image and contempt for our fellow man is not a small thing. James 3:9-10 makes this connection directly: 

With [our tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

It is deeply inconsistent to bless God while cursing people who are made in God’s likeness.

Reviling, demeaning, despising, mocking, or treating our neighbor with contempt is not merely a violation of love of neighbor. It is also a failure to reverence one of God’s works. We dishonor the Craftsman and violate the third commandment when we treat His image-bearers as trash.

This does not mean we may never rebuke sin, expose error, correct folly, or speak plainly about wickedness. Scripture does all of those things. But even necessary rebuke must remember that the person being addressed is not an animal, not an object, not a punchline, and not beneath basic creaturely dignity. Man is fallen, guilty, and often wicked. But man is still made in the image of God.

Therefore, the third commandment should govern not only how we speak directly about God, but also how we speak about the works by which God displays His glory. And among those works, mankind has a unique place.

So the third commandment requires total reverence toward God as He has made Himself known. His Name, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, and works must be treated as holy because He is holy.

Question 60: What does the third commandment forbid?

The catechism now opens the negative requirement of the 3rd commandment: “all profaning and abusing of any thing whereby God makes himself known.” That language is broad because the commandment is broad. Wherever God makes Himself known, man must not profane or abuse that revelation.

To profane something is to treat what is holy as common. 

To abuse something is to misuse it, twist it, exploit it, or handle it contrary to its purpose. 

So the third commandment forbids not only blasphemy and profanity, but false doctrine, hypocritical worship, manipulative use of Scripture, empty vows, religious showmanship, careless prayer, irreverent preaching, and claiming God’s authority for what God has not said.

Malachi is especially important here. 

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the Lord’s table may be despised.

They were not atheists. They were religious leaders. They were near the altar, near the sacrifices, near the language of worship, and yet they dishonored God. That is terrifying. It is possible to be religious and still profane the Name of the Lord.

This is a warning for pastors, teachers, fathers, mothers, worship leaders, and every church member. The third commandment is not only violated in the bar or on the street. It may be violated in the pulpit, classroom, living room, prayer meeting, counseling session, small group, and Lord’s Day gathering. Whenever God’s Name is used to advance ourselves, excuse sin, manipulate people, argue dishonestly, or dress up our preferences as divine commands, we are in dangerous territory.

If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. (Malachi 2:2, ESV)

That is a searching word. Religious office does not protect a man who dishonors God. Religious usefulness does not excuse irreverence. God sees how His Name is handled.

Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape. (Malachi 3:13-15, ESV)

That is the sin of cynical religion. It speaks as though obedience is pointless, worship is wasted, and God is not worth serving unless He pays out immediately according to our expectations. That too profanes His Name. It treats God as a bad employer rather than the holy Lord.

We should apply this carefully. 

The third commandment forbids using God’s Name as a swear word. 

It forbids saying, “God told me”, when He has not. 

It forbids making promises in God’s Name and breaking them. 

It forbids praying with the mouth while the heart is far from Him. 

It forbids preaching Scripture as a means of personal display. 

It forbids singing great truths while despising them in practice. 

It forbids using doctrine as a weapon for pride rather than as truth unto worship and obedience.

This should not make tender Christians afraid to speak of God. The answer is not silence. The answer is reverence. We should pray, sing, confess, teach, and evangelize. But we should do so as those who know that God is holy and that His Name must not be used emptily.

Question 61: Why the third commandment?

Question 61 explains the warning attached to the commandment. God says, “for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” (Exodus 20:7). The catechism draws out the point: men may escape human punishment, but they will not escape God’s righteous judgment.

This is necessary because many violations of the third commandment are hard for men to judge. We can hear blatant blasphemy. We can sometimes identify false teaching. We can sometimes see hypocrisy. But we cannot see the heart perfectly. We cannot always know whether a prayer is sincere, whether a vow is honest, whether a preacher is seeking God’s glory or his own, whether a religious sentence is spoken in faith or manipulation. Men may miss much. God misses nothing.

The sons of Eli are a sobering example. 

Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. (1 Samuel 2:12, ESV)

Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt. (1 Samuel 2:17, ESV)

Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. (1 Samuel 2:22, ESV)

These were not outsiders attacking Israel’s worship from the outside. They were priests corrupting holy things from the inside. God’s judgment came because Eli honored his sons above the Lord by allowing them to fatten themselves on the best of the offerings:

Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?’ (1 Samuel 2:29, ESV)

Later, the Lord announces judgment:

And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. (1 Samuel 3:13, ESV)

That is exactly the issue of the third commandment: profaning and abusing the things by which God makes Himself known.

This should sober every leader in Christ’s church. Those who handle holy things must not be casual. To teach, preach, administer ordinances, lead worship, shepherd souls, or represent Christ publicly is a serious mercy. It is mercy because Christ uses weak men and ordinary means. It is serious because the Lord will not hold guiltless those who abuse His Name.

“If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting.”

The point is not that every suffering is tied to a specific violation of the third commandment. 

The point is that God Himself guards the honor of His Name. He will not be mocked.

We need this warning because human beings are easily impressed by what God hates. A man may take God’s Name in vain and become popular. A church may profane worship and grow numerically. A teacher may twist Scripture and sell books. A leader may manipulate people with religious language and gain influence. A hypocrite may fool men for years. But the Lord will not hold him guiltless. 

