The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Philip H. during the 2009-2010 League.
Mission: Research on the Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments have impacted our world in many different ways. Even those who aren’t Christians will agree that the Ten Commandments are good because they are foundational for what is considered to be “moral behavior." For Christians, however, the commands serve a much greater purpose then to act as a moral guide. Most importantly, the commandments highlight our own inability to please God and our utter need for a savior outside of ourselves. In addition, the commandments restrain evil and are one of the ways through which Christians can show their love for God by their obedience in following the commands He gave us.
In Exodus 20, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments that the Jewish people must obey in order to maintain their covenant. The most important purpose of these Commandments was to set a standard so high that the Jews would realize that they cannot fulfill the law in their current sinful state and must rely on a source outside of themselves to keep their covenant with God. Every single person is guilty of failing to meet the standard that God has laid out in the moral law. While you may not have actually murdered a person you are still responsible for breaking the 6th command when you think evil of another person or try to get back at them. Jesus made it clear that murder is not merely the physical act of ending a life, it can be a multitude of behaviors, thoughts, or actions that hurt others. Our inability to follow the laws that God has commanded us to is scripturally verified when the Bible says in James 2:10 that, "whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." Every time we violate one of the commands of the law, we violate the full law itself. Indeed, St. Augustine sums up the purpose of the law accurately when he said, “Through the Law, God opens man's eyes so that he sees his helplessness and by faith takes refuge to His mercy and is healed. The Law was given in order that we might seek grace." The law is a wonderful thing because it shows us our desperate need for the grace of God.
The Ten Commandments, however, are not only an indicator of our own insufficiency. The world benefits from the Ten Commandments because they restrain evil. Those who honestly try to abide by the commandments will not go on a shooting spree at a mall and massacre dozens of people. If people truly desire to follow the law they will abide by a basic sense of morality that is good for the world. While the law itself is by no means sufficient for a person’s salvation, the law does restrain wickedness.
Finally, the Ten Commandments were beneficial because they gave the Jewish people an authoritative set of rules that God desired them to abide by and thus offered a way for the Jewish people to show their love for God. The law was given to the Jewish people through direct commands and revelations from God as well as the Ten Commandments. Without any guiding principles or morals the Jewish people would have been lost and similar to other religions where there is a god figure but no way of knowing what it wants done. Rather, God made it clear that he wanted an obedient worshipping heart that sought to follow the commands out of love for God. Jesus said in John 14:15 that if we truly love God then we will keep His commandments. In the same way that obeying your parents out of respect demonstrates your love for them, we can demonstrate our love for God by obeying what He has called us to do.
The center of much theological debate has been over the idea of works based salvation contrasted to faith based salvation. Although I believe that salvation is through faith apart from works (Romans 3:28) such as following the moral law, the Ten Commandments have clearly been beneficial because they show us that we need a savior, they have restrained the influence of evil, and provide us with an opportunity to show our love to God.
