Katechismus

Lord's Day Forty

Questions 105-107

Ursinus included a table in his commentary on the Catechism that provides a helpful summary of what is commanded and forbidden in the sixth command.

The sixth command forbids unlawful injuries to the well-being of others, in general forbidding anything we say, think, or do that fails to properly honor the image of God in those who bear it, and, by doing so, adequately esteem the value of the image-bearer – remember the price God paid for our redemption. At the same time it enjoins that we do all within our ability to preserve, protect, and defend the well-being of others.

So what about the death penalty?
“When God forbids the infliction of any wrong upon society, and wills that the magistrate be the defender and preserver of order according to the whole Decalogue, he also designs that those who manifestly and grossly violate this order be restrained and kept within proper bounds by just punishments. The magistrate, therefore, may be guilty of doing wrong not only in being cruel and unjustly severe, but also in being too lenient ...

Obj. It is here said, Thou shalt not kill. Therefore no one must be put to death... you who are merely a private person, according to your judgment and desire, when I do not command you, and give you any warrant from this law. But this does not do away with the office of the magistrate; “for he is the minister of God and does not bear the sword in vain.” (Rom. 13:4) Hence when the magistrate puts wicked transgressors to death, it is not man, but God who is the executioner of the deed. ...some are to be put to death, lest human society be destroyed by thieves and robbers” Ursinus

A foundational element of just war theory is found in this, the lawful use of the “sword” by the civil magistrate to guard society or nations against evil-doers. Only the magistrate and not private citizens can issue a call to war; only those acting on the authority of the magistrate act lawfully when they take the life of another. The magistrate is responsible before God for the justness of the war; the soldier is responsible before God to submit to the authority of the civil magistrate.

On the side of what is forbidden, the wrongness of direct assaults on life and/or safety is obvious. It is wrong to attack someone's life, health, character, integrity. What is not so obvious are the injuries we cause by our internal affections – anger, hatred, desire for revenge, malice in our hearts toward someone else. We must consider Jesus' teaching that it is not necessary to commit an overt act in order to break the law of God. See Matthew 5:21-22; 5:27-28 He makes it plain that failing to honor the commands of God in our thoughts is just as much a sin – not as grievous, because to think and then act on our thoughts compounds one sin on another – as it is to commit the overt act.

Similarly, on the side of what is commanded, the rightness of helping to preserve life and safety through humanity – that is, benevolence or philanthropy toward others, mercy and friendship is obvious – doing good to our neighbors, attempting to mitigate the calamities of the less fortunate, and performing the duties of friendship.

The rightness of commutative justice, that's easy to understand but more difficult to practice. For justice to be commutative, there must be “equality between offense and punishment, inflicting either equal punishments, or less in view of just and satisfactory causes, having a proper regard to the circumstances which should ever be taken into consideration in civil courts.” Ursinus Repeat offender laws, “three strikes and you're out”, the sex-offender registry, our desires to lock the perverts up and throw away the key or exile them to Cuba, all of these are regulated by the sixth commandment.

Fortitude is that virtue which braves danger for the glory of God, the salvation of the church and country, and preservation and defense against wrongs and oppressions. Indignation is the zeal that responds to a wrong committed against the innocent (including reproach against the name of God) and strives to make it right.

Now for the really complicated situations, those times in life when life and technology intersect – persistent vegetative states; fetal defects; premature birth; end-of-life issues; execution methods (hanging, electrocution, lethal injection, firing squad). When is withholding technology or effort justified? Is it ever justified? Dr. deKay and the Day boys illustration. We certainly have the duty to do what is reasonable to maintain an acceptable quality of life – providing food, shelter, clothing. But when preserving life approaches “simply” prolonging basic bodily function the decisions become much more difficult.

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Question 104

The commandment refers specifically to honoring father and mother but extends far beyond the confines of the home and its relationships. Of the three God-ordained institutions (family, church, and state) family was created first, it is the first relationship into which individuals enter. The family relationship provides the setting for training up proper behavior in the other two areas of life.

The concept of honor according to TWOT means: “giving honor or glory is to say that someone is deserving of respect, attention and obedience”. The idea is that the one honored has value or a position of authority over another; that politically incorrect notion of superior and subordinate and the proper relationship between the two. When God requires children to honor their parents, he at the same time requires that parents discharge their duty in such a way as to be worthy of that honor; the same is true of those exercising authority in every other sphere of life.

