A New Look at God's Law

"You shall not covet … anything that is your neighbor's."--Exodus 20:17

The Ten Commandments are the Good News about what the Savior does

Most people look upon the Ten Commandments as hard rules impossible to obey, yet God gave them to His people at Mt. Sinai as ten great messages of Good News.

He said, "You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself" (Exodus 19:4). Think of the baby eagle trying to learn to fly; imagine you are one. You flap your wings wildly in terror as you see ground zero coming up; then comes mother with her great outstretched wings under you. She flies under you and carries you home to safety. This is what the Savior does for every human being who will let Him do so!

It's the meaning of the word "succor" in Hebrews 2:18 in the KJV: "In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted." Yes, sin has ruined you; you are going down; but here I am, I have already paid the price to redeem you. Believe Me, and I assure you that you will never do the evil things that these Ten Commandments warn you against.

People need to know this!

Millions are caught like a fly in the spider's web of despair, thinking that it's impossible to overcome temptations to sin. They need to know the truth about this Saviour who has already brought us out of bondage!

The tenth commandment is the strongest of all the ten, the one that zeroes in on the most sensitive level of our consciousness. It says,

"You shall not covet … " anything or anybody that belongs to someone else

To make the point clear, God specifies some things that we must not "covet." (The word means to desire, to want to have, to want to enjoy what is not ours.) The idea sums up all of the other nine commandments, but gets down to the root problem-the desire which burns deep inside the heart long before anything is said or done to express it. Covetousness is "action in the egg." The covetous person is a thief in the shell; the thief is the covetous person out of the shell.

For example, the tenth commandment says, "You shall not covet … your neighbor's wife." (It could just as well say, "your neighbor's husband"). It's talking about lust buried deep in the heart where no one else can see or guess that it's there.

Jesus understood this tenth commandment when He defined what real adultery or fornication is: "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:27, 28). That's the essence of pornography. That's coveting!

Ouch! No word has been spoken, no act has been done; everything's totally secret; the particular "woman" (or man) doesn't even know what's in your heart; yet, according to Jesus, the sin has been done!

Many "goody-goody" people imagine that they are upright non-transgressors of God's law because their acts (they think) are okay. They boast of their "righteousness." But this tenth commandment is the one that wakes them up to the truth about themselves. They never saw it before, but there's a cancer in their hearts, deep down.

Saul of Tarsus was one such person before he became Paul the apostle

He tells us that "as touching the law, … touching the righteousness which is in the law, [he was] blameless" (Philippians 3:5, 6, KJV). He was not only okay, but proud of it. But one day he discovered this tenth commandment. It had been there all along, he just had not seen it. It wasn't an ax chopping down a tree or a few limbs off of it; it was digging up the very root itself. Yes, that secret longing, that lust was deep in his heart! The cancer was there! He had never seen it before.

He tells us of his discovery: "I was alive once [contented with myself] without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death" (Romans 7:9, 10). Suddenly I found myself condemned, he says. All my self-illusionment was gone; I was a sinner! At last I saw myself standing naked before the judgment bar of God.

"I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet [that tenth commandment!]'" (verse 7). At last Saul of Tarsus was awake and was converted.

The result was that he knelt down and confessed himself a sinner in need of the grace of God. He re-read the penitential psalms of David, of his adultery with Bathsheba, and of his murder of her husband, Uriah the Hittite. "Oh God, I thought I was okay while my heart was hard and proud because my outward acts seemed 'righteous.' Now I see that David's sin is my sin; I am no better than he. Forgive me, and cleanse my heart!"

Paul's discovery is that of "every man" and woman, too

We go through life content with ourselves, feeling spiritually that we are "rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," all the while unconscious that in the sight of Heaven we are "wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked" (Revelation 3:17). That tenth commandment has awakened us also.

"Sin ... dwells in me… In me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. … Sin … dwells in me. … I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:17-24).

Here is Paul praying with heart-felt tears, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, … hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation" (Psalm 51:7-12). A prayer like that never goes unanswered!

This discovery of truth is a precious experience. It's nothing to be avoided, but to be welcomed. Eternal life begins when we see and confess the truth. Even pastors, priests, and bishops-all are in the same condition. We all need the One who "will save His people from their sins, … Immanuel, which is translated, 'God with us'" (Matthew 1:21, 23).

The tenth commandment preaches the gospel to us-when it is understood as an assurance under the New Covenant. It does no good for us to promise to keep God's commandments. Our promises to God are like ropes of sand. But what is important is believing God's promises to us: "You shall not covet." In other words, the Savior says:

I will take away the selfish lust that is in your heart;

I will cleanse your mind;

I will set you free from the slavery to adulterous or any kind of covetous desiring;

I cannot make it impossible for you to be tempted, but I can give you grace that will "teach [you] to say to "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live [a] self-controlled, upright and godly [life] in this present age" (Titus 2:11, 12, NIV).

A young man writes us a letter

He is disturbed, worried. "It's my problem night and day, thinking about women. I see them all the time in my mind's eye. I can't look the other way when I see one. The problem goes down deep inside me, down to my toes. What can I do? I realize that Jesus says that it's in the heart; and that's where I know it is! Help me!"

