Question 105: What does God require of us in the sixth commandment?

Question 105: What does God require of us in the sixth commandment?

Answer: I shall not, by thought, word, look, gesture, or, more obviously, by deed, despise, insult, hate, or kill my neighbor, nor share in the doing of such things to others. I shall fundamentally renounce all desire for revenge. I shall also refrain from harming myself or prematurely putting myself in danger. One of the reasons the government is armed is to prevent murder.

The sixth commandment is, "Thou shalt not kill."

This commandment speaks of the shedding of blood. Blood comes from God. Blood must not be shed anywhere. Leviticus also mentions the shedding of blood. The first human crime, murder, was Cain's murder of Abel. All life comes from God, and no one can take life for granted. God's will is hidden within that life. All life is finite. Therefore, God allows us to realize that eternal life exists within it.

Through the blood, we are called to seek God's eternal life. This is the promise of the seed. The seed is the source of life. The seed of promise becomes the source of eternal life. The seed of promise is Christ (the Messiah). It is to seek the Christ who will come, whom God promised to Abraham.

Murder hides the greed to demonstrate one's righteousness. God rejected Cain's offering but accepted Abel's. What Cain brought was the fruit of the earth. The earth is land. The word "Adam" is thought to derive from the Hebrew word "adamah" (land). The fruit of the earth is the fruit of "adamah." In other words, it refers to the fruit produced by tilling the land, the foundation of humanity. It refers to the fruit produced through diligent efforts with the intention of becoming like God without God.

According to the Law, grain, the produce of the land, was also acceptable to God as an offering. It wasn't because it was a product of the land that it was unacceptable, but because the produce of the land, as mentioned here, was self-made, without God, it was unacceptable. Abel offered his firstborn, symbolizing Jesus Christ.

In Genesis 3:15, God promised the woman's offspring, who would become Christ, the Seed of Promise. Both Cain and Abel likely heard and understood the promise of the Seed of Promise. However, Cain did not believe the promise. Instead of offering a sacrifice in remembrance of the Seed of Promise, he offered to God something he had produced himself. Abel offered a sacrifice in faith in the Seed of Promise.

Sodom and Gomorrah were judged by God. This serves as one basis for God's judgment of the world. The world was also destroyed during Noah's flood. This too serves as a model of God's judgment on those who turn away from God. Through the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, God demonstrates how He judges. Those who turn away from God, believing they can become righteous like God without Him, produce things, foreshadowing the judgment that "God will not accept."

Even today, in this day and age, we must not approach God with the same intentions as Cain. Believers cannot approach God with the same intentions, thoughts, and efforts as Cain. Ultimately, Cain, like Abel, refused to abide in God's promise regarding the seed of promise. The result was anger and wrath, manifested in the murder of Abel.

Murder, in its essence, hides the greed to become like God, who subdues others with force when they are hindered from expressing his own righteousness. Genesis 4:7 says, "If you do well, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it." Sin is separation from God. In other words, what one desires after leaving God is nothing other than the desires of the flesh. Everything the flesh desires is the desire of the mind, and these are sins. The desire to become like God without God is a physical manifestation.

The same thing is said in 1 John 2:15-16. "Master sin" means "control the desires of the flesh." The Apostle Paul said in Romans 7:7, "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! For I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known coveting if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.'" People do not really understand what the flesh desires. However, since God told Cain, "Do not do what sin desires, but have the mastery," people should have realized it, but they did not.

What the Apostle Paul is saying is, "Realize that the flesh cannot do good, but rather will do evil." In other words, he's telling us that those who have turned away from God must not follow the dictates of the flesh. God tells us to put to death the heart that comes from the flesh. The heart that comes from the flesh is the tempting greed that believes we can become like God without God in the kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul refers to this as the "old self." The old self must die in order to see God.

Romans 6:6 says, "Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin." God gave the law to the Israelites to keep it diligently and achieve righteousness, but in reality, He revealed sin through the law and made them realize that they could not attain God's righteousness unless they abandoned their fleshly selves. When believers abandon their fleshly selves, they discover the seed of promise (Christ). This is what Genesis tells us to do: seek the fruit of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden.

Cain failed to understand God's word and, following the flesh's desires, killed Abel. Living on this earth, we are divided into those who are crucified with Jesus Christ and those who are not. The difference is whether we die or not. God tells us to die with Jesus on the cross and return. Otherwise, we will be the ones who crucify Jesus. Those who do not die with Jesus will harbor fleshly desires in their hearts, and that desire will lead to their own anger.

Cain tilled the ground according to his fleshly desires, but eternal life was not granted to him. Cain and his descendants lived according to the desires of their flesh, and the result was recorded in Genesis 6:5-6: "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved." Ecclesiastes 8:11 also states, "Because sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil."