Exodus 20.13 Genesis 9.1–6; Matthew 5.17–26; 1 Timothy 2.8–11
A sermon preached at Nedlands Anglican Church 4th February 2024
I was shaking hands as people left the church. A couple greeted me and explained that they were new in Perth and were visiting different churches looking for a home. They mentioned visiting a church whose minister was regarded as a little strange. I asked them how it went. “OK,” they said, “but the sermon was odd.” I asked what was said. “Well, he began with the reading: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and your neighbour as yourself.’ He paused, then repeated. ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and your neighbour as yourself.’ He thought for a while, then said it again: ‘You’ve got to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself.’ Another pause, then, “That’s what it says; well damn it all, that must be what it means. So if you don’t like it, you might as well ship out. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.’” That’s a little bit how I felt approaching about today’s subject. What is there to say?
Last year I attended the student church in Stellenbosch in South Africa and heard a sermon on “You shall not murder.” The preacher had a lot to say that needed to be said, and I thought to myself that I too should one day preach a series on the Ten Commandments. I had never done it before, because they seemed so obvious; especially the last five: don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet. But the world has changed; what seemed obvious to me in the 1960’s is not obvious now, and the reason is plain: there has been a revolt against God, and western societies which once drew their inspiration from God’s word, do so no longer. When I started at university, I decided to read the Bible. I was no Christian; I just thought if I was to be educated, it was something I should do. University students today are more familiar with the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche that the Bible.
Many of the European intelligensia in the nineteenth century gave up believing in God. Tom Wright says it began with the great Lisbon earthquake on All Saints Day 1755. Thirty thousand died. People couldn’t square it with the existence of God, and began to abandon Christianity—but they held on to its morality. Nietzsche, at the end of the nineteenth century, challenged them to be consistent. If God was dead, Christian morality was nothing more than a trick to make people conform. The only thing that made sense was “the will to power.” One consequence of this new philosophy was revealed at the time of the second world war; the Gestapo and the German SS were fed Nietzsche in large doses and taught to laugh at Christian rules like, “You shall not kill.” Murder became a virtue.
You would have thought the horrors of Nazism would have brought the world to its senses. But the hostility towards God is alive and well. In my university days people debated whether you needed God to be good. “No,” they said. “Many non-Christians live better lives than Christians.” So, Christian education was quietly dropped from the national curriculum. But what do you put in its place? For a while educationists thought children were naturally good: just take all the value stuff away, and their innate goodness will flower. William Golding responding with a novel about an aeroplane-load of schoolboys being evacuated from England during the war. The plane crashed on a tropical island and all the adults died. The boys were left to develop without the “corruptions” of western society. What began as a pig hunt—“Kill the pig, kill the pig!”—ended as a hunt for an unpopular child–“Kill the pig, kill the pig!” —murder. Lord of the Flies was widely read; even studied in schools. But educationists rejected its warning, and society is disintegrating. It is becoming more and more obvious that morality has to have its feet in a worldview. What you do flows from what you believe. But what does the West believe? The pursuit of happiness? the pursuit of power? A world without God lacks any solid basis for deciding what is right and wrong. Nor does it know where happiness is to be found. All there is left is the law of the land, and so there is a scramble to replace Christian-based laws with those drawn from different understandings of the meaning of life, and to impose them on the rest of society. “Culture wars,” is the name we give to it.
“Thou shalt not kill,” is too general. The Hebrew word ratsah means murder. Not all killing is murder, but how do we decide what is allowed and what not? This is important. If there is no God—if “man is the measure of all things,” and therefore the decider of right and wrong—where do you draw the line between killing which is permitted, and that which is not? It becomes a matter of debate, and those with the loudest voices will have their way.
“It depends on the culture,” they say. I was part of a group being driven through Accra, the capital of Ghana. I saw a shop window that seemed like it was full of brightly coloured carnival equipment. The driver stopped and took us in. It was a coffin shop; you could choose to be buried in an Adida running shoe, or a Mercedes, or a giant cobra, or a 737 jet. Our guide explained that in former times in Ashanti culture kings and queens were buried on a bed of human skulls. People went into hiding when the word got out and the soldiers were looking for victims. The British (Christian law) put an end to this; so much for the evils of colonialism!
