What many consider to be the “Ten Commandments” are more accurately, the “Ten Prescriptions.” You may have missed that they were prescriptions because most people gloss over scripture. The “Ten Commandments” were given to Moses in the Book of Exodus, and Moses explained them in the Book of Deuteronomy. Focus now on the latter; not the commandments but the reasons for them:
29 O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever! and 33 Ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess. (Deut 5:29,33)
Those Ten Commandments are like
harsh tasting “medicines;” they can be taken with a bad taste (or the taste ignored)
for the health benefits to be derived or rejected. The Jews took them as if they
were bitter medicines that if they failed to do, they would be punished. The
intention is for the Ten Commandments to be beneficial, and thus, they are to keep
the people well.
Well, until when? Jesus
explained it all; “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mat
19:17). Commandment keeping is preservation to enter into life… eternal
life. They are prescriptions for longevity until the day of the Lord arrives
when Jesus provides new flesh for the living souls, or if the reader prefers…
when Christians are “saved.”
After Jesus was tempted by Satan to violate the commandments, Jesus said,
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised… 21 And He began to say unto them, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” (Luke 4:18,21)
Now consider the healings by Jesus. Just as there are Ten Commandments, there are Ten Beatitudes:
1.
Blessed are the poor in spirit…
2.
Blessed are they that mourn…
3.
Blessed are the meek…
4.
Blessed are they that seek righteousness…
5.
Blessed are the merciful…
6.
Blessed are the pure…
7.
Blessed are the peacemakers…
8.
Blessed are those persecuted for Jesus’s sake…
9.
Blessed are you for being hated…
10.
Blessed are you for suffering persecution…
1.
The kingdom of heaven.
2.
Comfort.
3.
To inherit the Earth.
4.
A filling, indubitably by God’s Holy Spirit.
5.
To obtain mercy.
6.
To see God.
7.
To be called “children of God.”
8.
The Kingdom of Heaven will be revealed.
9.
The Kingdom of Heaven will be theirs.
10. Blessed are ye… you will be entirely well off.
Each of those blessings point toward
eternal life: “for great is your reward in heaven” (Mat 5:12).
The first nine blessings are
specific, but the last one more general — blessed are you. The Greek
word for “blessed” is “makarios” or “well-off” and “supremely” so. Blessed
points to the only place that a person is supremely well off, and that is
Paradise.
In the Paradise of Eden, it is
written, “God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very
good” (Gen 1:31). How good? In the Hebrew, it was “meod tob” — “exceedingly
beneficial,”
When Jesus blessed those who had those
righteous characteristics, He promised them a Garden of Eden in heaven; that
which we call “Paradise.”
The blessings, or fulfilling of
certain “prescriptions,” that God prescribed were contingent upon ten things,
enumerated in the first list: poor in spirit, mourn, meek, and so forth. The
Ten Commandments identify the Ten Characteristics. For instance, meekness is
that they are not gods, as commanded with the “First Saying” of the Word.
Hence, the beatitudes (“blessings
are”) the things of Paradise as rewards for things here in the world. Those things
are not works but attitudes: poor in spirit, mournful, and meekness.
With that background, the Ten
Commandments are not so much works, but attitudes: honor God, to
consider Him worthy, honoring the Lord’s Day, doing no work on that day, honoring
parents, and valuing the lives of others, just to address a few of the ten. In
other words, the Ten Commandments are not works but our attitudes
toward God, and the rewards that Jesus proclaimed were the fulfillment of the
Ten Attitudes most often called “commandments.” The rewards for those attitudes
are “beatitudes.” The prefix “be” implies endowed with — endowed with
attitudes.
The two are the same list of ten
but for Christians and the patriarchs they were not works at all but attitudes.
For the Israelites, they were taken to be hard works they were to do rather
than general attitudes about God. Even doing ten was hard work, so they then
supplemented them with 601 more (611) to make their work even harder!
Perhaps that Adam even got it
wrong. Adam was cursed by hard work (Gen 3:17-19). Hidden in that chapter is a
reprieve: Adam and Eve were given coats of skins for their comfort. God
provided the “Comforter” — the Holy Ghost of Jesus — to preserve them until
Jesus fulfilled that very scripture, as He said in Luke 4. Adam and Eve
would work for their bread, but Jesus would be the “Bread of Life” and for that
Bread there would be no work because of the grace that Adam and Eve were
wearing, to wit, the coats of skin provided by the Word (pre-incarnate Jesus).
God blessed sinful Adam and Eve
because they were sorry for what they had done. They repented of their
disobedience when they were ashamed of their flesh. Blessed are those whose
nature Jesus has corrected. What is it the blessed have done? Just stood there while
God began the regeneration process. The blessings are the “final solution” to
the unrighteous nature of Adam’s kind.
(picture credit; University of Texas)
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