The sixth commandment says, “You shall not murder.” We are not to kill one another. We are not to cut off one another’s life. We are not to take life away from each other. Instead, we are to do things that further one another’s life. We should be giving life to one another, instead of taking it away.
Unfortunately, it is a common thing among those who believe in Jesus to experience a taking-away of life instead of a giving of life, in our relationships with each other. But, the good news is that the Holy Spirit is setting us free from doing that to each other. When we read in many of the ten commandments, “You shall not,” we need to understand that in the New Testament relationship with God, this comes to mean, “You are not going to do these things.” We are free from these things! As the Word and image of God is formed within us by the work of the Spirit of Truth, we are set free from hurting one another. Instead, the love and wisdom of God causes us to help one another. The life of Jesus working within us sets us free from all the various tendencies to hurt other people. This needs to be our faith. This needs to be our firm hope. God’s life has and will set us free, to walk in the good things, and to do the good things.
The sixth commandment is based on the fifth. The fifth commandment is about honoring one another -- about finding the precious value of each person. Each person was created in God’s image, and for the specific purpose of revealing and living out some facet of God’s being. God has a plan and a purpose for their existence! They have a life to live that God created them for. For us to cut off their life, and to kill them not only hurts them, but cuts off the works and purposes of God. God intended them to live, and we decide they shouldn’t. How offensive to God! How absolutely offensive.
Instead of killing them, we need to be encouraging them in that image of God that they are. We need to encourage them in living that life that God has given them. We need to encourage them to be free from us and our opinions, and free from all people, and free from all the organizations and societal things that would try to shape them into something different than what God created them to be! When they receive the redemption that God gave them, and that image of God that they were created for grows and is formed in its full, living, healthful form, then they are being what they were created to be. But, the old nature of living separates from God’s life, and works to cut short that glory and image of God. Similarly, the old nature working in other people, tends to influence and work to make them conformed into some other image other than what they are.
But, the cross of Jesus, the dying of Jesus working inside of each and all who believe, works to set us free from this tendency to be warped in our image, and to free us from warping other people into what we think they should be.
The life of God sets us free from trying to warp other people into our image, into some image we have in our hearts and minds. We are set free, in order to help others be free also. They are set free to live the divine nature, and the divine purpose that they were created for.
This is the essence of the sixth commandment. We are to help one another live that life they were created for, and be what they were created to be, and not hurt or hinder that life of theirs. We are to help them grow into that full image and glory of God -- that unique word and revelation that they are. We are not to harm that image. We are not to redirect them to something else. We are not to try to form them into the image of some idol that we have within our own hearts. We are to be free ourselves, and set them free to be what the Spirit and Word of God forms within them.
There are many ways that we tend to hurt people, in such a way that hinders them from the image of God.
The first and most obvious way of hurting another person in this manner is to literally kill them, so that their body dies. Clearly, then, they cannot live out the image of God, and the purpose for what they were created -- at least, not until the resurrection. What a horrible thing to do to a person -- kill them so that they cannot live the life that God gave them. God gave them that life -- how dare we take it away. God created them to be something -- how dare we say that they cannot be that thing! We have no right!
I would say that a large number of people who literally murder would have never dreamed that they could have done it. But the anger grew in them to a point where they were mad -- crazy -- not in their right mind. Anger just took them over.
One of the nicest and kindest people I have ever gotten to know was a murderer. In fact, I met him in a high security prison, which he was in for murder. I never asked his story, but he did volunteer that he grew up in a good family, where his mother loved him very much. They would pray together nightly, if I remember correctly. His mother was a believer. I do not know anything about his father, however, since he never mentioned him. My heart ached for him. I do not know how he fell into murder, but my guess is that anger and upset about something toward someone soared to uncontrollable heights one day. How sad. Thankfully, he had found the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, and was a very loving and faith-filled believer in that prison.
Now, literal murder is the extreme. But there are numerous ways that we do the same thing, in a less extreme manner.
