Q42. What is the sum of the ten commandments?

A. The sum of the ten commandments is, to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind; and our neighbor as ourselves.

Let me begin by briefly addressing the criticism of Meredith Kline, who argues against the traditional view that the two tables represent the religious and ethical dimensions of the moral law. He bases this rejection on the fact that these two tables are those “copies,” one for each party in the covenant agreement, universally featured in ANE Suzerain treaties.1 Even if this is exactly what was in view of the text, it would not necessarily negate the meaningfulness of speaking of the “two tables” in the traditional way. It would still beg the question as to whether or not this may be a proper systematic consideration.

Two Tables: Godward and Manward

Another introductory word about the numbering. The Jews regard the preface as the first commandment. If anyone asks how this can be a command, the answer is that it is a command to recognize, somewhat similar to the shema of Deuteronomy 6:4. The Lord recognizes this as a commandment to “hear” and “love” and so forth (cf. Mk. 12:29). How then do they square that number ten? They do so by seeing the first and second commandment as one — their second.

In about the fifth century, the catholic tradition began to divide the tenth commandment in two, while retaining the unity of the first and second. The rationale for dividing the tenth had to do with Augustine’s doctrine of concupiscence, so that coveting the wife of one’s neighbor was significant enough to separate from coveting all other things of one’s neighbor. One biblical argument against this, made by the likes of Turretin, is that Moses would not have switched the order of the neighbor’s wife and his house, as he in fact does do between Exodus 20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:21. In the former, the house comes first, and in the latter, the wife comes first. Clearly Moses could not have meant that the places of the objects of the ninth and tenth switch from one generation to the other! 

At the time of the Reformation, there was a return to a third way that had become obscured. That is to see the Ten Commandments in exactly the way we do today. This was already the standard according Josephus, Philo,2 Origen, the Latin Fathers until Augustine, and the entire Greek Church. The argument from authority alone is overwhelming. However, two New Testament arguments for the main division would be that Jesus listed the Fifth with the reciting of the Second Table to the rich young ruler (Mat. cf. Mk. Lk. 18: ); and Paul placed the Fifth in the Roman household codes along with the wife’s relation to the husband, and the servant’s relation to the master in Ephesians 6.

Now what about that meaning to the structure? The simplest way to put it is that there are two parts of the Ten Commandments — one through four being the First Table, and five through ten being the Second Table. We realize at once that these are not divided evenly, by number, but rather by a moral principle. Brakel wrote, 

“if someone asks why the law was not written upon one, but upon two tables, we answer that the law pertains to two objects: God and one’s neighbor, as the Lord Jesus shows in Matthew 22:37, 39.”3

In other words, the First Table regards those duties which we owe God directly; that is, by our public worship. They are more specifically dealing with religion. The Second Table regards those duties which we owe God indirectly; that is, through how we treat our fellow human beings. In fact, it is not quite exact enough to say that the First Table gives us the “Godward” commandments and that the Second Table gives us the “manward” commandments, for they are all Godward. How we treat each other is something we owe principally to God.

So it would be better to view the Second Table as a circle inside of the larger circle of the First Table. To see why, we only need to remember the principle that has run through, and which was set down in Question 1 about God’s glory and man as the image of God—We do what we do because of what it says about God — not because of what it says about us (or any other lesser thing). So why do we do commandments 5 through 10? Because of what it says about God through our love of neighbor. And we will be able to see that in very specific ways.

Let’s look at that saying of Jesus and then unpack it a bit.

“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Mat. 22:37-40).

Dabney actually interprets Christ’s words here as directly intending to highlight the Decalogue as the summary of the whole law — an abridging and not an abrogating — because “these two are the epitome.”4

God’s Essence and God’s Image

There are two basic problems in any theology of obedience. The essence of God, as He is in Himself, is infinitely above us; and the image of God, as the one thing in creation most like God has been shattered. And in fact, these two reasons are not merely theoretical. They actually come to form objections against obedience to the first and second tables of the law. 

What is the first part of the Greatest Commandment? Jesus takes this from the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6:4. It is a love for God, but with those four “alls”—‘with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind.’ There’s a lot that can be said about this, but at the very least, this implies a devotion to God with every part of man’s being and with the depths of those. When we look at the First Table, we see four dimensions of this “whole-life worship,” and with the Fourth, we see that so-called “whole-life worship” cannot be pit against special-day worship. 

