The Watchman Radio Hour

The Ten Commandments are a Summary of God's Moral Law

(Deuteronomy 4:13)

The Westminster Assembly wrote in their Shorter Catechism this question - Where is the moral law summarily comprehended? The moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments. God's moral law is summed up in the ten commandments. Today, we are trying to remove the ten commandments from the public sector. We are trying to put God;s moral law under the rug so no one can see it. We have opted for moral neutrality. Peter Barnes writes in Love Rules, The Ten Commandments for the 21st Century, "The modern secular state wants people to be compassionate, tolerant, honest, and caring, but has great difficulty in defining these terms and motivating its subjects to embrace them. Law makes little sense and carries little real authority without a lawgiver....We mock God as lawgiver, but still hope that people will behave themselves...Ultimately, moral neutrality is no position. The western world is afflicted with increasing sin, but a decreasing sense of sin. We have returned to the creed of Rousseau, 'Whatever I feel is to be right is right. Whatever I feel to be wrong is wrong.' Such is the condition of humanity, without a revelation from God." (p. 6) In that same book, Andrew Clarke writes, "The place of the moral law in relation to the gospel has become one of the most controversial issues of the evangelical church today. The Ten Commandments are rarely asserted with confidence, and generally minimized with embarrassment. Their thorough and diverse application in the Scriptures is conspicuously absent in discipleship and worship, resulting in 'repentance' without content and authenticity...The end result is that less than 1 percent of church members can list the Ten Commandments." (Ibid p. 1) This was not the case with evangelicals of an earlier generation. Clarke goes on to write, "Previous generations of evangelicals taught their children to memorize the Ten Commandments before they turned attention to John 3:16. Why? Because they believed that any understanding of John 3:16 would be grossly deficient without a prior knowledge of the moral law." (Ibid p. 2) Yet, today's generation is trying its best to keep the ten commandments hidden from our children. Peter Barnes writes, "There is no doubt that, for the most part, the western world has discarded the notion of the need for obedience to God's law, as summarized in the Ten Commandments." (Ibid p. 5) However, the Bible has not changed. God's Law has not changed. Though men would deny that such a law exists, God's moral law hovers over the nations. The Ten Commandments are as valid today as ever. The Ten Commandments are as real and valid today as they were when God wrote them on two tablets of stone. No generation can do away with God's Law. They may try, but they will not succeed.

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