You Shall Not Murder
Church, don’t murder.
I want to make sure that everyone just heard the sixth commandment that Marshall read — could you do me a favor and raise your hand if you heard the commandment, “You shall not murder”?
Now my guess is that nobody is surprised by this commandment. There’s nothing shocking here. The sixth commandment might even be the most popular of all the commandments.
Some of y’all know Stephen Colbert, the comedian, used to have this satirical news show called “The Colbert Report.” I used to watch it back in college, and one season he did this segment called “Better Know a District” where he would go around the country and interview different congressmen, and in one interview he was talking with a congressman from the 8th district of Georgia who was a vocal advocate of having the Ten Commandments on display in Congress. The congressman had co-sponsored a bill to have the Ten Commandments posted in the Hall of the House of Representatives and in the Chamber of the Senate, and when Colbert asked him why he sponsored the bill, he went on to explain how important the Ten Commandments are to America, and he said he feared that if we forget the Ten Commandments, our nation could lose its way — and then Colbert says back to him: “Can you name the Ten Commandments?” Colbert is super witty, and the congressman is completely stumped. He doesn’t know the Ten Commandments, but he does get at least one — can you guess which one that is?
“Don’t murder.”
Everybody knows don’t murder. I think it’s the most popular commandment. We might also think it’s the easiest commandment — it’s not one we tend to worry about. But this morning I would like for us to slow down and think deeply about this. In this moment, more than ever before, we want to understand the will of God in the sixth commandment. And so I’d like to pray again toward that end.
Father, we confess that we need you to teach us! In your mercy, we humble ourselves, and we ask that you would send the Helper and teach us. In Jesus’s name, amen.
Okay, so when it comes to the plan for this sermon, I mainly just want us to look at the words here. In the English there are four words: “You shall not murder.” But in the Hebrew it’s just two words, literally, “no murder.”
And we get the No. It means Don’t do it. Just don’t. No. But what does this word “murder” mean? That’s the first thing we need to establish.
What Does It Mean to Murder?
Well, when it comes to the Hebrew word translated “murder” in verse 13 there’s actually not an exact correlation in English. In fact, in the old King James Version, the Hebrew word is translated “kill” — “Thou shalt not kill” — that’s how I first learned this commandment, but for us in English, we usually think differently about the words “kill” and “murder.”
And I’m going to try to explain how we do this: Kill is a broader category, and murder is a narrower one.
For example, in James and the Giant Peach, his parents were killed by a rhinoceros that escaped from the London Zoo. But in Shakespeare’s MacBeth, MacBeth murdered King Duncan.
Now we could also say that MacBeth killed Duncan, but it’s more specific to say murder in that case — and we would never say that the rhino murdered James’s parents.
We use “kill” and “murder” to mean different thing — “kill” is broad, “murder” is narrow — and when it comes to the Hebrew word in verse 13, it’s sort of in between those. The Hebrew word means something narrower than our word “kill” but broader than our word “murder.”
For a definition, basically, the Hebrew word for “murder” refers to the ending of life that is unlawful or forbidden, whether it is intentional or accidental.
“Unlawful and Forbidden”
Let’s look at the first part: “the ending of life that is unlawful or forbidden.” This is where the meaning is narrower than kill. The commandment is not to simply not kill in any kind of way whatsoever, and we know that because already, way before we get to Exodus 20, God has said that humans who murder other humans require the death penalty. This is way back in Genesis 9:5. God says,
From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
This is capital punishment established in Genesis 9, and we see this all throughout rest of the Pentateuch. So we know God does not prohibit every kind of ending of life whatsoever — there are scenarios where there is the ending of life for the sake of public justice, or lawful war, or necessary defense, and the Ten Commandments is not talking about that.
Here in the Ten Commandments, “murder” is referring to the ending of life that is unlawful and forbidden.
“Whether Intentional or Accidental”
But it doesn’t matter “whether it’s intentional or accidental.” There is such a thing as the ending of life that is unlawful but also accidental. And examples help, so let me give you one — and we actually have a good one in Deuteronomy 19.
Say you and your neighbor go into the forest to chop some wood, and all of a sudden, as you’re swinging the axe, the head of your axe flies off and hits your neighbor in the head and he dies — what do we call that?
