The Sixth Commandment

*The following post was originally written as a meditation for our Confession of Sin during Lord’s Day worship.

Confession of Sin

Acknowledging our guilt; resting in His grace.

The Sixth Commandment:

“You shall not murder.” (Exodus 20:13)

We often think of this command as forbidding only those most extreme forms of hatred and violence. By doing so, we severely misunderstand the comprehensive application and value of this command to the lives of all men.

Our Savior taught us,

“You have heard it 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)

With these words, our Savior has traced the scope and focus of the 6th commandment all the way back to the thoughts and intentions of the individual heart.

By doing so, Jesus shows us that the gravest atrocities of our world––murder, abortion, oppression, violence, abuse, slavery––always grow forth from the unweeded soil of the sinner’s soul.

Murder is a grotesque and poisonous fruit which grows from smaller seeds of sin that have been nurtured in the heart. It is not the beginning of evil, but rather a culmination of evils.

Wherever the sinful seeds of a nursed wound, unforgiveness, bitterness, slanderous accusation, ill-will, hatred, and desire for another’s harm are planted and watered in the heart of man, the sin of Cain will always be the harvest which is reaped.

Our Savior calls us to love our enemies and to pray for their good. This does not mean that we pretend as though wrongs and hurts have not been done.

Rather, it means that we are called to plead the grace of God to absorb the guilt of those wrongs so that our fellow man can receive the same radically and entirely undeserved forgiveness which God has freely given to us.

By faith, we are called to dig up the roots of every unloving thought in our hearts as often as they grow, and to prayerfully cultivate a bountiful harvest of mercy, grace and love in their place.

Let us each ask Jesus to thoroughly weed the garden of our heart, exposing and uprooting every unloving, unforgiving, and hateful thought which we have sinfully allowed to grow. Let us turn to him now in prayer.

We invite you to privately confess your sins before the Lord now. — (A TIME OF SILENT CONFESSION)