Text: Exodus 20:1-17 (Thou shalt not murder)
The first murder on planet earth was when Cain killed his brother Abel out of jealousy and the anger which comes with it.
Today we look at the 6th Commandment – You shall not murder. This commandment may not be the most frequently violated of all the commands, but when this one is disobeyed, more is broken than the law. From the beginning, human life has been sacred to God because we are made in His image.
God values the lifeHe gave us, but from the beginning human beings have sold it at a bargain price. Besides Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, Genesis records many other acts of violence. And the Bible records hundreds of murders. And they didn’t stop with Revelation. History records millions. We are a murderous people.
There is however more to the sixth commandment than a way of measuring how far the human race has fallen from the ideal. None of us is guilty of murder. Probably none of us has even been tempted by it. But that doesn’t mean we can breeze through this commandment as if it has nothing to say to us. As with all of these commandments from God, there is more than first meets the eye.
First I want to look at several things that are not prohibited by this commandment.
First of all, it is significant that the commandment God gave was not “Thou shalt not kill” but rather “Thou shalt not commit murder.”
The Hebrew word that is used here is very specific and refers to murder.
It’s obvious that God didn’t intend to prohibit all life-taking, because the penalty for murder under the law of Moses was death. So if this commandment meant that you could never take a person’s life, then you couldn’t have someone punished for murder. There is a definite distinction made in the Bible between killing which is lawful and killing which is unlawful. Lets look at some of these…
Justifiable homicide
The law of Moses said there were certain times when a person was justified in killing another person. Suppose, for example, someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night. You wake up and discover him, there is a struggle and the thief is killed. According to the law of Moses, that type of killing didn’t fall under the sixth commandment.
We read in Exodus 22:2 “If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed.”
War
The Bible is clear also that the same God who told the Hebrews not to murder often sent them into war and told them to kill. And nowhere in Scripture New Testament or Old, are soldiers told to give up their military careers in order to be faithful to God. I would assume, then, that there are at least occasions when a person would be justified in taking a life in times of war.
Capital punishment
The Old Testament not only permitted but required the death penalty for certain crimes.
This is the only law which is repeated in each and every one of the first five books of the Bible. God commanded the death penalty be given for murder, rape, kidnapping, and several other crimes.
When we look to the New Testament, when Jesus was on trial before Pilate, He never challenged the state’s right to execute criminals. Rather, Jesus acknowledged that right and told Pilate that his authority came from God (John 19:10).
In Romans 13:4, Paul makes it clear that the authority of the government to punish wrongdoers comes from God. “For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.”
Well, enough of what the sixth commandment does NOT say. Let’s talk about what it does say and, more importantly, why it says it.
God says, “You shall not murder.” What is the message or the principle that God is trying to get across to us in this commandment?
Basically, God is saying that human life is precious, it is sacred, and we ought to have the utmost respect for all human life.
First, because we are made in the image of God.
In every other act of creation, God said, “Let there be,” and it was so. “Let there be light.” “Let there be plants.” Let there be birds and fish.” God spoke and creation occurred.
But the creation of human life was different. God said, “Let us make man…” God didn’t just speak us into existence as he did everything else. No, he made us. We are the closest thing in all creation to God. We are the only part of creation made in the image of God.
I like the words of T. S. Eliot who said, “…There’s something in us, in all of us which isn’t just heredity, but something unique. Something we have been from eternity. Something… straight from God.”
Second, human life is valuable because of the price that was paid
I once visited a member of a congregation and found that he collected comics. What’s a comic worth? Well, I’m sure if you added up the material cost, it might be around a dollar. But if you’ve got a rare comic that everybody wants to buy, it might be worth several hundred dollars. You determine the value of something by what someone is willing to pay.
That concept is important, because it tells us exactly what a human life is worth. And God considered our lives so valuable that He was prepared to give the live of His earthborn Son so that we could live in eternity.
The sixth commandment is about more than just murder. Which is a shame because I was beginning to feel pretty self-righteous because I’ve never murdered anybody. Ultimately the sixth commandment has to do with the respect I have for people and the value I place on their lives.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ’You shall not murder,’ and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ’Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ’You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.” (Matthew 5:21-23)
I think what Jesus is saying is that when we get this angry with someone then deep down inside we’re thinking that this person doesn’t deserve to be alive. In that instant of anger, we’re saying, “I don’t want to have anything to do with this person….as far as I’m concerned my life would be better if his life would end.” And perhaps we have been at that point more often than we’d like to admit. If we’re not careful, we can live our lives motivated by anger and hatred.
But I would suggest that the principle of the sixth commandment even goes beyond that. It is a call to respect people and care about them.
That means that if we want to see the true value of human beings, we need to see them from God’s perspective. Because the only way to truly cherish the lives of other people is to see each and every person the way God sees them: made in his image, and worth more than the life of his only Son.
Let me give you an example of how we might do this – you might remember the story of Terry Schaivo. This is a quote from Wikipedia..
Theresa Marie Schindler “Terri” Schiavo was an American woman who suffered brain damage and became dependent on a feeding tube. She collapsed in her home on February 25, 1990, and experienced respiratory and cardiac arrest, resulting in extensive brain damage, a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS) and 15 years of institutionalization. In 1998, Michael Schiavo, her husband and guardian, petitioned the Pinellas County Circuit Court to remove her feeding tube. Robert and Mary Schindler, her parents, opposed this, arguing she was conscious. The court, after 7 years of deliberation determined that Schiavo would not wish to continue life-prolonging measures. She died at a Pinellas Park hospice on March 31, 2005, at the age of 41. Some have since maintained that her death constituted judicial murder.
It seems to me that not only physicians but the rest of us are smart enough to know the difference between protecting, enhancing, and empowering a human life with reasonable hope of recovery and merely prolonging the process of dying. Skill and technology that help our recoveries are admirable and ethical; the same skill and technology used to prolong our dying are unnecessary and ill-advised.
Maybe a key issue here is our common insensitivity which fails to see that what is best possible treatment for a person lacking higher brain function is not always the most treatment possible. The idea that an emotional observer’s faint hope of another’s recovery is better than peer-reviewed medical judgment under extensive court scrutiny over several years is simply irresponsible.
Death is sometimes an ally instead of an enemy. Perhaps death itself needs to be reconsidered by all of us. It is not an absolute evil. It is sometimes an instrumental good for those without reasonable hope of recovery. Sometimes the real evil lies in forcing someone to endure existence that is no longer really life.
However at the root of the Sixth Commandment is God’s concern for how we treat each other.
And any time we violate the dignity of a human being we are treating that person with contempt
Any time we permit our anger to seethe and boil without resolution, we devalue not on the relationship we share with that person, but also that person’s life.
Any time we dismiss someone out of prejudice, dislike or disrespect, we fall under the condemnation of the sixth commandment.
To Jesus, every human being is a brother and sister. And because we are members of the same family, the human race, we have a responsibility to each other. In Genesis, with the memory of his brother’s blood still fresh in his mind, God confronted Cain. “Where is your brother?”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain asked. God said to him, “The blood of your brother cries out to me from the ground.”
Yes, Cain, you are your brother’s keeper. And so are all of us.
The challenge of the sixth commandment is not simply to avoid the taking of human life, but to value the life that God gave … to treat it with dignity and the deepest respect.