For example, an inappropriate word of anger to a growing child can hurt deeply, and leave a mar in their heart, and change the course of their life. It might cause them to draw back, and become unhealthfully shy. Or it might cause them to be unhealthfully angry. Or depressed. Or, it might just be a little hurt. Little hurts, however, can build up over time. It can change a child’s nature. A child that might have grown up to be a kind and respectful and profitable human being, may have the course of their life changed so that they become a drug addict, or thief, or a child abuser, or a murderer. Or, perhaps they will just be extraordinarily shy, and never accomplish what they might have otherwise. In any case, that mean word to the growing child can mar them for life.
Similarly, an unkind word and anger and upset and disrespect toward a spouse might change the course of their marital relationship. It might commence a course -- if the life of God does not heal and re-direct that hurt into forgiveness and redemption -- that ends up killing that relationship. How sad.
This is why Jesus taught that unrighteous and unholy anger, and hatred, and mean and harmful words, are the equivalent of murder (Matthew 5:21-22).
There are other reasons that people murder, besides anger. Sometime people “get in the way,” in some manner. Perhaps the other person might get them in trouble, because they know something about them. Or perhaps the other person is married to the one that they would like to be married to. In these kinds of situations, someone may be just getting in the way of their plans. So they plan a cold-blooded murder.
This may not be anger, but it is hatred. Hating who they are. Hating the image of God that they are. Planning harm against them. Or just being mean to them. Or giving them the silent treatment. These are also murder in the heart, and coming out in words and behavior. It works to harm the other person. It works to harm or kill relationships, also.
Here is yet another common way in which we murder. It is also cold-blooded murder. It comes out as “ministry.” It is related to the idea contained in the verse, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (II Corinthians 3:6). In the verses that follow this one, Paul calls the ministry of the Old Testament law “the ministry of death,” as well as “the ministry of condemnation.” He contrast the ministry of life with the ministry of death. He contrasts the ministry of righteousness with the ministry of condemnation. He contrasts the ministry of the Spirit with the ministry of the letter.
Sometimes we kill with the letter of the Word of God, apart from the working of the Holy Spirit. It is not that there is something wrong with the letter. Paul is not telling us to forget the Bible, and just stick with what the Holy Spirit says. Rather the knowledge of right and wrong, even the knowledge of the very Word of God, apart from the life and light and power of the Holy Spirit, leads to condemnation, and death. “The letter” is just the knowledge of the Bible apart from the light of the Holy Spirit.
And, many times, people “minister” words that just come out of the human mind, with human ambition, human understanding, human explanation of what the verses of the Bible mean -- apart from the light and working of the Holy Spirit. This is the ministry of the letter. This kind of ministry just makes us aware of our failure, weakness, and inability. This is the ministry of condemnation. This condemnation ends up causing people to draw back from God, and not fellowship with Him, and not receive the righteous life that God offers -- it is in this sense that this ministry kills. It cuts people off from God, instead of causing them to continue to stay in His life. This is the ministry of death. The ministry of the Holy Spirit, in contrast, makes us aware of the righteousness of God, and that He has supplied that righteousness to be our very life. It makes us aware of “what manner of man” we are (James 1:24). It makes us aware that we are righteous people, born of God, partaking of the righteous nature of God. It makes us aware of the life and goodness and power of God. It makes us aware that God is raising us up into all that He is. It makes us aware of the good life that is in us -- both in general, as well as in all the specific good things that he wants us to do by the strength and wisdom He supplies. It makes us aware that we are the people of God, filled with the Holy Spirit. If we need to repent of something, it makes us aware of the fear of God within us, and that the power and life of God will help us and set us free from that thing. The ministry of the Spirit not only makes us aware of all these things, but it also imparts to us the power and nature to grow into and do all of the wonderful attributes and works that He makes us aware of. It truly gives life -- the life of God within our being.
Really, what ends up happening, when the ministry of death is occurring, is that people end up conforming other people to their concept of what the letter is saying, instead of conforming them to the image of Jesus Christ. They conform them to the imagination of their own hearts, instead of to the righteousness and life and love of God. This ends up warping them. It ends up marring the image of God within them. It ends up cutting them off from the life they are supposed to be living, instead of helping them to grow in that life.