Well, the Hebrew word in Deuteronomy 19 is the same word in Exodus 20. In that case, there has been a murder — even though it was by accident. That neighbor should not have died — it was unlawful and forbidden, and even though it was accidental. The ending of life in that case is considered murder in the Bible. And it’s prohibited.
And for the sake of clarity, in English, as a way to differentiate this kind of accidental murder, it has its own separate word: manslaughter.
In the American judicial system, manslaughter is third-degree murder. It is still wrong and punishable, but it’s not the same kind of wrong as first-degree murder which is unlawful, intentional, and pre-meditated. And then even within manslaughter, there are categories of voluntary and involuntary, and there are very precise conditions for how we understand the differences. How we think about these things is complex, and for what it’s worth, it’s all derived from the Bible — because what the Bible says makes sense. (The sophistication of this ancient book is amazing! It is the wisdom of God.)
So the first thing here that we’re trying to establish is: what is this word “murder” in the Ten Commandments? What is God telling us not to do?
He is saying: Do not end the life of someone unlawfully, even if by accident.
What Is Life?
And with that we need to back up a little bit more and talk about the meaning of life. If murder is most basically the ending of life — then what exactly is life?
This has to be foundational, right?, and we probably assume we know what life is, but let’s slow down for a minute.
What is life? What’s the reality behind our being alive?
The most basic fact is that God gives life. None of us choose to be made. God did that. That’s what it means that he is the Creator. Human life is God’s idea, and we see right away in the Bible that sin is mainly an attack on human life. God warned Adam in the Garden that if he sins against God, on the day you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “You shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17) — and that’s the first time we see this concept of death. Death is the removal of life, it’s the antithesis of life — and by Genesis 3, because of Adam’s sin, death became the reality.
And death, of course, has physical and spiritual dimensions. Physically, human life can cease to function. Spiritually, our deadness means we are separated from fellowship with God. We can understand the problem of death in the Bible — death is the great curse of sin.
And when you think about it, this is precisely what God’s salvation remedies. God’s whole design for redemption is to restore life — first there is the spiritual life that begins now and lasts forever, and then also there is physical life, in the resurrection. God’s people will physically live with him in glorified bodies in a new glorified world. It’s no wonder then why we see Jesus use the phrase “eternal life” over and over again — “For God so love the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
The gospel is a counter-attack on death, which is an attack on life. One way to say it is that the gospel is in defense of true life, abundant life, everlasting life. Which is God’s idea. Not ours. God is the one who gives life.
The Wonder of Being Alive
We are, in this moment, physically alive — [y’all want to take a deep breath? Maybe pinch yourself.] You are alive right now. Here right now. You are an active participant in the reality of this world right now — because God made you. God made you alive.
Years ago I remember reading this story about a man who was a committed atheist, but then after the birth of his first child, as he would sit and hold her, he was overcome with the fact of her life. He would hold her, this living person, and he knew she was here not because she chose to be, but because of mom and dad, but then not really. Not just that.
Mom and dad were part of her being alive, but they didn’t “make” her. They didn’t design her, or create her. And as this man held his daughter and just looked at her face, he began to study her face, and he said that it was the intricacy of her ears that made it click. He looked at her ears and concluded, there has to be a God, and this God is the Creator of life — and then you open the Bible and you meet this God. God is the Author of life.
God is in the life business, you could say. And it’s one thing to acknowledge that all life comes from God — but then also, we take another step and realize that life, which comes from God, has a purpose — and that purpose is shown at very beginning in Genesis. It is so that man would image God. Every human carries in themselves the image of God. We are not God, but we are a reflection of God. And God made us for that purpose of imaging. We are the display of his majesty. We are his artwork. And that is what affords us the wondrous dignity we have as men and women.
Better Than a Sunrise
Y’all know I really enjoy sunrises. I talk about them all the time. Five days a week the kids and I drive east, early in the morning, and we’re always checking out the sun: What kind of sunrise do we have today? We’re trying to be sunrise connoisseurs. The other day Elizabeth named this one sunrise Lemon Sky — because it was more of a yellow color than an orange, and it kind of radiated this pastel fade into the blue background — and she said it’s lemon sky. Which is just perfect.
