Does the Decalogue still oblige? Have the commandments been changed?
“Teacher, what must I do…?”
2052 ‘Teacher, what good thing must I do to obtain eternal life?’To the young man who asks him this question, Jesus responds first by invoking the need to recognize God as ‘the only Good’, as the Good par excellence and as the source of all good.Then Jesus declares to him: ‘If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.’And he quotes to his interlocutor the precepts that refer to love of neighbor: ‘You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.’Finally, Jesus summarizes these commandments in a positive way: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt 19:16-19).
2053 To this first response a second is added: ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven;then come and follow me’ (Mt 19, 21).This answer does not cancel the first one.Following Jesus Christ involves keeping the commandments.The Law is not abolished (cf Mt 5:17), but man is invited to find it in the Person of his Master, who is the one who gives him perfect plenitude.In the three synoptic gospels, the call of Jesus, addressed to the rich young man, to follow him in the obedience of the disciple, and in the observance of the precepts, is related to the call to poverty and chastity (cf Mt 19, 6-12. 21, 23-29).The evangelical counsels are inseparable from the commandments.
2054 Jesus collected the ten commandments, but manifested the power of the Spirit at work already in his letter.He preached ‘justice that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees’ (Mt 5, 20), as well as that of the pagans (cf Mt 5, 46-47).He developed all the requirements of the commandments: ‘you have heard that it was said to the ancestors: You shall not kill… Well, I say to you: Anyone who is angry with his brother will be liable before the court’ (Mt 5, 21-22).
2055 When asked the question: ‘what is the greatest commandment of the Law?'(Mt 22, 36), Jesus responds: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the greatest and the first commandment.The second is similar to this: You will love your neighbor as yourself.The entire Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’ (Mt 22, 37-40; cf Dt 6, 5; Lev 19, 18).The Decalogue must be interpreted in light of this double and unique commandment of charity, fullness of the Law:
In fact, the following: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and all the other precepts are summarized in this formula: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.Charity does not harm others.Charity is, therefore, the law in its fullness (Rom 13, 9-10).
2056 The word ‘Decalogue’ literally means ‘ten words’ (Ex 34, 28; Dt 4, 13; 10, 4).These ‘ten words’ God revealed to his people on the holy mountain.He wrote them ‘with his Finger’ (Ex 31, 18), unlike the other precepts written by Moses (cf Deut 31, 9.24).They constitute words of God in an eminent sense.They are transmitted in the books of Exodus (cf Ex 20, 1-17) and Deuteronomy (cf Dt 5, 6-22).Already in the Old Testament, the holy books speak of the ‘ten words’ (cf. for example, Hos 4, 2; Jr 7, 9; Ez 18, 5-9);but its full meaning will be revealed in the new Covenant in Jesus Christ.
2057 The Decalogue is understood above all when it is read in the context of the Exodus, which is God’s great liberating event at the center of the old Covenant.The ‘ten words’, whether formulated as negative precepts, prohibitions, or as positive commandments (such as ‘honour your father and mother’), indicate the conditions of a life freed from the slavery of sin.The Decalogue is a way of life:
If you love your God, if you follow his ways and keep his commandments, his precepts and his rules, you will live and multiply (Dt 30, 16).
This liberating force of the Decalogue appears, for example, in the commandment of Saturday rest, also intended for foreigners and slaves:
Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and that your God brought you out of there with a strong hand and a tense arm (Dt 5:15).
2058 The ‘ten words’ summarize and proclaim the law of God: ‘These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly, on the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, the cloud and the dense fog, with a powerful voice, and added nothing more.Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me’ (Dt 5, 22).That is why these two tables are called ‘““the Testimony””’ (Ex 25, 169, since they contain the clauses of the Covenant established between God and his people. These ‘tables of ““the Testimony””’ (Ex 31, 18; 32, 15; 34, 29) were to be deposited in the ‘ark’ (Ex 25, 16; 40, 1-2).
2059 The ‘ten words’ are pronounced by God within a theophany (‘the Lord spoke to you face to face on the mountain, in the midst of the fire’: Dt 5, 4).They belong to God’s revelation of himself and his glory.The gift of the commandments is the gift of God and his holy will.By making his will known, God reveals himself to his people.
2060 The gift of the commandments of the law is part of the Covenant sealed by God with his people.According to the book of Exodus, the revelation of the ‘ten words’ is granted between the proposition of the Covenant (cf Ex 19) and its ratification (cf Ex 24), after the people committed themselves to ‘do’ everything the Lord had said and to ‘obey’ him (Ex 24, 7).The Decalogue is not transmitted except after the remembrance of the Covenant (‘the Lord, our God, established an alliance with us at Horeb’: Dt 5, 2).
2061 The commandments receive their full significance within the Alliance.According to Scripture, man’s moral actions acquire all their meaning in and through the Covenant.The first of the ‘ten words’ remembers God’s first love for his people:
As there had been, in punishment for sin, a passage from the paradise of freedom to the servitude of this world, that is why the first phrase of the Decalogue, the first word of God’s commandments, refers to freedom: ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage’ (Ex 20, 2; Dt 5, 6) (Origen, hom. in Ex. 8, 1).
2062 The commandments themselves come second.They express the implications of belonging to God instituted by the Covenant.Moral existence is a response to the loving initiative of the Lord.It is recognition, homage to God and worship of thanksgiving.It is cooperation with the plan that God proposes in history.
