The Ten Commandments Episode 1 Overview

Relationship is the key value in the whole theme of the commandments, because God wants us to be fulfilled in life through relationships, both with Himself, and with one another. We find then that the first four commandments deal with our relationship with God, and that the next six deal with our relationships with one another. That is why the New Covenant had a promise that the law would be written in our hearts by The Holy Spirit, a person, who can indwell us and make alive the spirit of the law, and the standards of God's wisdom for our relationships. This can now be done on the powerful basis of love and grace, instead of legalism.

God has designed the Commandments as a sequence of steps where success in any one commandment leads to an understanding of the next. Obedience to the first commandment gives understanding of the second commandment, and in the same way, failure in say, the sixth commandment means a lack of understanding in the fifth. The fifth commandment says ‘Honour your father and your mother’, and the sixth says ‘You shall not kill’. So how are these related?

If we look at the personal relationships Involved, we see that commandment number five, honouring our parents, speaks about the very first relationship we experience as human beings, a relationships with authority. In this relationship we are being taught, in a very natural way, to trust another person for the needs in our life. In a perfect world, with perfect people this trust would grow and grow, but we don't live in a perfect world. Have you ever seen children get angry? That is because they’re frustrated at not getting what they want, even from parents that they trust and that loves them, and so we all fail in the fifth Commandment.

The reason that this relates to the sixth commandment is found in the statement that Jesus made in the sermon on the mount, when He said 'In the law it says thou shalt not kill, but I say unto you, be not angry with your brother without cause. Put in simple terms - anger kills. Anger kills relationships and it kills people. So by experiencing frustrations in not getting our own way as children in an imperfect world under the authority of imperfect parents, we carry this mistrust and independence into our lateral relationships and display the anger, moodiness or aggression, which kill relationships, and so we fail in the sixth Commandment. 

Here we see another Divine design. That is, that the growth pattern of the ten commandments is not like going up a stairway, it is a circular spiral that takes us all the way around to commandment number ten, and then leads us right onto commandment number one again. In a positive sense, that upward path is an upward spiral, and spiritual growth is taking place. This growth will always take place if a person is willing to honestly admit where they are failing and go back one step and correct the response to the previous commandment, and then leap forward in revelation and faith. And of course the downward path is in fact a downward spira.l 

The evidence of the circular nature of the progression of the commandments is seen graphically when we get to commandment number ten and find that the next progression is to commandment number one.
This can be explained by the fact that the nature of the problem in commandment number ten, which is the commandment against covetousness, is that of idolatry and discontent. Those persons who are not content with what they have, live their lives out of coveting what someone else has, and so, the source of their fulfilment is what others have. This is a form of idolatry and is called such in the Bible (Colossians. 3:5). And there we have the circle completed. The answer to this covetousness and idolatry of course, is found in commandment number one, where we acknowledge God alone as our fulfilment. This is why commandment number ten, and commandment number two (on either side of commandment number one), both deal with idolatry.

At any point of failure at some level of experience, we need to go back to the previous commandment, and let The Holy Spirit reveal truth to us in this way.. This also affords a most effective chart of diagnosis for the serious counsellor who wants to see a life transformed by the truth and power of The Holy Spirit