And yet, we must also hear the gospel. Who among us has perfectly honored God’s Name? Who has prayed with perfect reverence, sung with perfect sincerity, spoken of God with perfect care, used Scripture with perfect purity, and represented Christ without blemish? None of us. 

The third commandment exposes our need for Christ.

Christ alone hallowed the Father’s Name perfectly. 

Christ alone spoke every word in truth. 

Christ alone prayed without hypocrisy, taught without error, worshiped without corruption, and bore the Name of God without vanity. 

Christ alone bore the guilt of His people, including our irreverence, hypocrisy, careless speech, and profaning of holy things. Therefore, the warning should not drive believers to despair. It should drive us to repentance, faith, gratitude, and careful obedience.

Conclusion

The third commandment teaches us that God’s Name is holy because God Himself is holy. His names, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, and works are not common things for sinners to handle however they wish. They are holy because they reveal Him.

So take this lesson with you this week in three ways:

FIRST, watch your ordinary speech.  

Do not use God’s Name as filler, decoration, exclamation, leverage, or cover for your own desires. 

That includes obvious profanity, but it also includes careless religious language: 

Some of this can be valid.

But it is blasphemous when we are really using holy language to baptize our own opinions. 

Let your speech about God be truthful, careful, and reverent.

SECOND, watch your religious duties. 

We must repent not only of obvious irreverence, but also of religious vanity: 

The third commandment reaches everywhere:

Holy things must be handled in a holy way.

THIRD, watch how you treat God’s works, especially people made in His image. 

We dishonor the Craftsman when we treat His image-bearers as trash. 

That does not mean we cannot rebuke sin, expose error, or speak plainly. 

Scripture does all of those things. 

But contempt, mockery, reviling, and demeaning speech do not fit those who hallow God’s Name.

AND YET:

Reverence is not the enemy of joy. Holy fear is not distance from God. 

The Name we must not take in vain is also the Name by which we are saved. 

We call upon the Lord because He has revealed Himself in mercy. 

We hallow His Name because Christ has brought us near. 

The Lord will not hold guiltless the one who takes His Name in vain. 

But in Christ, forgiven sinners are taught by grace to honor the Name above every name.

 Lesson 25: Questions 54, 55, 56, and 57

In our last lesson we considered the first commandment. We saw that God requires us to have no other gods before Him, which means we must know and acknowledge Him as the only true God and our God, and worship and glorify Him accordingly. We also saw that the first commandment forbids atheism, false worship, idolatry of the heart, and giving to any creature the honor due to God alone. Now the catechism turns from Whom we worship to how we worship Him.

Question 54: What is the 2nd commandment?

The 1st commandment teaches us that we must worship the only true God. 

The 2nd commandment teaches us that we must worship the true God only as He has commanded. 

That distinction matters. Many attempt to worship Him in ways He has forbidden. 

We are not merely forbidden the worshipping of false gods, but also worshipping the true God falsely.

Then comes the reason: “for I the Lord your God am a jealous God”. God’s jealousy is not petty insecurity. He is not like a sinful man threatened by rivals. God’s jealousy is His holy zeal for His own glory and for the covenant purity of His people. He alone is God. He alone redeemed His people. He alone has the right to define His worship.

This commandment also warns that false worship has generational consequences. This does not mean children are punished for their fathers’ sins, but it does mean that corrupt worship does not stay private. A father’s worship teaches his children. A church’s worship forms its people. 

One generation’s drift can lead to disorder in the next and then to defiance.

But mercy has the final emphasis. God shows mercy “unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” Judgment is to the third and fourth generation; mercy is to thousands. So the 2nd commandment is not only a prohibition. It is also a mercy. God does not leave us to invent worship. He tells us how He is to be honored.

Question 55: What does the 2nd commandment require?

The catechism now opens the positive requirement of the 2nd commandment. It is not enough to say, “Do not worship God by images.” We must also receive, observe, and keep pure and entire the worship and ordinances God has appointed in His Word.

The phrase “as God hath appointed in his word” is the heart of the answer. The 2nd commandment requires appointed worship. 

We are not free to invent worship and then ask God to bless our creativity. 

We are not free to take whatever seems moving, impressive, ancient, modern, beautiful, emotionally powerful, or culturally attractive and make it part of God’s worship. 

God regulates His own worship by His Word.

This is sometimes called the Regulative Principle of Worship. The basic point is simple: in the worship of God, we may only include what God has appointed. That does not answer every practical question automatically, because we still have to distinguish between elements of worship and circumstances of worship. A church must decide on circumstances like: 

But the elements of worship themselves must come from Scripture.

And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 32:45-46, ESV)

That is the posture required by the 2nd commandment. We receive God’s words. We take them seriously. We teach them. We obey them. This is why the catechism says we must receive God’s appointed worship. We do not decide whether God’s appointed means are enough. We receive them as gifts. The reading and preaching of Scripture, prayer, singing, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, giving, confession, fellowship, discipline, and the gathered assembly of the saints are not man-made entertainments. They are God’s appointed means for His worship and for the building up of His people.