Cultures have allowed intertribal murder, killing of infidels, execution of the politically unsound, the exposure of babies to be eaten by animals, human and child sacrifice, enforced suicide of women on their husband’s funeral pyre, dueling to the death, and eating human flesh. Lorraine and I visited an orphanage in India where many of the girls had been rescued from garbage tins, and one had actually been dug up; this still happens in a culture that devalues women. The killing of cows was prohibited. You see how we have a problem, if human law and culture are the way things are measured. Western culture regards the prohibition of murder as self-evident. But that is the influence of Judaism and Christianity. Take God away, and soon or later …
Why do we say murder is wrong? God condemned Cain for the murder of his brother, Abel: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”[1]When Noah emerged from the ark God told him all the plants and animals were ours to use for food. But we must not kill another human being.
From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.[2]
Do you see that there is a reason for humans being treated differently than the animals? We are made in God’s image. This means we are representations of the invisible God, and have a significance which lies outside of this world. We are potentially sons and daughters of our Creator. The law that forbids murder has a divine sanction. It is holy. Murder provokes the anger of God, and will be avenged, if not here in this world, by God himself at the last judgement.
By removing God from the world, we take away the distinction between humans and animals. Some people will give transcendent value to animals and refuse to eat animal products; others will refuse to see humans as different. Our children are taught that they are just intelligent animals; so it is understandable that some going through hard times will want to escape their misery. If you put a dog out of its pain, why not me? Increased suicide rates are a natural consequence of refusing the knowledge of God.
When is killing a human being not murder? At the same time as God said no to murder, he also allowed that some killing will not be murder. “Whoever sheds the blood of a human being, by human beings will his or her blood be shed.” God sanctions the execution of a murderer. Societies may not wish to use the right, but it is theirs if they wish. We should not condemn societies which still have the death penalty on their statute books for first degree murder.
I grew up in a country town in NSW. Every kid in the school knew if you killed or raped someone, they would take you to Grafton Gaol and you would be hanged. The population of the town was 7000 (14000 in the district). In my growing up years (1950–64) there was one murder. Perry the Bushranger, we called him, shot our neighbour on the next farm. Nowadays, hardly a week goes by without gang killings and household murders. I am not campaigning for the reintroduction of the death penalty, but one wonders whether our merciful laws are really merciful at all—for the scores of victims.
Moses law made a distinction between murder and what we call manslaughter. When Israel settled in Canaan, three cities in each of the twelve tribal areas were set apart as “cities of refuge.” Israel’s law made provision for accidental killing. There were no police forces at that time; justice was meted out by family heads and local leaders. An axe-head flies off its handle and kills a nearby person. It was an accident. Two men get into a fist fight, and one dies; again there was no intention. Still, the relatives will clamour for revenge. The guilty person could flee to the nearest city of refuge. “The avenger of blood” could not go there. Neverthless, if it was established that the killing was intentional, then it was murder, and the murderer would be handed over for punishment.
War is another exception to the prohibition on taking human life. It is sadly true that people and nations will fight. Countries have the right (responsibility) to arm and defend themselves, just as societies have the right to arm their police, and individuals have the right to defend themselves. The right to life is not absolute. The person who kills or seeks to kill another person forfeits their own right to life.
But I want to pause now to lament the disregard for human life that has characterized the last one hundred years. Why mention one victim among the millions, but let me do it? Carola Neher was a German actress and singer. When Hitler came to power she and her husband, Anatol Becker travelled to Moscow. They were both ardent Communists, and you think would have been welcomed with open arms. But Stalin didn’t like idealists. Anatol faced a firing squad, accused of Trotskyist sympathies, and Carola died in a Russian prison camp. Their son, Georg, was raised in a Russian orphanage. He came to Germany in 1975 at the age of 40. We became friends in a language school. He had just discovered the identity of his mother and father. We all had to deliver a short talk in German. Georg spoke about Russia. He began by writing a big number on the blackboard. “The population,” I thought. Under it he wrote the German word “getötet”—killed. Forty million killed to advance the Marxist revolution in Russia. I thought he was mad, but the same number is given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Georg had no love of Marxism.
Marx dismissed God, and Lenin replaced him with the Communist Party. Whatever the party says is good is good. Anything is justified which advances the revolution. Murder became a virtue. And so murder was unleased on the world on a grand scale, and it still goes on. I received an email from a Perth couple working in Mexico a few days ago. In their area people are still being killed, including many Christians, who wont join the resistance movement.
