That brings us to our gospel reading for today (John 2:13-22), where Jesus clears out the template. If I were still at the church where I became a Christian, I’d be advocating for removing the Decalogue – the First Covenant Law – and replacing it with Jesus’ Great Commandment – the distillation of the Second Covenant, which is rooted in freedom and love. (In Exodus 20, love appears only in verse 6, as an explanation of God’s jealous love for God’s people.) But what is particularly emphasised in Jesus’ summary, and not obvious from the Decalogue, is love. These align well with what I wrote about – to be exclusive with God and ethical with people. And Jesus, when asked about the Decalogue, distills them into just two: Love God and love your neighbour. We see this fleshy version of the Decalogue most powerfully in Christ’s incarnation – God come to dwell among us in human form. But the later prophets, Ezekiel (11:19 & 36:26) and Jeremiah (31:33), wrote about having hearts of flesh instead of hearts of stone, and of God writing God’s law on our hearts. In the First Testament, the Decalogue was written on stone tablets, but the very finger of God. And six of the commands are about our relationships with people – essentially, they are supposed to be ethical relationships – we are to treat people well. In the church where I became a Christian, a reformed evangelical church, we had the Decalogue up on the walls at the front of the church – they were presented as the most important verses of Scripture and central to our faith.įour of the commands are about our relationship with God – essentially, it is supposed to be an exclusive relationship (“no other Gods but me”) – a 100% commitment to God, to Yahweh. Today, we focus on the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, from Exodus 20:1-17. Or watch the video here on Facebook (the message starts 24 minutes into the recording). Click here to listen to the audio recording of this 16-minute message.

Precious moments baptism invites