The catechism also says we must observe God’s appointed worship, not simply affirm correct principles on paper. We must actually worship according to God’s command. The early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42) There is a beautiful simplicity there. The church did not need religious theater. They devoted themselves to the Word, fellowship, the ordinances, and prayer.

This should challenge us. If we say Scripture is sufficient, do we trust God’s appointed means? 

Do we believe preaching, prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper are enough? 

Do we believe the ordinary gathered worship of the church, ordered by Scripture, is enough? 

Or do we secretly think God’s worship needs our additions to become “more effective”?

The catechism then says we must keep God’s appointed worship pure and entire. 

“Pure” means we must not corrupt worship by adding to what God has not commanded or by mixing His worship with superstition, manipulation, entertainment, or idolatry. 

“Entire” means we must not corrupt worship by subtracting from what God has commanded. We must not remove hard preaching, public prayer, congregational singing, the ordinances, confession of sin, or reverent seriousness simply because they feel uncomfortable to modern people.

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. (Matthew 23:16-22, ESV)

Jesus is directly rebuking oath gamesmanship, but the principle matters: man does not get to manipulate sacred things for his own purposes. God’s worship is not a prop in our religious performance.

So Question 55 teaches us that the 2nd commandment requires us to receive, observe, and keep the worship God has appointed. The true God must be worshiped in the true way. And the true way is not discovered by imagination, tradition, preference, or pragmatism, but by the Word of God.

Question 56: What does the 2nd commandment forbid?

The catechism now opens the negative requirement of the 2nd commandment. It forbids “the worshipping of God by images or any other way not appointed in his word”. 

The first phrase addresses images directly; the second broadens to all unauthorized worship.

First, the 2nd commandment forbids worshiping God by images. Again, the issue is not simply paganism. It is possible to claim that an image represents the true God. That is exactly what happened at Sinai. Aaron made the golden calf and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord” (Exodus 32:5). Notice that. This was not presented as Baal worship. Aaron blasphemously connected the calf to the Lord. He used an unauthorized practice in the worship of God. Ask Nadab and Abihu (Aaron’s sons) how that went for them! (Leviticus 10)

God’s verdict was not, “Their hearts are in the right place.” His verdict was that they had turned aside, made an idol, worshiped it, sacrificed to it, and attributed redemption to it (Exodus 32:8). 

Good intentions do not purify forbidden worship. 

Calling something “for the Lord” does not make it acceptable to the Lord.

This is one of the most important lessons of the 2nd commandment. Sinners are very good at baptizing disobedience with religious language. We say:

But the question is not first, “Does it move me?”

The question is, “Has God appointed it?”

“Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” (Deuteronomy 4:15-19, ESV, emphasis added)

This text grounds the prohibition in God’s own revelation at Sinai. Israel saw no form; therefore, they must not make a form. That is profound. 

God’s people may not replace the form of worship God gave with the form of worship man prefers. 

God gave His voice. God gave His Word. 

Man wants an image. Man wants something he can see, touch, carry, and control. 

The 2nd commandment forbids that exchange.

The catechism then adds, “or any other way not appointed in his word”. This is where the 2nd commandment reaches beyond statues and paintings. Images are not the only way to corrupt worship. We may corrupt worship by adding unauthorized ceremonies, manipulative techniques, priestly mediators not appointed by Christ, entertainment elements treated as worship, mystical practices, superstition, drama as a substitute for preaching, or anything else introduced as worship without warrant from Scripture.

When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’ You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.

That is the principle in plain form: do not worship God by importing the practices of false religion; do not add; do not subtract.

This does not mean worship must be ugly, careless, or lifeless. Sometimes people hear “regulated by Scripture” and imagine joyless minimalism. That is no more true of biblical worship than it is of lawful obedience to the Law. Biblical worship should be reverent, joyful, hearty, thoughtful, and full of faith. But its beauty must be the beauty of obedience, not the beauty of human invention.

Question 56 also protects the church from tyranny. If worship is governed by human creativity, then the strongest personalities, the loudest preferences, the most persuasive leaders, or the most successful trends will rule the church. But if worship is governed by Scripture, then Christ rules His church through His Word. That is where true worship is found.

So the 2nd commandment forbids images in worship and every other unauthorized way of worshiping God. The true God may not be worshiped according to man’s imagination. 

He must be worshiped according to His Word.

Question 57: Why the 2nd commandment?

Question 57 asks what reasons God attaches to the 2nd commandment. The catechism gives three reasons: God rules us, He owns us, and He is zealous for His worship.

FIRST, God has sovereignty over us. God is not our consultant. He is not waiting for worship suggestions from His creatures. He is King. Psalm 45 speaks of the King in beauty, majesty, truth, meekness, righteousness, and everlasting rule.

You are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips;  therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty!

The catechism applies this royal language to God’s sovereignty. He has authority to command. He has authority to define what pleases Him. He has authority to reject worship He has not appointed.

That cuts against a deep impulse in fallen man. We want to be sovereign over worship. We want to decide what feels meaningful, what seems effective, what attracts people, what expresses our personality, or what preserves our tradition. But worship is not self-expression. Worship is obedience to God’s self-revelation. Because God is sovereign, worship must begin with obedient surrender.