The promise attached is also a principle – if the family is the basic building block of society, then the society is healthy as long as the family is healthy. The society would have the strength and fitness to thrive “in the land”; the blessing is not merely long life for the individual but for the society/culture as well. Once the family structure and performance of its training and discipline duties began to break down, the society as a whole became vulnerable to outside forces that would subjugate it.

Expected characteristics of superiors

1. Parents should:

   1. meet their children's physical needs – Matthew 7:9-11

   2. provide for the safety of their children – 1 Timothy 5:8

   3. see their children are properly educated – Deuteronomy 6:6-9

   4. govern their children so they learn submission to authority – Proverbs 19:18

2. The civil authority should:

   1. encourage conformity to God's law – Romans 13:1-7

      1. encourage and defend those who obey

      2. punish those who disobey

   2. enact laws consistent with God's law for maintaining civil order

Expected characteristics of subordinates

1. They should:

   1. show love, honor and reverence

      1. recognizing God has placed superiors in their position of authority

   2. obey those in authority

      1. as they would the Lord

   3. show gratitude for what they provide

      1. promote the interests of the superiors whenever possible

   4. practice forebearance

      1. bearing with faults and infirmities

Expected characteristics of both

1. act justly – Romans 13:7

2. be diligent in labor – Ecclesiastes 9:10

3. show gratitude for benefits received – Proverbs 17:13

Matthew Henry (Vol. V, 211) reminds:

The sin of cursing parents is here opposed to the duty of honoring them. Those who speak ill of their parents, or wish ill to them, who mock at them, or give them taunting and opprobrious language, break this law. If to call a brother Raca be so penal, what is it to call a father so? By our Saviour’s application of this law, it appears, that denying service or relief to parents is included in cursing them. Though the language be respectful enough, and nothing abusive in it, yet what will that avail, if the deeds be not agreeable? It is like him that said, Z go, Sir, and went not. ch. Xxi. 30.

God had placed reverence for parents on the same level with Israel’s national and personal holiness and in context with the sanctity of the sabbath and with the proper worship of God. (See Lev. 19:3f.) It is because the majesty of God, violated in this disrespect for the persons of the parents that the sin of cursing them is made punishable with death. All of God’s representatives are to be served with honor and fear, because in this commandment lies the foundation for order in the whole social realm. Here God teaches us to acknowledge rightful authority by showing proper reverence in thought, word and deed. Out of this understanding of the true positions of father and child grows our appreciation of, and demand for, good government and, consequently, our grasp of the Kingdom of God. This relationship is so fundamental, because it gives moral character and stability to a nation, and prosperity and well-being to its people. Thus, the failure adequately to value this parent-child relationship, especially through the grown son’s refusal to support his aging parents, is direct evidence of a fundamental moral decline in appreciation for the majesty and authority of God. Not only is the image of God in the parents no longer kept sacred, but the Word and authority of God are also ignored. This is why refusal to support one’s parents in their helplessness and senility is a sin worthy of capital punishment under the Mosaic system.

College Press, Gospel of Matthew, Vol. III, pp. 339-340

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Question 103

The fourth commandment: the one most disputed within the broadly evangelical church. Does it still apply? Is it binding on the New Testament believer? What does it mean? How should we keep it?

Many committed Christians would stake their personal reputation on their belief that the command no longer applies. They take issue with it Sunday being called the Christian Sabbath, they acknowledge only nine commandments still in force. Yet by their practice they view the setting apart of one day in seven as just as important as those do who believe the fourth command still is in force.

Were there particular regulations regarding the appointed activities of the Sabbath day that are no longer in force? Of course; but we must be careful to distinguish between the command itself and regulations that God gave in addition to it.

Its institution

The command is given in Exodus 20:8-11 and set in a context that covers more than one-day-in-seven. The implications of the command extend just as much to the “other” six days as to the seventh. That is necessary for the command to make any sense – if one day is to be set apart, it is by definition distinguished from the other days. Something must be different about the other days or there is no distinction.

The command and its regulation is given to us in three places in the Old Testament: Exodus 20:8-11, Exodus 31:12-18, Deuteronomy 5:12-15. Jesus refers specifically to the sabbath ordinance in Mark 2:27. In three of four instances the ordinance is presented in the context of creation, explicitly in both Exodus passages, implicitly in the Mark passage by Jesus' use of ginomai, referring to the “making” or “creating” of the Sabbath.