First Commandment Object of Worship

Second Commandment Manner of Worship

Third Commandment  Name of Worship

Fourth Commandment Time of Worship5

What did Jesus say in that Greatest Commandment between the two parts? He said, “And a second is like it” (22:39). Applying this to the Decalogue, we can see that the Second Table is like the First. Why? Because its object is man, and man is like God. Consequently how we treat the image of God says something about how we treat the essence of God. Our marriage and stewardship and speech is like our religion. Indeed it is our religion: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jam. 1:27). But the all-important point is that the image of God is the direct object being violated in any disobedience to the command:

Fifth Commandment Authority of the Image

Sixth Commandment Life of the Image

Seventh Commandment  Marriage of the Image

Eighth Commandment Property of the Image

Ninth Commandment Good Name of the Image

Tenth Commandment Anything for Another (not Yours) of the Image

Now why does this matter? At the present hour, so-called Progressivism continues to ravage the church with violent ideologies, while the church was left in an intellectually imbecilic state, unable to think about how Progressivism uprooted the entire Second Table of the Law. How so? First, the Radical Two Kingdom view groomed the church for the better part of two decades, declaring “Verboten!” any discussion of “individual rights” as a “modern” or “Enlightenment” or simply “self-centered” construct. When all else failed, all such talk was at least “not a gospel issue,” and so to try to root these “Western” values in Scripture became a kind of an unspiritual indecency.

The problem with all this, by now, should be obvious. We didn’t these ideas from Thomas Jefferson out of Independence Hall. We got them from God through Moses on Mount Sinai. And a life in the womb is not a bundle of subjectively construed “rights,” and neither is a man’s property that he hands down to his sons “expressive individualism,” but rather a stewardship from the hand of God. 

Another clue is in John’s first letter. There he dealt with what love and hate say about God. That is, how we either love or hate our fellow man.

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 Jn. 4:20-21).

John’s statement here helps us drive home the idea. Our fellow human beings are the nearest thing to God we will see in this world. That is what God meant by making man and woman in his image. Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:5-6 provide the roots for this in the creation design. 

Objections to the Perfection of that Moral Law

The first two of these objections were taken up by Brakel—namely, 1. that the law of love summarizes the law by replacing the commandments with the heart of love; and 2. that new things are commanded by Christ that comprise the New Law. Let’s begin with that first objection:

Objection. “Christ has given a new commandment: ‘A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another’” (John 13:34).

Answer: Love was commanded in the law (Mat. 22:39). One must love in the New Testament because it has been commanded in the law (Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8). It is thus evident that ‘a new commandment’ does not refer here to a commandment that did not exist  previously but rather which was renewed, that is, presented and insisted upon anew.”6

The doctrine of the New Law, or Law of Christ, became fashionable in the century following the Reformation. If this did not take the form of love, it at least pointed out how 1. faith, 2. self-denial, 3. cross-bearing, and 4. the imitation of Christ, were present in the New but not in the Old. But faith is clearly implied in the looking to God through the sacrifices of Israel; self-denial in the ultimate love and worship to God; cross-bearing in the same through suffering; and the imitation through lesser officers and the obedience learned through it—as Brakel put it, “The matter has been commanded in the law, although the object of imitation is revealed in the gospel.”7

It was also objected (from Q41) that these commandments cannot “summarily comprehend” the whole of morality for this or that reason. Where is liberty versus slavery, for example?

We must remember that “The law of the LORD is perfect” (Ps. 19:7). Surely the law’s perfection is an attribute which must extend to its sufficiency. All of this is to say that the division of loving God and then loving neighbor is the great circle around which all moral action is comprised. 

A final objection that is also supposing an Old versus New dichotomy, is to pit the spirit against the letter, and especially from 2 Corinthians 3. We mentioned that there is a “spirit” and “letter” distinction to be made; but what is really the culprit in that “veiled” reading of the law of Moses that Paul attributed to the Jews? One key to the meaning is something we touched on, but which needs to be made much more of.

In all of the commandments, there is a positive and a negative dimension. That is, there is what each commandment requires and then there is what each commandment forbids. And these are not parallels that are equal and opposite. The doing is in the “heads” position. It is the doing that it is the essence of it. For example, why should sexual sin and sexual perversion be so hated? It is to protect and preserve its true design in marriage. It is for the sake of something glorious that 

This implies the other meaning of the “spirit of the law,” and that is to interpret it rightly, as when Paul says: “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane” (1 Tim. 1:8-9). Hodge’s reminder is instructive: 

“The decalogue is not to be interpreted as the laws of men, which take cognizance only of external acts, but as the law of God, which extends to the thoughts and intents of the heart.”8

We must conclude that what we called the “spirit of the law” is not simply one way to read the law, but rather the correct and spiritual way to read the law. That is because “the law is spiritual” (Rom. 7:14); and “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (Ps. 51:6). Spiritual here meaning the particular character of the moral actor. Turretin says of this, “First, the law is spiritual, respecting not only the external acts of the body, but the internal motions of the mind … and the nature of the lawgiver himself. He is not a human and earthly lawgiver who, since he has fleshly eyes, attends only to the external deeds striking the senses.”9

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1. Meredith Kline, Treaty of the Great King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 19.

2. It should be pointed out that Philo and Josephus also divided the two tables evenly, five and five. Clement of Alexandria, in Stromata VI.16, retains only commandments one through three in the first table: cf. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.5.1

3. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:39.

4. Dabney, Systematic Theology, 355

5. G. I. Williamson, The Westminster Shorter Catechism: For Study Classes

6. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:71.

7. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:71.

8. Hodge, Systematic Theology, III.19.1

9. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.6.2.