SECOND, God has “propriety in us”. This older usage of this word means He has ownership of us. Psalm 45:11 says that He is Lord. The church belongs to Christ. The individual believer belongs to Christ. As Question 47 taught us, heart, soul, strength, and mind, all Christians belong to Him. 

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

We are not our own. Therefore, our worship is not our own. Worship is not about us!

This is especially important for Christians. God owns all men by creation, but He owns His people by redemption as well. We have been bought with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19; see Lesson 23, Question 49). That means the church does not have the right to reinvent worship according to the market, the culture, the pastor’s personality, the congregation’s nostalgia, or the preferences of the age. We belong to Christ. His Word governs His house.

THIRD, God has zeal for His own worship. 

You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. (Exodus 34:13-16, ESV, emphasis added)

God’s jealousy is not incidental. His Name is Jealous. He is fiercely committed to His own glory and to the purity of His people’s worship.

So Question 57 gives weight to the whole matter. We worship God as He commands because He is sovereign over us, because He owns us, and because He is zealous for His worship. Worship is not a playground for religious invention. It is the holy privilege of drawing near to the living God through the mediation of Christ, according to the Word of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

Questions 54 through 57 teach us the 2nd commandment. The 1st commandment tells us to worship the true God alone. The 2nd commandment tells us to worship Him only in the true way.

So take this lesson with you in two ways.

FIRST, let it correct how you think about worship. Worship is not mainly about what feels meaningful to us. It is about what God has commanded. The church does not gather to express religious creativity, but to meet with God through the means He has appointed.

SECOND, let it encourage you. God has not left His people in the dark. We do not need to invent ways to draw near to Him. We do not need images, gimmicks, spectacle, or unauthorized helps. We have Christ, the perfect image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). 

We have His Word. 

We have His Spirit. 

We have His ordinances. 

We have His gathered people. 

We have access to the Father through the Son.

That is enough. 

Because it is enough, we should receive it with gratitude, observe it with care, and keep it with joy.

Lesson 24: Questions  50, 51, 52, and 53

In Lesson 23, we began to work through the Ten Commandments by considering the preface to the law. We saw that God identifies Himself as the Lord, the covenant God Who redeemed Israel out of bondage, and that His authority to command is grounded in Who He is and what He has done (Q47-49). That order matters. God does not present His law as an abstract code floating in the air. He speaks as the redeeming Lord. Now, having considered the preface, we come to the 1st commandment itself, which establishes the foundation for all true worship and all true obedience.

Question 50: What is the 1st commandment?

The 1st commandment is short, but it is not small. 

You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)

This commandment is first for a reason. Before God tells us how to worship Him (2), use His

The first issue is God Himself.

That is because sin is never merely behavioral. Sin is worship gone wrong. When man turns from God, he does not become neutral. He gives his heart to something else. He fears something else, trusts something else, loves something else, serves something else, or seeks final satisfaction in something else. The 1st commandment confronts the root: you shall not have another god.

This matters because idolatry is not only a pagan problem involving statues and temples. It is a human problem involving the heart. A man may not bow before an idol of wood or stone and yet still live as an idolater. He may live for money, reputation, pleasure, control, comfort, family, politics, success, intellect, sex, self-expression, or even religious usefulness. Anything that receives the trust, love, fear, obedience, or glory due to God alone has become a rival god.

We should also notice that the 1st commandment is not merely negative. It says, “You shall have no other gods before me”, but the negative command implies a positive duty. If we must not have other gods, then we must have the true God as God. We must know Him, trust Him, love Him, worship Him, obey Him, and glorify Him. The 1st commandment is not satisfied by deism, vague spirituality, or bare monotheistic correctness. The commandment calls for covenantal allegiance to the living God.

This is why the 1st commandment is foundational. If we fail here, everything else collapses. A man may externally avoid murder, adultery, theft, and lying, and yet still be a covenant-breaker at the deepest level if he does not worship the true God (see discussion on Matthew 19:16-22 from Lesson 22). Moral respectability without true worship is not righteousness. It may restrain certain sins, and that is a mercy, but it does not fulfill the 1st commandment.

So Question 50 introduces the 1st commandment as the great command of exclusive worship and allegiance. The Lord alone is God. He alone is worthy. He alone must be trusted, loved, feared, served, worshiped, and glorified. No rivals. No replacements. No substitutes. No hidden gods before His face.

Question 51: What does the 1st commandment require?

The catechism now opens the positive requirement of the 1st commandment. It is not enough merely to avoid obvious idolatry. The 1st commandment requires us to know and acknowledge God to be the only true God and our God, and to worship and glorify Him accordingly.

Notice the order. First, we must know God. Then we must acknowledge Him. Then we must worship and glorify Him accordingly. True worship is not built on ignorance. God is not honored by vague religious energy detached from His self-revelation. We must know Him as He has made Himself known.

And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever. (1 Chronicles 28:9, ESV)

David’s charge to Solomon is deeply personal and covenantal. “Know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind.” That is 1st commandment religion. It is not mere outward compliance. It is knowledge of God, wholehearted service, and willing obedience before the God Who searches hearts and understands thoughts.

That is searching. God does not merely see the outward action. He searches the heart. He knows whether worship is sincere or hollow, whether obedience is glad or grudging, whether public religion is joined to private love for Him. The 1st commandment reaches into the inward man. It asks not merely, “To whom do you bow?” but, “Whom do you love? Whom do you trust? Whom do you seek? Whom do you fear? Whom do you serve?”

This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared today that the Lord is your God, and that you will walk in his ways, and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules, and will obey his voice. And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.” (Deuteronomy 26:16-19, ESV)

That is covenantal acknowledgment. Israel declared the Lord would be their God and they would walk in His ways, keep His statutes, and obey His voice. The 1st commandment requires not only that we confess there is one God, but confess He is our God. It requires personal, covenantal allegiance.

This matters because there is a kind of bare orthodoxy that says true things about God but does not embrace Him as God. The demons know there is one God, and they tremble. A man may affirm monotheism, defend theology, and win arguments, and yet not worship and glorify God as his God. The 1st commandment requires more than correct vocabulary. It requires the heart’s allegiance.

Then the catechism says we must worship and glorify Him accordingly.

Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” (Matthew 4:10, ESV)

Jesus speaks these words (cited from Deuteronomy 6:13) to Satan in the wilderness. Satan offered Him the kingdoms of the world and their glory if Jesus would fall down and worship him. Jesus answers with Scripture: worship belongs to the Lord God alone. Here we see the 1st commandment obeyed perfectly by Christ. Where Adam failed in a garden, Christ succeeded in the wilderness. He refused the shortcut of idolatry. He would not receive a kingdom by worshiping another. He would worship and serve God alone.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. (Psalm 29:2, ESV)

To glorify God is to ascribe to Him the glory due His Name. That word “due” matters. Worship is not something we generously decide to give God. It is owed. God is infinitely worthy, and therefore worship is not optional. The creature owes worship to the Creator. The redeemed owe worship to the Redeemer. The child owes love, reverence, and obedience to the Father.

And notice that worship must be “accordingly”. If God is the only true God and our God, then we worship Him as such. We do not worship Him casually, as though He were one interest among many. We do not worship Him selectively, as though He may command some areas of life but not others. We do not worship Him pragmatically, as though He exists to serve our goals. We worship Him as God.

This includes public worship, but it is not limited to public worship. The 1st commandment reaches all of life. We must glorify God in our homes, work, speech, money, bodies, thoughts, desires, relationships, and plans. The 1st commandment requires whole-life allegiance.

So Question 51 teaches us that the 1st commandment requires true knowledge, true confession, true worship, and true glorifying of God. We must know Him as the only true God. We must acknowledge Him as our God. And we must worship and glorify Him accordingly.

Question 52: What does the 1st commandment forbid?

The catechism now opens the negative requirement of the 1st commandment. Question 51 tells us what the commandment requires. Question 52 tells us what it forbids: denying God, failing to worship and glorify Him, refusing Him as God and our God, and giving His worship and glory to another.

FIRST, the commandment forbids denying God. 

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. (Psalm 14:1, ESV)

The Bible does not treat atheism as intellectual neutrality. It treats it as folly. That does not mean every atheist is unintelligent. Some are very intelligent. But Scripture’s category of folly is moral and spiritual, not merely intellectual. The fool denies what is most fundamental: God is God.

This denial may be philosophical, but it may also be practical. A man may say he believes in God and yet live as though God does not see, does not speak, does not judge, and does not matter. Practical atheism may sit in church, sing hymns, and speak orthodox sentences. The question is not only, “Do you affirm that God exists?” The question is, “Do you live before Him as God?”

SECOND, the 1st commandment forbids not worshiping and glorifying the true God. 

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:21-23, ESV)

Notice the order. They knew God, but did not honor Him as God or give thanks. That is 1st commandment rebellion. God revealed Himself, and man refused to glorify Him. Man’s problem is not merely lack of information. It is suppression, ingratitude, and refusal to honor God as God.

This should correct the way we think about sin. The root problem is not that man needs a little more self-esteem, organization, or religious inspiration. The root problem is that man does not glorify God as God. He takes gifts and forgets the Giver. He receives life, breath, food, pleasure, beauty, intellect, family, and strength, and then refuses gratitude. Ingratitude is not a small sin. It is an assault on the 1st commandment.

THIRD, the 1st commandment forbids refusing the true God as “God and our God”. 

I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. (Psalm 81:10-11, ESV)

That is tragic language. “I am the Lord your God”, and yet “my people did not listen”. God presents Himself as their Redeemer, the One Who brought them out of Egypt, but they would not submit. Their sin was not merely that they failed to believe certain doctrines about God. They refused covenantal submission to the God Who had claimed them.

This is a warning to religious people. It is possible to be near the means of grace, near the language of covenant, near the worship of God, and still resist God. External nearness is not the same as inward submission. The 1st commandment requires that we receive the Lord as God and our God.

FOURTH, the 1st commandment forbids giving any other the worship and glory due to God alone. 

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

This is the logic of idolatry: exchanging the truth about God for a lie, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. Idolatry is not harmless spiritual creativity. It is a lie. It takes the glory due to the Creator and gives it to a creature.

