- God the Creator has established an absolute standard of what is right and wrong. This law is in force for all people throughout human history, so it is not for each culture or each individual to decide what is right and wrong. This law is written to some extent on the hearts of all people. It is revealed clearly in the Bible.
- The Ten Commandments, originally given by God on tablets of stone, still provide a useful summary of the timeless law of God, as their content is repeated in the New Testament. This law can be summarized in one statement: Love God and love your neighbor.
Loving God
- The first and greatest commandment is this: We are to fear, love, and trust in the triune God above all things.
- It is wrong to worship or pray to any being other than the triune God. This includes angels, Mary, Allah, ancestral spirits, and all gods and goddesses in the form of idols. It is wrong to secretly put anything in the most important spot in our lives other than the triune God. This includes money, possessions, power, occupation, entertainment, sports, family, or spouse.
- God’s name is a special possession, and we are not to use it carelessly. God wants us to use his name to praise him, to pray to him, and to share knowledge about him with other people near and far.
- Spiritual light from the triune God and spiritual darkness do not mix. Believers in the Lord should not have anything to do with witchcraft, the occult, astrology, and evil spirits.
- It is a great joy for believers in Christ to gather regularly for worship and to use the Word of God also in other settings. As our bodies need food to stay alive, so our faith needs the means of grace-God’s Word and sacraments-to stay alive and grow.
- God has not commanded a specific day for worship or a specific worship order to follow. Christ and the means of grace are the focus of our worship, and our worship includes confessing our sins and hearing of God’s gracious forgiveness in Christ.
Loving Your Neighbor
- Parents and other authority figures in church and society deserve love, respect, and obedience because God has set them over us as his representatives. In the event that they command us to do something contrary to God’s Word, then we must obey God and disobey their command.
- Secular governments are instituted by God to maintain peace and order on earth. Therefore Christians should always respect their leaders as God’s representatives and should pray for them. Christians may serve in government and may work to improve government.
- Children are precious gifts from God, and it is a privilege, not a burden, to raise them. Children are not to be left on their own in regard to religious training. God wants Christian parents and Christian congregations to be zealous in teaching the Christian faith to the next generation. When God chooses not to grant children, Christian couples receive this also as God’s loving will for them.
- Our bodies are gifts of God, and earthly life is a time of grace when we may come to faith and serve others. God wants us to take care of our bodies, and not to damage them through drunkenness, harmful drugs, or other mistreatment. Since God alone has the right to end life, it is a sin to commit suicide, to murder, or to participate in mercy killing. Since life begins at conception, abortion is also sinful.
- God wants us to help others with their bodily needs, as we are able. Christians should have a caring eye and a generous hand especially toward the poor, the needy, the disabled, and all who are fellow Christians. We also are to love our enemies and to pray for them.
- God intends that men and women find sexual fulfillment within marriage, and not in casual encounters or live-in arrangements apart from marriage. Marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman, publicly recognized. Though divorce and remarriage are permitted for innocent partners in cases of adultery or malicious desertion, divorce always involves sin on the part of at least one partner.
- Since God has established marriage, he has the right to tell us how it should function. He says that the relationship between husbands and wives is to be patterned after the relationship between Christ and the church, with husbands and wives having different roles. The husband is to be the loving head, and the wife the loving helper. God wants every married person to treat their spouse with respect.
- God’s Word says that homosexuality is contrary to God’s intention for males and females. People with homosexual tendencies can find forgiveness in Christ and strength to live in harmony with God’s will.
- God does not want us to be pure only in our actions, but also in our thoughts. Lust in our minds is sinful, just as much as adultery. Hatred in our minds is sinful, just as much as murder.
- Everything in the universe belongs to the Lord. When the Lord entrusts money and property to us, he expects us to manage it wisely for him, using it to provide for our families, to pay our taxes, to support the church, and to help the needy. Likewise, he expects us to manage our time and abilities wisely as good stewards for him.
- God forbids us to take the money and property of others. It is a sin to get things for ourselves by robbery, theft, cheating, bribery, overcharging, or underpaying.
- God hears every word that we speak. He wants us to speak in a way that is truthful and will build others up, and not tear them down. He wants us to take the words and actions of others in the kindest possible way. He detests lying and gossiping.
- Since we have a generous God who promises to give us all that we need, we can be content and not envy others. To desire things that God does not want us to have is sinful and dangerous. Such desires can lead to sins of action like theft, adultery, and murder.
- What God commands is not a matter of performing heroic or extraordinary deeds. Rather, in our ordinary daily activities God wants us to show love to others as he has shown love to us, and to treat others as we would like them to treat us.
Keeping the Law
- The true God is not satisfied with a good effort at keeping the law, or with a level of obedience higher than others. Since the true God is holy, he cannot tolerate any sin in his presence. To be in a right relationship with God and to enter heaven, human beings need to obey God’s law perfectly in every thought, word, and deed.
- Since the true God is just, he must punish all sin. One punishment for sin is physical death. The ultimate punishment is eternal death in hell, a real place where the evil angels and all who reject God’s way of salvation will suffer never-ending torment.
- God’s law reveals that all people have sinned and deserve God’s judgment. No human being is good enough to earn heaven, but all are condemned. Like a mirror showing the flaws in our appearance, the law shows our sinfulness before God.
- In addition to our sins of thought, word, and deed, the Bible teaches that we all have a sinful nature or old Adam inherited from our parents, for which we also deserve God’s condemnation. Because of this original sin, we are inclined to evil and even our good deeds are tainted by sin.
- We desperately need a Savior from sin. Thanks be to God, the Bible presents the gospel! The gospel, summarized in the Apostles’ Creed, is the good news of what God has done through his Son Jesus to save mankind from sin.