Ten Words to Live By
Ten Words to Live By: Delighting in and Doing What God Commands
By: Jen Wilkin
[Fulfilling “A book with a number in the title” as part of the 2021 Spring/Summer Reading Challenge]
True to form, Jen Wilkin delivers a gut-punch of conviction in this meaty, but short, look at the Ten Commandments. Not only does she expound on each command, showing us they’re not as simple and ‘easy to keep’ as we thought, but she flips the negative to a positive and helps us see the beauty of the Ten Words when we view them as a gift, helping us love and honor God and our neighbors.
The Torah and the rabbis called the Ten Commandments the ‘Ten Words.’
This famous list means different things to different people, but overall the general vibe of these commands is negative. ‘Thou shalt not…’ They are the party-stoppers and the killjoys. Restrictive to our freedom.
Yet, we think, they are the rules we must obey to keep God happy and to get our ticket to Heaven so we have to acknowledge them.
Jen Wilkin describes it like this:
“They are seen by many as the obsolete utterances of a thunderous, grumpy God to a disobedient people, neither of whom seem very relatable or likeable. Because we have trouble seeing any beauty in the Ten Words, forgetting them comes easily.”
I think a broad stroke puts us in one of two camps-
‘These don’t apply to me and I don’t care’
or
‘They apply to me, but I pretty much do them. Well, at least better than that guy over there. So I’m good.’
I’ve been a Christian my whole life and I thought I knew what these were all about. But with every Word I was convicted in new ways. She gives so much insight on the commandments per the time they were given and what it means for us today. She also shows how they build on each other—if you break one, you’ve almost certainly broken a few more.
At the end of each chapter Wilkin asks the question, “Before reading this chapter, how would you have rated your obedience to this commandment? After reading it, how would you rate yourself?”
Yes, you will feel convicted, as we should be, but Wilkin believes in Jesus Christ, and so we are not pummeled and kicked in a ditch for all our sinful ways. We are reminded of Christ paying the price for each and every one of our Ten Word failures.
In the introduction she quickly points out the important difference between legalism and lawfulness.
“While legalism builds self-righteousness, lawfulness builds righteousness. Obedience to the law is the means of sanctification for the believer… There are good works to be done by the people of God, not out of dread to earn his favor, but out of delight because we already have it.”
She straightens us out when we use the phrase ‘Christianity isn’t about rules, it’s a relationship.’ We say that phrase like we have to apologize for the Ten Commandments. ‘Oh, sorry our God keeps telling you not to do stuff, he doesn’t really care about that, he just wants to be your friend!’
Wilkin tells us that law and relationship are not at odds. They are companions:
“Christianity is about relationship with God and others, and because this statement is true, Christianity is also unapologetically about rules, for rules show us how to live in those relationships.”
We don’t need to say sorry for God’s commands. We need to delight in them, knowing we are free from having to perfect them, and they are given to us as a gift that we might love and honor God and our neighbors and live in right relationship.
The Ten Commandments were given to the Israelites right after God delivered them from their slavery in Egypt. This deliverance came partly in the form of ten plagues— each one of which “was a symbolic defeat” of a particular Egyptian god. So when God declared ‘You shall have no other gods before me,’ he had essentially just declared every one of Egypt’s gods as worthless. Have no other gods because there are no other gods.
He asks them to remember their “costly deliverance” as they pledge their allegiance to Him alone.
“To obey the first word establishes the proper posture before God that enables the proper motives and behaviors to obey the other nine.”
There is so much to be learned and taken to heart in this book. I highly recommend you read it for yourself.
To give you a little picture of how she rewords the Ten Words, here is the chapter outline:
Undivided Allegiance
Undiminished Worship
Untarnished Name
Unhindered Rest
Honor Elders
Honor Life
Honor Marriage
Honor Property
Honor Reputation
Honor in the Heart
One thing I liked that she pointed out was the feeling of contempt. She first brings it up in the ‘Honor Life’ chapter, but tied it into the following four that have to do with how we relate to other image-bearers.
“First, I am angry with you in response to a hurt. Next, I begin to question your character with an insult. Then, I begin to question your worth as a person. As anger degrades into contempt, the personhood of another is devalued.”
Contempt leads to violence in the sixth word, adultery in the seventh, theft in the eighth, false witness in the ninth, and coveting in the tenth. We are devaluing the personhood of the one we are dishonoring by justifying any action or word we take against them.
This brought to mind a quote Jonathan Leeman referenced in his book, 'How the Nations Rage’: “We don’t have an anger problem in American politics. We have a contempt problem in American politics.” The value of the Ten Words goes way beyond politics so I don’t want to put it in this box by any means, but in the cultural climate we are in today, I think we must recognize that how we do politics (which is pretty life-encompassing right now) is reflective of our character and can be a barometer of our keeping or not keeping God’s commandments.
With every interaction we have with one another, we must never find ourselves believing in the worthlessness of another image-bearer of God. It not only dishonors the person, it dishonors their Creator. As with each of the ten commandments, any breaking of the Word is altering our posture before our God and is an act of rebellion against his authority and sovereignty.
Read this book and let it recalibrate your knee-jerk ‘judgement’ reaction when you hear the Ten Words. They are not just for the wayward Israelites, they are for the wayward us. They are not a condemnation if we are in Christ, but a gift. The law cannot save us, but it shows that we need a Savior, One who has done with the Ten Words what we could never do—fulfill them.
“Ten words to convict us, shape us, and to give us hope. Ten Words that Jesus came not to abolish, but to fulfill…Ten Words to put to death our sin. Ten Words to herald abundant life. Ten Words to steady and strengthen us on the narrow path that leads us home.”
**Received an ARC via Amazon**
[Sidenote: This book would be a great Bible Study option. It would be 10 weeks if you did a chapter a week and there are a few discussion questions after each chapter. I haven’t read her Sermon on the Mount book but she does reference it here so I can’t speak to whether or not there is repeated content. It’s possible those two books would pair nicely together.]
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