Commandments are God's laws
A commandment is the law of life that God gave to man. Therefore, the commandments are God's laws. God's commandments are in both the Old Testament and the New.
"Covenant" means "promise."
Man fulfills God's Law in order to receive the benefits that God promised. The Old Testament promised that the Messiah would come to the world, and the New Testament promised that the believer would have the Kingdom of God.
" Bible " is Greek for "book". The writings of the Old and New Testaments were so popular among traders in the Mediterranean region in the early centuries of Christianity that they were simply called “books.”
The Old Testament consists of 39 books:
- 5 books of the prophet Moses;
- 7 books about the history of Israel;
- 5 books of an instructive nature;
- 22 prophetic books.
The New Testament consists of 27 books:
- 4 books of the Gospel;
- 1 book of the Acts of the Holy Apostles;
- 21 Apostolic Epistles;
- Book 1 of the Revelation of John the Theologian.
Commandments of Jesus Christ
What the Bible Says About Commandments
The commandments, as an expression of the Creator's will for man, occupy one of the central places in the Bible. The Old and New Testaments approach the commandments as a religious phenomenon in completely different ways. The Old Testament basically contains a wide range of very heterogeneous commandments that make up the so-called. God's Law. The total number of commandments found in the Old Testament exceeds six hundred; on the contrary, in the New Testament the Lord Jesus Christ reduces the number of commandments to a minimum.
At the very beginning of the history of the world and man, at creation, God gives people one single commandment; according to the writer, it contains the entirety of the Creator’s plan for the world and man. This first and at that time only commandment is that a person must accept the moral world order established by God. Refusal to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means that a person does not claim power over what is good in the world and leads to life, and what is evil and leads to death. By giving this commandment, the Creator gives a person a real opportunity to accept and fulfill it, or reject and break it. The reality of choice, in turn, makes human spiritual freedom real.
When this first and only commandment was violated by people, the Lord, instead of it, consistently offers people other, more specific commandments, linking their fulfillment with the restoration of the life lost by people. This is how the commandments of the covenant with Noah, with Abraham, and, finally, the commandments of the Sinai covenant, which constituted the Law of God, appear.
The entire set of commandments of the Old (Sinai) Testament is based on the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Decalogue (Decalogue), as the Ten Commandments are also called, includes the requirement of monotheism and the rejection of paganism, as well as basic moral norms. In subsequent times, the ethical part of the Decalogue began to be called “universal human values.” To a large extent, the Old Testament commandments specify those basic requirements that were included in the Decalogue.
The fulfillment of the commandments is considered in the Pentateuch as a sign of the covenant, a sign that strengthens a person’s faith and gives him hope. As the main sign testifying before God and people about the faithfulness of the chosen people to the concluded covenant, the law of Moses offers the commandment of the Sabbath. In this regard, references to this commandment are perhaps the most numerous in the Pentateuch. In general, the commandments of the Old Testament can be divided into several groups.
The first group consists of commandments that determine the religious aspect of the life of the chosen people. These commandments prohibit paganism in all its manifestations and require the worship of the One God. In addition, the most important part of the law is the ethical and legal norms governing relations between people. Already in the text of the Pentateuch these two main groups of commandments are generalized; By the time of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ, the essence of the law was usually briefly expressed in the words: “The first of all commandments: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength—this is the first commandment! The second is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29–31).
The worship of the One God, justice and mercy began to be considered the essence of the law very early; already in the 8th century. BC The prophet Micah spoke of the commandments this way: “O man! It has been told to you what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic. 6:8). The requirements of monotheism and the prohibition of paganism imply not only the rejection of idolatry. First of all, the law speaks of trust in God, faith and hope in His mercy. The requirement to worship the One God contains a call to seek God and strive for Him: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, there is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength” (Deut. 6:4–5). Thus, the commandments of monotheism concern the very essence of a person’s spiritual life, and not just its religious manifestations.
Ethical commandments in general say that relationships between people should be built in love, mercy and justice. In addition, they lay down the principle of equality of people before God and human responsibility before Him for actions towards other people. All human affairs take place before the face of the Creator, and God is far from indifferent to what these actions are. Any manifestation of cruelty and violence is considered a sin, a violation of the will of God. At the same time, some ethical commandments of the Old Testament reflect the level of morality and consciousness of the people of their time. What, from the point of view of the New Testament, looks inhuman, in the 12th–10th centuries. BC was a significant advance over the primitive state of fallen humanity. This part of the ethical commandments of the Old Testament changes in the New Testament era.
Further, many commandments establish the details of the Old Testament cult. In many ways, they use the religious experience and customs of the cultural environment of which the people of Israel were a part. However, unlike paganism, the Old Testament bases the cult not on human creativity, but on the will of the Almighty. Even those details of the cult that cannot be described in the form of commandments are determined by God Himself, who chooses those artists and musicians who are entrusted with developing them. The relevance of the vast majority of cult commandments was lost after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD.