Many a person is a slave to pornography who hates it. It's like the custom in the old Roman Empire-a murderer was chained to the corpse of his murder victim. Paul cries out, "Who will deliver me from this body of this death? … With the flesh, [I serve] the law of sin" (Romans 7:25). You carry the pollution around with you, chained to you.

But there is solid Good News. Paul admits that just quoting the law to him doesn't help. "The commandment which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me" (7:10, 11). You can preach hell-fire and brimstone and terrify people, but that doesn't change the heart. Fear is not the motivation that works.

But Paul describes something that does work: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit" (8:2-4).

Let's analyze what he says, because there is "most precious" truth here:

1. The tenth commandment can't save anyone (none of them can save).
   
   
2. But God sent His Son to solve the problem of deep-inside-of-us, down-to-our-toes sin. He accomplished this wonderful achievement by taking upon Himself our same fallen, sinful flesh that we have. Thus He met and endured all the temptations that we have, including those of the young man who wrote us that letter.
   
   
3. Jesus conquered, defeated, sin in our fallen, sinful flesh. It is not true that the Virgin Mary gave Him flesh that was any different than the flesh which we all have. His name is "God with us," not God-afar-off-from-us. It wouldn't be fair for Jesus to deceive us, to pretend to be "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" if He fudged on it and managed to get an "exemption" from the DNA heredity that all of us have. If Jesus were to do that, Satan would shout to high heaven that Jesus disqualified Himself from becoming our Savior from sin! Satan would claim that he had invented something that defeats God's government, and that would mean that Satan would become the ruler of the universe (some people think he is, but they are mistaken).
   
   
4. All this mighty achievement which Christ won in our "flesh" was with the purpose that "the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us." Sin has been conquered forever; that nasty root of selfish covetousness deep in the heart has been pulled up. All those tearful prayers for "a clean heart" are already answered.
   
   
5. What kind of a new life do we live now? We "do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." It's very simple:

You go for a walk with the Holy Spirit leading;

You let the Holy Spirit hold you by the hand;

Step by step, moment by moment, grace teaches you to say "No" to every temptation;

You listen to the Holy Spirit;

And you say "No!" to the temptation;

Now you say, "Thank You, Lord, for saving my soul."

But right here we must remember that temptation is not sin; the sin comes only in our saying "Yes!" to it. A thousand temptations do not equal one sin. We must not expect God to do what He has said He will never do: He will not make up our mind for us, He will not take from us the freedom to choose. But when Christ gave Himself for us on His cross, He purchased something precious for every one of us: He gave us the power of choice. Yes, we choose heaven or hell.

So we tell the young man who wrote the letter: don't pray that God will turn you into a stone or a tree so you can't be tempted; He doesn't want statues in His kingdom. He wants living people there! His grace will "teach" you, just like a schoolteacher taught you how to write your ABC's; He will teach you to say "No!" to every such temptation. Don't get the cart before the horse: even before you begin to pray, the Holy Spirit is already "teaching" you to say "No!" You don't need to waste your breath praying for Him to do that. Now make your choice to listen to Him, to say "No!" to Satan. Then, the next step comes up: thank God for the victory He has promised to give you "in Christ," and keep on saying "No!" to the temptation.

Satan is a conquered foe; he cannot force you to transgress

The meaning of the word "covet" is to desire inordinately anything that God has not seen fit to give to you now, and which may not be good for you to have now. You may think your secret coveting is impossible to overcome. Satan may wrestle with you and try his best to discourage you. But remember the battle that Jesus fought with him; remember His cross where He chose to die rather than to give in to Satan. We're talking here about the nitty-gritty, the bottom line of salvation, the difference between heaven and hell, between eternal life and eternal damnation.

There are a thousand things for us to be tempted to "covet"-whatever is our neighbor's that we don't have. Houses, cars, clothes, jobs, positions-yes, the newspapers, magazines, TV are all full of the alluring advertisements intended to create covetous lust of some kind in our hearts. It's a never-ending slavery we are enticed into, making us always unhappy, always wanting something else, always seeking it, never satisfied. "Send us gold, for we Spaniards have a disease that can only be cured by gold," is the reported message of Cortez to Montezuma, ruler of Mexico. True happiness lies in "godliness with contentment [which] is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content" (1 Timothy 6:6-8).

Blessed contentment! Jesus Christ saves us "lest at any time [our] hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day [the end] come upon [us] unawares" (Lk. 21:34).

The true Good News

The tenth commandment tells you that indeed you have sinned; that indeed, you have a sinful nature. But it also gives you the Good News that you have a Saviour who "saves completely those who come unto God by Him" (Hebrews 7:25). Whoever you are, wherever you are, sing your song of praise to the Lamb of God. Say Thank You even if you think you are saying it in advance; the truth is, you are not thanking Him in advance, you are thanking Him for shedding His precious blood for you at His cross, long ago! It's taken you a long time to understand it and appreciate it, but thank God, you have begun!

Eternal life has begun for you.