And the more I think about these things, I want to get this clear in my own heart, and clear with you, that as amazing as that sunrise is, what is more amazing is the human being sitting beside me also looking at that sunrise.
We can marvel at the sky, and then here, also, even better, this is a human life that has been created by God. She carries in her person the fingerprints of his design. She has been fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together in her mother’s womb: 7 octillion atoms converging in one person, with a heart that started beating at 3 weeks gestation, and that beat an average of 54 million times before her birth, and then afterwards that same heart is now beating and is set to beat 3.2 billion times in her lifetime; her nose has the capacity to recognize a trillion different scents; her eyes can distinguish up to 10 million different colors at one time; she has enough blood vessels inside of her to stretch around the equator of our planet four times; and if we could unravel her DNA it would reach about 10 billion miles, which is roughly the distance from Earth to Pluto and back.
All of that wonder is right here, beside me, looking at the sunrise, and that’s just the life of the body. She also has a soul, which is bigger than the universe, because her soul is eternal. God has put eternity into man’s heart. Which means, this human life beside me feels the world around her. She steps into every space of God’s world as a living part of it, breathing the air around her, thinking thoughts and speaking words. She has hopes and fears, likes and dislikes. She has dreams and ambitions and values. There are things she delights in, and hard things she wants to avoid — but hard things she is willing to endure for the sake of what she loves, because love is the greatest of all her capacities, because she was made to love God and to know his love, this creature of God, this person who reflects the majesty of God. She will make 35,000 choices a day for the rest of her life, and they are choices God has ordained to effect things. God has given her that kind of agency. Because she is alive! She bears the image of God, and when I look at her face, I see glory, because God is the Author of her life, and she is human. She is a human life. And I know that in God’s sight, she is precious — just like every human to ever live on the face of this earth.
Every human life is from God and for God, and therefore every human life is precious to God. You shall not murder.
Do we see where this is coming from?
This sixth commandment is about our horizontal relationships but it’s really about God.
Respect Human Life
This negative commandment, You shall not murder, if we were to say it in the positive, it simply means to honor life. The sixth commandment compels us to respect human life — which is from God and for God.
And when we understand this, when we obey the sixth commandment as a respecting of life, the application of our obedience expands into so many things. In fact, if we think about all the historical, social problems of humanity, it’s fundamentally due to the failure of respecting human life. The whole brokenness of our world could be summed up as breaking of the sixth commandment.
And think about it: all good human legislation has most basically been to stand against that. All good laws most basically share the one goal of respecting human life — and that goes for everything from
speed limits in your neighborhood to
regulations by the FDA to
the safety rehearsals that are mandatory every time you get on an airplane.
What all of these have in common is that your life matters and it is worthy of protection.
Protecting life is necessary if you respect life … and although there are good laws that do this, there are also bad laws that don’t do this, or no laws at all that leave humans vulnerable and helpless.
The history of this country is littered with such bad laws or lack of laws, and when such an opening for injustice is allowed, murderers will flood into it. For at least 200 years in our country those murderers were racist factions who murdered thousands of African Americans in addition to subjecting them to all kinds of cruelty through race-based slavery and Jim Crow. In the present-day those murderers are abortionists, who since 1973 have murdered over 62 million human lives. And in most of these cases there has not been (and is not) retribution for these murders because they have been wrongfully not considered crimes. This is a moral outrage against our nation.
We could even say that the 20th century, overall, was characterized by the most atrocious disregard of human life in the history of the world. Even the most ancient pagan cultures never enabled the kind of horrors that were done at the hands of the most ‘modern people’ in the 1900s, from lynchings to gas chambers to abortion. Jesus says in John 8 that Satan has been a murderer from the beginning, and Satan has seemed to have his way in our recent history (see John 8:39–47).
How Do You Respect Life?
The sixth commandment is “You shall not murder” — which means, in the positive, respect human life. And there’s a lot we could explore at the macro level, but I want to close with some personal application. How should we obey this commandment? The Ten Commandments are moral demands on me — so then what does this mean?