2063 The alliance and dialogue between God and man are also confirmed by the fact that all obligations are stated in the first person (‘I am the Lord…’) and are directed to another subject (‘you’).In all of God’s commandments there is a singular personal pronoun that designates the recipient.At the same time as to all the people, God makes his will known to each one in particular:
The Lord prescribed love for God and taught justice towards his neighbor so that man would be neither unjust nor unworthy of God.Thus, through the Decalogue, God prepared man to be his friend and have one heart with his neighbor… The words of the Decalogue also persist among us (Christians).Far from being abolished, they have received amplification and development by the coming of the Lord in the flesh.(S. Irenaeus, haer. 4, 16, 3-4).
The Decalogue in the Church’s Tradition
2064 Faithful to Scripture and following the example of Jesus, the Tradition of the Church has recognized in the Decalogue a primordial importance and significance.
2065 Since St. Augustine, the ‘ten commandments’ occupy a predominant place in the catechesis of the future baptized and of the faithful.In the 15th century the custom was made of expressing the precepts of the Decalogue in rhymed formulas, easy to memorize, and positive.These formulas are still in use today.The catechisms of the Church have frequently expounded Christian morality following the order of the ‘ten commandments’.
2066 The division and numbering of the commandments has varied throughout history.The present catechism follows the division of the commandments established by St. Augustine and which has become traditional in the Catholic Church.It is also that of the Lutheran confessions.The Greek Fathers made a somewhat different division that is used in the Orthodox Churches and Reformed communities.
2067 The ten commandments state the demands of the love of God and neighbor.The first three refer more to the love of God and the other seven more to the love of neighbor.
As charity includes two precepts in which the Lord condenses all the law and the prophets…, so the ten precepts are divided into two tables: three are written on one table and seven on the other.(St. Augustine, serm. 33, 2, 2).
2068 The Council of Trent teaches that the ten commandments bind Christians and that the justified man is also obliged to observe them (cf DS 1569-1670).And the Second Vatican Council states that: ‘The bishops, as successors of the apostles, receive from the Lord… the mission of teaching all peoples and of preaching the Gospel to the whole world so that all men, through faith, baptism and the fulfillment of the commandments, may achieve salvation’ (LG 24).
The unity of the Decalogue
2069 The Decalogue forms an inseparable whole.Each of the ‘ten words’ refers to each of the others and to the whole;they condition each other.The two tables illuminate each other;They form an organic unit.To transgress one commandment is to break all the others (cf James 2, 10-11).You cannot honor another without blessing God your Creator.One could not worship God without loving all men, who are his creatures.The Decalogue unifies the theological life and the social life of man.
The Decalogue and the natural law
2070 The ten commandments belong to the revelation of God.They teach us at the same time the true humanity of man.They highlight the essential duties and, therefore indirectly, the fundamental rights, inherent to the nature of the human person.The Decalogue contains a privileged expression of ‘natural law’:
From the beginning, God had placed the precepts of natural law in the hearts of men.At first he was content to remind them.This was the Decalogue.(St. Irenaeus, haer. 4, 15, 1).
2071 Although accessible to reason alone, the precepts of the Decalogue have been revealed.To achieve complete and certain knowledge of the demands of natural law, sinful humanity needed this revelation:
In the state of sin, a full explanation of the commandments of the Decalogue became necessary because of the darkening of the light of reason and the deviation of the will.(S. Buenaventura, sent. 4, 37, 1, 3).
We know the commandments of God’s law through the divine revelation that is proposed to us in the Church, and through the voice of moral conscience.
The obligation of the Decalogue
2072 The ten commandments, by expressing the fundamental duties of man towards God and towards his neighbor, reveal in their primordial content serious obligations.They are basically immutable and their obligation is valid always and everywhere.No one could dispense with them.The ten commandments are engraved by God in the heart of human beings.
2073 Obedience to the commandments also implies obligations whose matter is, in itself, light.Thus, verbal abuse is prohibited by the Fifth Commandment, but it could only be a serious offense due to the circumstances or the intention of the person who utters it.
“Without me you can do nothing”
2074 Jesus says: ‘I am the vine;you the branches.He who abides in me as I remain in him, he bears much fruit;because without me you can do nothing’ (Jn 15, 5).The fruit evoked in these words is the holiness of a life made fruitful by union with Christ.When we believe in Jesus Christ, participate in his mysteries and keep his commandments, the Savior himself loves in us his Father and his brothers, our Father and our brothers.His person becomes, through the work of the Spirit, the living and interior norm of our actions.’This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you’ (Jn 15:12).
In brief
- 2075 . ‘What good must I do to obtain eternal life?’- ‘If you want to enter life, keep the commandments’ (Mt 19, 16-17).
2076 By his way of acting and by his preaching, Jesus has attested to the perennial value of the Decalogue.
2077 The gift of the Decalogue was granted within the framework of the alliance established by God with his people.God’s commandments receive their true meaning in and through this Covenant.
2078 Faithful to Scripture and following the example of Jesus, the Tradition of the Church has recognized in the Decalogue a primordial importance and significance.
2079 The Decalogue forms an organic unity in which each ‘word’ or ‘commandment’ refers to the entire set.To transgress a commandment is to break the entire law (cf James 2, 10-11).
2080 The Decalogue contains a privileged expression of natural law.We know it through divine revelation and human reason.
2081 The ten commandments, in their fundamental content, state serious obligations.However, obedience to these precepts also implies obligations whose subject matter is, in itself, light.
2082 God makes possible by his grace what he commands.
Source: Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Three, Section Two.