Clearly, the institution and practice of the Sabbath rest pre-dates Mount Sinai; the Sabbath was already being practiced in Exodus 16 when manna was first given and before the giving of the Law to Moses. The implication there is that it was an established practice as would be expected if it truly is a creation ordinance.

Genesis 1:26-2:3 provide the first significant teaching and example of Sabbath rest. There God made man in His image (important point), gave him two specific tasks – work and reproduction, and then rested. The seventh day rest is set over against the first six days of labor; the sanctified seventh day is set over against the creation mandate to be productive, to work. It is at that point that Jesus' teaching that the Sabbath was made for man, was a gracious gift of God to mankind, comes into focus.

Its meaning/purpose

We are commanded to work at our normal labors, subduing the creation, for six days and then rest from those labors on the seventh day. We are not to burn out by becoming workaholics. Nor are we to become so wrapped up in work and “self-sufficient” that we forget God and that He gave it all to us in the beginning. Don't forget, this applied to Adam before sin and it certainly applies to us today.

Further, as beings created in the image of God, we are to follow His example, established in the first week of creation. He labored for six days, then rested from those labors on the seventh and set apart the seventh day to a holy purpose. God's rest on the seventh day was not a rest of idleness; it was a cessation of his creative labors of the first six days and occupation with different activities on the seventh day.

It is important that Jesus conveyed in his response to the Pharisees that the Sabbath rest had as its purpose man's good – it was made for the good of man, not as a straitjacket or goad to force him into a certain pattern of behavior. We can see two areas of significance in the two givings of the law – Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. In the first we see the importance of rest from labor; in the second we see the importance of regular focus on remembering our redemption.

Its perpetuity

Overarching both of these considerations is the foreshadowing of that eternal rest in the next life that we get a taste of in our weekly sabbath. Hebrews 4 alludes to the rest into which our Savior has already entered (remember he said “It is finished”!) and that still awaits us.

"For He spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all His works" (verse 4). God’s rest on that primitive seventh day possesses at least a fourfold significance. First, it denoted His own complacency, His satisfaction in what He had made: "And God saw everything that He had made and, behold, it was very good." Second, it was the Creator setting before His creatures an example for them to follow. Why had God taken "six days" to make what is described in Genesis 1? Had He so pleased, all could have been done in one day, yea, in a moment! Obviously it was for the purpose of teaching us. Just as the great God employed in works of usefulness, in providing for the temporal necessities of His creatures, so should we be. And just as God has ceased from all the works of those six days and on the seventh day "rested," so must we. Third, that primitive Sabbath was the prophetic pledge of the "rest" which this earth shall enjoy during the reign of Christ. Fourth, it was a foreshadowing and earnest of the eternal Sabbath, when God shall "rest in His love" (Zeph. 3:17).

"There remaineth therefore a Sabbath-keeping for the people of God." The reference is not to something future, but to what is present. The Greek verb (in its passive form) is never rendered by any other English equivalent than "remaineth." It occurs again in Hebrews 10:26. The word "remain" signifies "to be left after others have withdrawn, to continue unchanged." Here then is a plain, positive, unequivocal declaration by the Spirit of God: "There remaineth therefore a Sabbath-keeping." Nothing could be simpler, nothing less ambiguous. The striking thing is that this statement occurs in the very epistle whose theme is the superiority of Christianity over Judaism; written to those addressed as "holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling." Therefore, it cannot be gainsaid that Hebrews 4:9 refers directly to the Christian Sabbath. Hence we solemnly and emphatically declare that any man who says there is no Christian Sabbath takes direct issue with the New Testament scriptures.

Thus, the Holy Spirit here teaches us to view Christ’s rest from his work of Redemption as parallel with God’s work in creation. They are spoken of as parallel in this respect: the relation which each "work" has to the keeping of a Sabbath! The opening "for" of verse 10 shows that what follows furnishes a reason why God’s people, now, must keep the Sabbath. That reason invests the Sabbath with a fuller meaning than it had in Old Testament times. It is now not only a memorial of God’s work of creation, and a recognition of the Creator as our Proprietor, but it is also an emblem of the rest which Christ entered as an eternal memorial of His finished work; and inasmuch as Christ ended His work and entered upon His "rest" by rising again on the first day of the week, we are thereby notified that the Christian’s six work-days must run from Monday to Saturday, and that his Sabbath must be observed on Sunday. This is confirmed by the additional fact that the New Testament shows that after the crucifixion of Christ the first day of the week was the one set apart for Divine worship. May the Lord bless what has been before us.” A. W. Pink, Exposition of Hebrews

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