As we look at the fifth commandment, “Thou shall not kill,” this Sunday, I’ll explore the following sentiment in more depth and with what I hope is a great deal of care and sensitivity, but sometimes it’s also good to get slapped upside the head with an obvious truth.
In saying that God’s people are not to take life, the commandments put us at odds with every government on earth. Governments put themselves in the place of God and kill to defend themselves and their vaunted claims of sovereignty. With God’s people, it is not to be so. Rather than ponder how we might skillfully reinterpret this command to suit present circumstances, our time might be better spent wondering how we might change the church to be the sort of place that produces and supports nonviolent people.
Jesus is no help in attempts to soften the force of this commandment. Indeed, in Matthew 5:21-26, Jesus expands the scope of the commandment to encompass even verbal abuse and angry outbursts against another… Perhaps we ought to take Jesus’ method of interpretation in Matthew 5:21-26 as a model for our interpretation—in Jesus the commandments are intensified, extended, expanded.†
I haven’t done this in a while in Vinebranch, but I think I’ll have the congregation text questions on this topic. What questions do we have about this commandment?
† Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), 80.