And most of us hear Exodus 20, verse 13, and we assume we’re good. In the narrow sense of this commandment, we don’t think much about it. But we should think more about the broader sense of this commandment. The question is, in obedience to the sixth commandment, how do we respect human life?
Three things:
Employ the doctrine of carefulness.
This doctrine of carefulness is one that I’m getting from the theologian John Frame. It’s implied in the sixth commandment, but explained more in Old Testament case law. Basically, if murder can be accidental then we should take all necessary precautions to prevent such accidents. For example, take the two neighbors chopping wood together in Deuteronomy 19.
The one guy’s axehead flies off and he manslaughters the other guy. Now although it was an accident, the guy should have made sure his axehead was secure before he started swinging it. The doctrine of carefulness says to check your axe … or buckle your seatbelt … or don’t text and drive … or beware of any kind of foolish risk that doesn’t respect the preciousness of human life.
And there are all kinds of implications here, including things like how much sleep you get or even things like your diet. If all you do is drink beer and eat cake, that’s a sixth commandment problem. Jesus make a connection between the sixth commandment and anger in Matthew, Chapter 5. He says:
You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. …
And Jesus is not saying here that anger is murder, he’s saying that anger is the power keg from which murder occurs, and if you don’t deal with your anger, you show a disrespect for human life — because anger is on the continuum of murder, and if you persist in your anger, you are increasing your likelihood to murder. That’s why Jesus goes on to talk about not insulting your brother, and to always hasten reconciliation. It is the doctrine of carefulness.
Respecting human life means caring for human life, for your life and others, and that care requires a carefulness. So in obedience to the sixth commandment, employ the doctrine of carefulness. [Update: this is especially relevant for social distancing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.]
See other people for who they are.
Respecting human life is going to change the way you look at other people. It means you can’t write anybody off, because every person you encounter is a human life created by God and they are worthy of honor. And we should see everyone that way, from our least favorite politician on TV, to the guy holding a cardboard sign by the stoplight, to the people sitting in here beside you right now, who in a few minutes are going to be dismissed and we’re all going to stand up and move around, and this is a space full of wonder, full of human life, and oh that we would see one another as who we truly are! C. S. Lewis says it best in The Weight of Glory,
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. […] Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
Seeing people as the wonder they are as a human life is respecting life.
Be cheerful in spirit.
Last week, we heard Pastor David Mathis read from the Westminster Larger Catechism, which has a great exposition on each of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism basically gives a comprehensive explanation of what obedience to each commandments looks like, and for each commandment it describes both the duties to practice and sins to avoid. And in question 135 we find the explanation of our duties related to obeying the sixth commandment, and embedded in that list is this phrase “cheerfulness of spirit.”
The catechism teaches that obedience to the sixth commandment obliges us to be cheerful — which, I think, is amazing, and I understand how they get this:
If we’re going to really respect human life, we should be grateful for human life. And if we’re grateful — if we’re mainly thankful! — it means that we don’t perpetuate a kind of dismal, gloomy, sullen character … because by God you are alive. You are a human life. And even if everything around you feels like it’s falling apart, I want you to know that there is more glory in the fact of your existence than you could ever imagine. You are a human life created by God and for God, and it doesn’t matter how hard things are — listen! — it doesn’t matter how hard things are, it is good to be alive.
You are a survivor. Right now, in this moment, you are here, you are alive. Your heart is beating. Your mind is thinking. Your emotions are felt. We are alive. And I don’t deserve to be alive. It is because of God. He made me. He has kept me. The sheer fact of my human life is enough that I should cheerful. We should be cheerful! But there’s even more if you trust in Jesus. If you trust in Jesus, if you are united to him by faith, you are alive right now and you will never die. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believe in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26).
How much more then are we as Christians to be cheerful? We are doubly alive, and it is life that will last forever.
You shall not murder. Respect life. Give God thanks.
That’s what we do at this Table.
The Table
We remember at this Table that the reason we live is because Jesus died for us. Jesus suffered the wrath of God that we deserved. By his blood, Jesus paid our debt we could not afford. He was for us crucified, dead, and buried, and then on the third day he was raised. And in his resurrection life, he given us life that will never end, if you believe him.
If you trust in Jesus, we invite you to eat and drink with us in cheerfulness of spirit. Let us give him thanks!