I grieve for the millions who have been murdered in our century—more I think than ever before in human history. I grieve for our society that no longer believes in God, and for what that will mean.
In Roman times a father decided whether a child was to be accepted into the family, or exposed to be eaten by animals. Christianity put an end to that. But Christianity is no longer regarded well, and unborn children in our own society are removed from the protection of law. With us it is the mother who makes the decision for life or death. In the debates that led to the change—I remember them well—it was argued that termination in a hospital was better than a “backyard abortion”; a few mothers’ lives could be saved. The law was not saying abortion is good; rather, it allowed that a doctor may decide a termination is justified or desirable, perhaps in the case of a woman who has been raped. The law will not come after him or her. You can understand doctors breathing a sigh of relief. Perhaps a few terminations are justifiable—or not. But where has it led? Last year in Australia there were 67,000 abortions, and the argument now is over whether the babies that survive the abortion procedure—and some do—should be left to die—they are being left to die; the argument is whether anything should be done to help them. And now there is the licensing of doctors to assist people to kill themselves—with safeguards, but how effective will they be? Abortion is now an industry; will assisted dying go the same way? I grieve over our brave new world—a murderous world. I cannot see how you can put the genie back in the bottle.
But let us think about ourselves. Just because society allows something, does not make it right. Christians have not always lived in societies that agree with their values. Listen to these words from the Didache, one of the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament.
There are two ways, one of life and one of death …
The way of life is this: ‘First thou shalt love the God who made thee, secondly, thy neighbour as thyself; and whatsoever thou wouldst not have done to thyself, do not thou to another…
But the second commandment of the teaching is this: “Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not commit sodomy; thou shalt not commit fornication; thou shalt not steal …; thou shalt not procure abortion, nor commit infanticide …; thou shalt hate no man …”[3]
Christians ceased exposing their children, though it was lawful for another three hundred years. A Christian woman can decide she will not kill her unborn child, no matter the pressure that may be put on her. A Christian can refuse to give the nod for an aging parent to be euthanased, even if it means delaying family members receiving a wished-for inheritance. It is crucial for us to realize that we live to God and not to people; we will answer to God for our lives, not to society. We do not live our lives by the fashion of the moment. We do not need to get lost in the arguments. God makes it easy for us. Of murder he simply says, “Don’t do it.”
And Jesus says more:
You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.[4]
Most laws are like warning signs telling us of danger. I once nearly walked into a minefield, but happily there was a fence and signs all along it, and I was able to skirt around it. All around our city there are cyclone-wire enclosures with warning signs: dangerous pits which can be attractive to children, electricity substations and the like. They warn you of danger areas, but do not teach you how to live outside the wire. To each of the thou-shalt-nots there corresponds positive principles, principles of life. “You shall not murder”: humans are made in image of God, God gives us life, life is good, there are times when I am my brother’s keeper; the good Samaritan rescued the wounded Jew and paid an innkeeper to care for him.
But let’s face it, some people are annoying, some threaten us. How many have wished that someone might die? Most of us I think. From God’s vantage point there is not a lot of difference between the person who plans a murder and carries it out, and the person who wishes someone dead, and would be happy if someone else killed them. There is a lot of difference for the person who is murdered, and a lot of difference when it comes to the law, but the difference in goodness may only be that one has the courage to act and the other does not.
When we think of God’s commandments not as just a law thing, but as spiritual, pointing away from the danger pit, and out to the life that is worth living—then the whole law is summed up in what we said at the beginning, “You shall love the Lord your God … and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” “Love does no harm to its neighbour,” said St Paul. Love doesn’t wish anyone dead. As Christians we are called to seek the best for those around us—even our enemies. Pray for them! Why? Because God has made them in his image, and wishes to redeem and save them. And life is good, and murder is the Devil’s work.
But do we? “No one is good except God alone,” Jesus said. Here is where Paul warns us we must take care how we use the law. It is not the way of salvation or the way to life. It leads us to the realization of how far we fall short of what God requires, and how desperately we need forgiveness and the help of his Spirit. It was for this that Jesus died. Later we will explore these things.
[1] Genesis 4.10.
[2] Genesis 9.5–6.
[3] Didache 1 –2.
[4] Matthew 5.21–22.