Expansive Obedience (‘Ten Words to Live By’ Book Review)
Christianity is just a religion of rules, right? The morals of Christianity are restrictive to full living, right?
No. The Ten Commandments, recorded in the Bible, are rules. And they do restrict. But they are more than rules. And they restrict as much as a fishbowl restricts a fish — for its own good and to give abundant life.
Jen Wilkin’s book Ten Words to Live By is about the Ten Commandments but helpfully re-interprets them as ‘words’ instead. They are less commandments from a strict God, but a guide to life in abundance as we were created to live.
In each of the ten chapters, one on each of the Words, Jen explains how to expand the command — both in how we can break it without realising, and how we should turn it into a positive command — and how the command is not only good for our community now but a foretaste of the life God has in store for his people.
Expanding the command
Some of the commandments are long with reasons to obey and ways we could fail to obey. Some are just three words long. But each can be expanded.
So take the command not to kill, for example. We can easily think “I’ve never killed anyone. Tick that one off the list.” But, as Jesus said, we can murder in our hearts when we are angry at someone, or when we say things behind their back to assassinate their character.
In fact, Jen Wilkin rephrases the command to “honour life”. So part of the command not to murder is indeed valuing life — whether the lives of the vulnerable, the marginalised, the unborn, or the dying. In not taking life, we must preserve life.
Thinking on the Ten Commandments in this way expands their effect and ways in which we can seek to obey.
Good for the community
The commands are not just to make our lives miserable or to appease an angry God. They are good for the community around us — whether in the church or in the world in general.
Yes, we should not commit adultery because it cheats our spouses and treats them as worthless. It considers people made in God’s image as expendable as and when we want them and makes sex a commodity rather than a beautiful gift.
But faithfulness in relationships is also good for our community.
Commitment to one another produces stability and trust in society. It forms the basis of a healthy family unit and gives the best foundation for children to grow on. Breaking this command is bad for not only the couple but those around them.
So the Ten Words are not only for our own living, but for the good of others.
On earth as in heaven
Maybe the most exciting thing that comes out of this book is the idea that obedience to the commands gives a foretaste of the world to come for God’s people, where they will sin no more.
The commands are unattainable because we are sinful people — which is part of the point (Romans 3:20). But in obedience to the commands, we are living on earth as in heaven.
Every time a child obeys their parents, people rest on the sabbath after a week of work, tell the truth, or find contentment in what they have, we are seeing a glimpse of what life will be like in the new creation.
Only one person has ever kept all of these Words, all of these commands, but that doesn’t mean we can’t seek to keep them. And with the help of the Spirit, and by his power, we can indeed grow to live more like the one who was perfect.
The Ten Words are a guide to living like the only perfect human, and a ‘spoiler’ of life in the new heavens and the new earth.
So we can read the words like this (from the book’s conclusion):
You shall have no gods before me.
You shall not make a graven image.
You shall not take my name in vain or break my Sabbath,
You shall honour earthly authority.
You shall not murder, or commit adultery, or steal, or bear
false witness.
You shall not covet the estate of another.