In denominational churches, this is the rule, rather that the exception. Church variety X ends up creating a bunch of people who are variety X types. They hold those doctrines, worship in those ways, sing and preach in those ways, etc. They take on the image of variety X, instead of the image of Jesus Christ, and that unique revelation that they are.
Instead of this, we need to help take other people into the heavenly realm -- teaching them to know Jesus, how to full of the Holy Spirit, how to be lead by and taught by God. Then they walk in the freedom of the divine nature.
Then, each of us, when we see each other, and get together to help one another grow, shares those nourishing thoughts, and revelations, and life-giving Words that God gave us. Then what the Scripture says happens: “Speaking the truth [to each other] in love, we are to grow up into Him who is the head, even Christ, in all things. From whom [Christ] the whole body, logically-placed together and connected together, by that which every joint [every believer] supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the increase of the body for the building up of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16). Every part nourishes the other parts by the flow of that Word, that image, that glory, that he or she is. This all flows from the head, Christ.
So, instead of killing another person, by ministering death to them, we instead minister life to them. We help them, by the divine nature working within and through us, to grow into the image and revelation and reflection of God that they are.
Life instead of death -- this is the sixth commandment.
Letting people live their life, not our concept of what we think they should be -- this is the sixth commandment.
Indeed, instead of killing others, we need to die for them. This is yet another facet of the sixth commandment. “We know love in this, that He laid down His life for us. So, we too should lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters” (I John 3:16). We die to how we would tend naturally react to and behave toward one another, and instead live toward them what God is saying and doing. This is to lay down our life for them.
I may want to watch a baseball game, but the Spirit and love of God may be making me aware that my wife needs to talk right now. I lay down my life as I pray, and find the life and flow of the Holy Spirit, to become aware of what He is doing. There is either what I want (to enjoy baseball at that moment), or what the love and flow of God is doing (turn off the TV to fellowship with my beloved wife). As the Spirit sets me free from my own desires in that moment, I lay down my life, die to what my soul had planned and longs for, and find grace and power to have a discussion with my spouse in the joy of the Holy Spirit.
In the same way, when one of my children says something in a certain way, for example, my natural reaction may be one of selfish anger. I lay down my life when I turn to the Holy Spirit, and find what His reactions are in that moment. The love of God will direct us at moments like these. The Spirit of God will set us free, allow us to lay down our own life, and find out how the parental (our Father is the best parent there is, and He is that kind of parent within and through us) love of God is moving and reacting toward our children at moments like these.
There are innumerable examples that could be given. But, the bottom line is that when the Spirit of God enables us to die, and lay down our lives, lay down our reactions, lay down our desires, lay down our plans, and lay down our ideas of what other people should do and be, He then protects us from marring and hurting and killing the other person either with “the law” of our own fleshly knowledge of right and wrong, or with our reactions. He enables us to love the other person, and to do good to them instead. We lay down our life that would have “killed” them with either anger, or with the ministry of death, and instead take up the life that God is living toward them at that moment. God knows how to love everyone in every moment, and when we lay down our own lives, God’s love can bless and help those around us.
This applies not only to big and important situations, but in all the little situations of everyday life. God will set us free at home, at work, at school, and in every moment, so that we can show the face of God to people instead of our own selves. Sometimes, it is may be just how we look at a person. There have been many times where I feel uncomfortable toward another person (for many different reasons), and may be inclined to just avoid looking at them and making eye contact with them. I may be tempted even to just avoid them altogether. But, many has been the time when the Holy Spirit moves within me to redirect my feelings and actions, as though to say, “No, don’t avoid eye contact, or act uncomfortable toward them. Look at them, and let friendship and kindness and caring for them show in your eyes and facial expression.” Even in these types of simple, little ways we can lay down our lives for one another.
So we die, so that others can live (II Corinthians 4:12). Jesus laid down His life for us, so that we can live. As we do this same thing for others, we are being “conformed to His image.” This is the essence of the sixth commandment.
Let’s see what the Holy Spirit has for us in the Seventh Commandment….