The Pharisees in Jesus’ time had organized the Law of Moses into 613 distinct instructions. With that many, it could be difficult to keep track of why they were all necessary. But before there were that insanely many commandments, there were ten, to which the entirety of the Law boiled down to. These ten are so crucial that even we today, who are under a new covenant, still follow them as a beginner’s guide to righteousness.
Can we be moral, righteous people without having God at the center of our lives? According to the ten commandments, not a chance. In fact, the very first few among them instruct us to focus on and revere the Lord, before we even worry about any moral actions. Our God is one, and he is holier than anything we can imagine; so naturally, we should form habits of contemplation, reverence, and worship for him alone. Only then do the commandments tell us about social morality. We are to honor other people, our covenants with them, and what belongs to them, because the Lord himself loves them. We are to love kindness and justice, because the Lord is kind and just. Half about worshiping God, half about social morality—this is why Jesus taught that the two greatest commandments, which encapsulate all the rest, are to love God and love others.
Christianity has a rather unfortunate reputation of being fanatically focused first and foremost on morality. But we can’t teach right and wrong without first teaching the love of God! We act morally because we are called to righteousness, and we are called to righteousness because we love God, and we love the Almighty God who created us, sustains us, saves us, and showers us with blessings—because he loved us first. What a wonderful truth! How could we not live in righteousness in order to love our God in return?