Another group consists of commandments that serve to preserve the religious and cultural identity of Israel; conditionally they can be called “ethnocultural”. Surrounded by pagan peoples whose culture was overwhelmingly superior to that of the Israelites, there was a serious danger of mixing cultures and religions. For this reason, the commandments of the Sinai covenant prohibit many things that could lead to the religious and cultural mixing of Israel and pagan peoples. There is a ban on mixed marriages, a number of bans related to war booty, and much more. This group, in particular, includes a number of food restrictions related to the division of food into clean and unclean. This same group also includes many ritual requirements associated with the concept of ritual purity. The scope of many of these commandments is not comparable to the Decalogue; against the backdrop of the greatness of the Sinai Revelation, they often look petty. However, the role of these commandments, positive in the initial period of Sacred history and negative in the New Testament era, is very great. This same group can include a small number of “hygienic” commandments that arose during the formation of the Israeli ethnic group and culture.
One can also identify a fairly extensive group of commandments that regulate various forms of social relations. Some of them have lost their significance in the course of history; others, such as the demand for monogamy, continue to remain relevant.
The entire set of prohibitions and commands is perceived in the Old Testament as a single whole; the book of Deuteronomy considers the entire set of commandments as a single commandment containing an indication of a person’s life path. God calls fulfilling the requirements of the law the way of life, and rejecting them the way of death. The choice between these two paths is left to man; the law announces to him the will of the Creator about his life so that a person chooses life. Life itself is characterized by obedience to the law and love of God.
At the same time, the commandments of the Old Testament constitute an essential part of Revelation. They not only show a person the path of life, but also allow him to know the One who gives these commandments. This idea is expressed especially clearly in many psalms. Thus, already in the Old Testament the meaning of the commandments is not reduced only to the distinction between good and evil, between permissible and unacceptable.
The Lord Jesus Christ gives the commandments a significantly different, deeper meaning. In answer to the scribe’s question about the greatest (most important) of all the commandments, the Lord calls the greatest two commandments, about love for God and about love for one’s neighbor as oneself. Like some Jewish teachers, the Lord says that this double commandment contains the whole law. The remaining commandments serve to clarify the commandment of love in relation to various life situations. In addition, the Lord deepens the meaning of many ethical commandments; in the Sermon on the Mount, He points out that cruelty and immorality are destructive already when they are born in a person’s heart, and not only when they manifest themselves in actions. Finally, the Lord distinguishes in the law between unchangeable commandments and those that were determined by historical circumstances and the moral state of people.
It is fundamentally important that in numerous discussions with the Jews, Christ insists on keeping the commandments in essence, and not in form. For Christ's disciples, the law should not be a faceless, self-sufficient set of rules; the commandments should serve to bring a person closer to God. Later, the Apostle Paul will say the famous words about this: “He has given us the ability to be ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, because the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6).
In the Last Conversation with the disciples before the Crucifixion, Christ gives them a “new commandment”, which absorbed the entire law: “love one another, as I have loved you.” The Lord tells the disciples that the fulfillment of this commandment is possible only as a manifestation of man’s love for God and deep rootedness in His love for man. The New Testament, thus, combines two attitudes to the fulfillment of the commandments: on the one hand, it is a way of approaching God and, on the other hand, a manifestation of unity with Him. In the New Testament, the Lord gives His disciples the opportunity to communicate with Himself so that this paradoxical path becomes real.
A way to connect with God
Since God gave people free will, every person has two ways: to be with God or to be against God. The choice stands exactly like this: He who is not with Me is against Me (Matthew 12:30), there is no third option. God loves each of His creations and wants all people to be with Him, but does not force anyone. The meaning of our earthly life is to decide and make a choice. While a person is alive, it is not too late to choose for himself, but after death - that’s it, he can neither change nor correct anything. As Saint Barsanuphius the Great said, “concerning knowledge about the future, do not be mistaken: what you sow here, you will reap there. After leaving here, no one can succeed... here is work - there is reward, here is feat - there are crowns"? Venerable Fathers Barsanuphius the Great and John Guide to spiritual life in answers to questions from students. M., 2001, p. 513. - Ed..
And for those who answer “yes” to God, fulfilling the commandments takes on the deepest meaning - it becomes this answer and a way of connecting with God.
After all, if you look at it, we can bring almost nothing to God, we can answer “yes” to Him with almost nothing - we were created by Him, and everything that we have received from Him: talents, property, family and even our very existence, For in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
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Read also: What would have happened to our civilization if Christ had not been resurrected?
The only thing we can give to God on our own is the voluntary fulfillment of His commandments, done not out of fear or for the sake of self-interest, but out of love for Him. The Lord Himself testifies to this: If you love Me, keep My commandments (John 14:15).
So every time we voluntarily and consciously keep God’s commandment, even the smallest one, we thereby testify to our love for God; we answer Him “yes.”
Fulfilling the commandments is always only what happens between a person and God. If a person does not steal or kill because he is afraid of going to prison, he cannot say that he is fulfilling God’s commandments “do not kill” and “do not steal,” because “what is done out of human fear is not pleasing to God.” "? Archimandrite John (Maslov). Symphony based on the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. Zagorsk, 1981, p. 2003. - Ed.. The commandment is given by God, and the fulfillment of the commandment is something that is done voluntarily and naturally by a person for the sake of God.