And notice what follows. Disordered worship leads to disordered desires. When man exchanges God for the creature, his loves become corrupted. The sexual revolution, the cult of self, the worship of comfort, the obsession with money, the hunger for approval, the sacrifice of children to the god of convenience, the frantic need for control: these are not disconnected sins. They grow from disordered worship. False gods always deform their worshipers.

That should make this commandment deeply practical. What do you fear losing most? What do you run to for refuge? What do you believe will make life worth living? What makes you angry when it is threatened? What do you sacrifice for? What do you daydream about? What do you obey even when God says otherwise? Those questions often reveal the functional gods of the heart.

So Question 52 teaches us that the 1st commandment forbids agnosticism, practical atheism, ingratitude, false worship, covenant refusal, and idolatry. It forbids every attempt to deny God, neglect God, minimize God, replace God, or give His glory to another.

Question 53: What does “before me” mean?

This final question presses the commandment into the conscience. “Before me” teaches that God sees all things, takes notice of idolatry, and is much displeased with the sin of having any other god. Idolatry is never hidden from God.

Exodus 8 tells of the 2nd (frogs) and 3rd (gnats) plagues. The crux of the story is found in verse 10:

Moses said, “Be it as you say, so that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God.”

In Exodus, the plagues are not random displays of power. They are judgments against Egypt and Egypt’s gods. Pharaoh and Egypt had false gods, false worship, false confidence, and false power. The Lord exposed them all. He showed that He alone is God.

That context helps us understand “before me”. Pharaoh did not merely hold mistaken religious ideas in private. He stood before the living God in defiance. Egypt’s gods stood, as it were, before the Lord, and the Lord judged them. He saw. He took notice. He was displeased. And He acted.

However, “before me” does not merely mean “where God can see it”, as though the main issue were secret idolatry versus public idolatry. It means no other god may be brought before Yahweh’s face. No rival may stand in His presence. No supposed lesser deity may be treated as though it has a legitimate place beside Him, under Him, or alongside Him. The Lord does not merely require first place among many loves. He requires exclusive worship.

We, like the Israelites of old, must heed the call of this commandment. It is not enough to proclaim that God is God. We must hold to Him and Him alone as God, clinging to no other. 

If we saw a man who claimed to love his wife, yet he was cheating on her with other women, we would call him a liar. He could not say “I love my wife the most.” Loving his wife means excluding all others. So, too, we must not simply love God first, we must honor Him alone.

Conclusion

Questions 50-53 bring us into the 1st commandment. God commands, “You shall have no other gods before me.” This is the foundation of all obedience. Before we ask how to worship, speak, or order time, authority, life, marriage, property, truth, and desire, we must ask: Who is God? Who has my worship?

So let us come to this commandment humbly. 

No other gods before Him. No rivals before His face. No hidden idols in the heart. 

The Lord alone is God. 

He alone is worthy. 

And in Christ, He is not only the true God; He is our God.

Lesson 23: Questions  47, 48, and 49

In Lesson 22, we began our introduction to the Law of God. We saw that the duty God requires of man is obedience to His revealed will (Q44), that the rule God first revealed to man for his obedience was the moral law (Q45), and that the moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments (Q46). That means we are not approaching the Ten Commandments as a ladder by which sinners climb into justification. We come as people who have already been taught the doctrines of sin, Christ, redemption, effectual calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, death, resurrection, and judgment. Now, standing in that doctrinal context, we ask how the Ten Commandments are summarized and how God Himself introduces them.

Question 47: What do the Ten Commandments teach?

The catechism begins its treatment of the Ten Commandments by asking for their “sum”. That is important. Before it walks through each commandment one by one, it teaches us the inner logic of the whole moral law. The Ten Commandments are not a random list of divine rules. They are the moral law summarized, and that moral law is summarized in love: love for God and love for neighbor.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40, ESV)

The first and great commandment is love for God. The second is like it: love for neighbor. 

And on these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. That means love is not a replacement for God’s commandments. Love is the heart of God’s commandments. The law shows us what love requires.

This matters because modern people often pit love against law. They assume that love is flexible, spontaneous, and sincere, while law is rigid, external, and cold. But Scripture does not give us that opposition. 

Biblical love is not lawless emotion. Biblical law is not loveless control. 

God’s law teaches us the shape of love, and true love gladly walks according to God’s law.

The first table of the law teaches us how to love God. We love Him by having no other gods before Him (1), by worshiping Him as He commands (2), by honoring His Name (3), and by keeping His appointed rhythm of worship and rest (4). The second table of the law teaches us how to love neighbor. We love our neighbor by honoring lawful authority (5), preserving life (6), pursuing chastity (7), respecting property (8), telling the truth (9), and governing our desires (10).

So when someone says, “Christianity is about love, not rules”, we should ask, “What kind of love?” If love is detached from God’s revealed will, then love becomes whatever fallen man wants it to mean. It becomes sentiment, preference, permission, or self-expression. But if love is governed by God’s law, then love is holy. It seeks what God says is good.

Notice also the totality of love required. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. That leaves nothing outside. God does not ask for a small religious compartment within an otherwise self-governed life. He requires the whole person: affections, desires, thoughts, will, body, energy, decisions, habits, relationships, and worship.

