Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Ten Commandments Minus One

It was my intention to talk some more about faith today. But instead, I'm going to talk about something else. As I mentioned very briefly, faith without works is dead. So what are works? This is important to determine before we can decide anything else.

Works means two things. The first is doing what God wants us to do, such as telling others about Jesus and such. The second is simply not sinning. So here's where ther question comes up: what does it mean to sin?

Sin is determined by the Law. The Law states what is sin, and the most commonly known part of the law is the Ten Commandments. Here's a list of the Ten Commandments (found in Exodus 20)

1 You will have no gods before The God

2 You will not have any idols (i.e. things that you place before God)

3 You will not misuse the name of God

4 Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy

5 Honor your parents

6 Don't murder

7 Don't adulterate

8 Don't steal

9 Don't lie

10 Don't covet

Which one is hardest to keep? I would say number 2. It's hard to focus more on God than on anything else. Which one is kept the least often? This one, interestingly enough, is also the easiest to keep. It's number 4.

What is the Sabbath? The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week (Saturday), which is intended by God to be a holy day. On the Sabbath, we are supposed to do no unnecessary work and spend our time worshipping God. How often do we do this? The not working part is easy--plenty of people manage to just do nothing on Saturday. However, we don't do the keeping-holy part of it.

The Law shows us what sin is and isn't (I'm not even talking about the complexities of sacrifice and the Feasts--just the Ten Commandents). If the Law says to do something, then not doing it is a sin, and vice-versa. The Law says to keep the Sabbath. So why don't we?

Goodbye, valiant reader,
Mitchell

Note: I have a new label for my posts. Important. This is for things that simply need to be said, regardless of their depth.