This exposes us. If the sum of the law is love for God with all that we are and love for neighbor as ourselves, then who among us can say, “I have kept the law”? We may compare ourselves favorably to other people, but the law does not ask whether we have been more outwardly decent than our neighbor. It asks whether we have loved God perfectly and loved our neighbor rightly.

That is why this question must not become sentimental. The summary of the law in love does not make the law easier. In one sense, it makes it much more difficult. God does not require mechanical rule-keeping only. He requires love. He does not merely command the hands, but the heart. He does not merely forbid outward law-breaking. He requires inward love toward God and neighbor.

At the same time, this question also protects us from treating the commandments as bare externalism. The law is fulfilled by love. A man may avoid certain outward sins because of pride, fear, reputation, convenience, or self-interest. That is not the obedience God requires. God commands love.

Here again we see our need for Christ. Christ alone loved the Lord His God with all His heart, soul, strength, and mind. Christ alone loved His neighbor perfectly. Christ alone fulfilled the law from the heart. And those who are united to Christ are not only justified by His righteousness (i.e., His law-keeping), but also renewed by His Spirit so that we begin to love what God commands.

So Question 47 teaches us how to read the whole moral law. The Ten Commandments are not less than commandments, but they are more than bare commands. They are the revealed shape of love: love for God first, and then love for neighbor under God.

Question 48: What is their preface?

Question 48 turns from the summary of the Ten Commandments to their preface. That may seem like a small detail, but it is not. God does not begin the Ten Commandments with, “here are My rules.” He begins with Himself: “I am the Lord your God”. He identifies Himself before He commands.

And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (Exodus 20:1-2, ESV)

This preface teaches us that the commandments come from the covenant Lord and Redeemer. God’s law is not an abstract moral code floating above God. It is the revealed will of the living God Who speaks to His people. The authority of the commandments rests on God’s authority.

The first thing God says is, “I am the Lord”. This is Covenant Name language. God is not merely a vague deity, a higher power, or a religious concept. He is the Lord, Yahweh (YHWH), the God Who is, the God Who has spoken, the God Who keeps covenant, the God Who reveals Himself, the God Who rules, saves, and judges. The law comes from Him.

That means obedience is personal. We are not obeying an impersonal rulebook. We are obeying the living God. This is one reason sin is so serious. Sin is not merely breaking a principle. It is rebellion against the Lord. To disobey God’s law is to disobey God Himself.

Then God says, “your God”. That is covenant relationship. He is not only the Lord in the abstract; He is the Lord Who has taken a people to Himself. He has claimed them. He has bound them to Himself. He has set His Name upon them. The commandments come in the context of covenant.

That matters because some people imagine law and relationship are opposites. They think relationship means warmth without command, and law means command without warmth. Scripture does not speak that way. God’s covenant relationship includes commands, and His commands come within covenant relationship. The God Who says “your God” also says “you shall” and “you shall not”.

Then God says He brought them “out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Before Sinai, there was redemption. Before the commandments were written on tablets of stone, God had delivered His people from slavery. That order matters enormously.

Israel was not given the law so that they might earn deliverance from Egypt. God did not say, “Keep these commandments, and if you do well enough, I will bring you out of bondage.” No, He redeemed them first. Then He commanded them. Redemption came before Sinai obedience.

This does not mean Israel was redeemed in exactly the same way we speak of redemption accomplished by Christ in the New Covenant. The Exodus was a historical redemption from Egyptian bondage and a type of the greater redemption to come. But the pattern (type) is still important: God’s commands come to a redeemed people. He saves, then He instructs. He delivers, then He commands.

This guards us from legalism. The law is not a ladder out of Egypt. God brought them out. They did not climb out by obedience. But it also guards us from antinomianism. The same God Who redeemed them also commanded them. Grace does not mean, “I brought you out, so now live however you want.” Grace means, “I brought you out; therefore, you belong to Me and must obey Me.”

This is exactly why the preface matters for Christian obedience. We must not detach commandment from redemption. If we do, we will either turn them into a system of self-salvation or reject them as if they were hostile to grace. But when we read them in light of redemption, we see them rightly: the redeemed life has a shape. God saves His people and teaches them to walk before Him.

The Exodus also reminds us that sin is bondage. Egypt is not only a geographical memory; it becomes a picture (type) of slavery from which God delivers. The Israelites were not brought out so they could invent their own freedom. They were brought out to worship and serve the Lord. Likewise, Christ does not redeem us from sin so that we may become autonomous. He redeems us from slavery to sin so that we may become servants of righteousness. 

What is righteousness? The opposite of sin. What is sin?

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. (1 John 3:4, ESV)

It follows, then, that the righteousness after which we strive is lawful obedience.

So Question 48 teaches us that the Ten Commandments begin with God Himself: the Lord, our God, the Redeemer. The Law comes from the One Who has authority to command and has given grace to redeem. Therefore, the preface prevents us from reading the commandments as cold legalism. They are covenant words from the redeeming Lord.

Question 49: What does the preface teach?

Question 49 explains the theological meaning of the preface. Because God is the Lord, because He is our God, and because He is our Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all His commandments. That word “therefore” matters. Obedience is not detached from God’s identity or God’s saving work. It flows from both.

FIRST, we are bound to obey because God is the Lord. He is Creator, King, Judge, and Sovereign. He does not need to ask permission to command His creatures. The Lord has absolute authority over everything He has made. His commands are not suggestions. They are binding.

This is where modern man often stumbles. He wants a god who advises but does not command, comforts but does not rule, forgives but does not judge. But God is the Lord. We are bound to obey.

SECOND, we are bound to obey because He is our God. That brings the matter closer. The commandments are not merely imposed from outside, as though God were an unknown ruler issuing distant decrees. He is our God. For Israel, the preface reminded them that the Lord had taken them to Himself in covenant. For believers in Christ, the point is even richer. The God Who commands us is the God Who has made us His people in Christ.

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. (Luke 1:68-75, ESV, emphasis added)

Zechariah speaks of deliverance in order that God’s people might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all their days. Notice the purpose of redemption: service, holiness, righteousness. God delivers His people so that they may live before Him.

This is deeply important. Redemption is not merely rescue from consequences. It is rescue unto worship and obedience. Christ does not save us so that we can remain devoted to the same sins that enslaved us. He saves us so that we may serve God without fear.

That phrase “without fear” matters. Gospel obedience is not servile terror. The believer does not obey in order to make God merciful. God has shown mercy in Christ. The believer obeys as one delivered, forgiven, adopted, and loved. But “without fear” does not mean without reverence, holiness, or seriousness. Zechariah immediately says “in holiness and righteousness”. Freedom from condemnation does not produce freedom from obedience. It produces freedom for obedience.

THIRD, we are bound to obey because God is our Redeemer. 

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:13-19, ESV)

Peter grounds holy conduct in both God’s holiness and Christ’s redemption (by precious blood). 

That is exactly the logic of the catechism. 

Because God is holy, we must be holy. 

Because Christ has redeemed us, we must live with holy conduct.

Notice how Peter speaks. He does not say, “You were ransomed, therefore obedience no longer matters.” He says the opposite. You were ransomed from futile ways. You were bought with precious blood. Therefore, be holy in all your conduct as obedient children.

This means redemption strengthens the obligation to obey. It does not weaken it. Since God made us, He has authority over us. Since God redeemed us, He has claim upon us twice over. We belong to Him by creation and redemption. The Christian is not less obligated to obey because he is saved by grace. He is more deeply bound, but now gladly, as one who has been bought with blood.

This is where we must be careful and pastoral. Some people hear “bound to keep all His commandments” and immediately fear legalism. That is understandable, especially if they have seen God’s law abused. But legalism is not the same as obedience. Legalism uses obedience as the ground of acceptance with God. Gospel obedience rests on acceptance in Christ and responds with love. 

It’s also important to note that it’s not legalism if it’s right. It’s not legalism for me to be faithful to my wife. It’s not legalism for me to be honest on my taxes. It’s not legalism for me to honor my Father and Mother.

Others hear “grace” and assume that commandment-keeping must be contrary to the gospel. But that is antinomianism. Grace does not make God’s will irrelevant. Grace writes God’s law on the heart and teaches us to walk in His ways. Grace does not destroy obedience; it enables it. Listen to what Jesus says:

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. (John 14:21, ESV, emphasis added)

What commandments would His hearers have heard? The Ten Commandments!

So the preface to the Ten Commandments teaches gospel-shaped obedience. 

God is the Lord, so He has authority. 

God is our God, so obedience is covenantal. 

God is our Redeemer, so obedience is grateful. 

We obey not as slaves trying to earn release from Egypt/sin, but as those already redeemed.

This also means partial obedience is not the goal. The catechism says we are bound to keep “all his commandments”. We do not get to choose our favorite commands and ignore the rest. God’s authority is not selective. His Word does not come to us as a buffet. We are not permitted to obey where obedience is easy and then negotiate where obedience is costly.

At the same time, we must remember that our obedience in this life remains imperfect. We are not justified by the quality of our commandment-keeping. Christ is our righteousness. 

But imperfect obedience is not the same as indifferent disobedience. The believer’s obedience is real, growing, Spirit-wrought, and grateful, even though it is not yet perfect.

Q49 teaches the foundation of Christian duty. God is the Lord, our God, and our Redeemer, so we are bound to keep all His commandments. Authority, covenant, and redemption stand together.

Conclusion

Questions 47, 48, and 49 prepare us to walk through the Ten Commandments rightly. 

So, let’s take this lesson with us this week in a few ways:

FIRST, we should believe differently. 

We should stop thinking of law and love as enemies. 

The law shows us the shape of love. 

Love for God and neighbor is not a vague feeling; it is obedience ordered by God’s revealed will.

SECOND, we should read the commandments redemptively. 

God does not bring His people to Sinai before bringing them out of Egypt. 

Redemption comes first. 

The commandments are not a ladder into salvation. 

They are covenant instruction for those whom God has delivered.

THIRD, we should obey differently. 

We do not obey to become justified. 

We obey because God is the Lord, because He is our God, and because He has redeemed us. 

Our obedience should therefore be humble, grateful, serious, and joyful.

So as we move into the commandments themselves, we should come neither as legalists nor as antinomians. We come as redeemed people, trusting Christ’s righteousness, depending on the Spirit’s help, and desiring to love the God Who first loved us. 

The Lord has brought us, His people, out of bondage. 

Therefore, we are bound to keep all His commandments.