A (55). The third commandment forbiddeth all profaning or abusing of anything whereby God maketh himself known.

A (56). The reason annexed to the third commandment is, that however the breakers of this commandment may escape punishment from men, yet the Lord our God will not suffer them to escape his righteous judgment.

Our outline will cover: 1. blasphemy and profanity, 2. oaths and vows, and 3. the certainty of judgment: whether now or in the end. 

Blasphemy and Profanity

Blasphemy and profanity are not simply about words that our culture has decided are shocking or unacceptable. These involve any misuse of God’s name, and all the more in a way that is consciously frivolous or disparaging.

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the LORD’s table may be despised … But you profane it when you say that the Lord’s table is polluted, and its fruit, that is, its food may be despised” (Mal. 1:6-7; cf. 12; 2:2; 3:14).

The answer to Question 55 states what we’ve already set the foundation for. It FROBIDDETH ALL PROFANING OR ABUSING OF ANYTHING WHEREBY GOD MAKETH HIMSELF KNOWN.

A word about what is more commonly known as profanity or cursing. Since all of our speech is God’s property, any speech that tends toward light thoughts of God is under a curse and curses more: 

“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness” (Rom. 3:13-14).

So even a common cursing is forbidden by the commandment since the profane is just whatever opposed the holy. And there are verses that make specific applications about not cursing the king or the rich (Ecclesiastes 10:20), not cursing our neighbors (James 3:9), and then Paul in Ephesians 4:29 prohibits any filthy or unwholesome talk.

Obj.1. But curse words are culturally relative. 

Reply Obj. 1. The trouble with that argument is that so much of what is wrong with profanity is that people’s minds are directed toward that which is debased, and to no good end. So the notion that “cultural relativity” makes the profanity less than profanity is like saying that a heresy isn’t a heresy because one can express it in a dozen languages, or because each language will mean some different falsehood by it. The issue is the object referred to, or suggested, by the words. In any language, cursing earns the name cursing precisely because it glorifies some part of the curse, or wishes it on others, or cheapens life in general.

Obj.2. But there is strong language in the Bible of a mocking or biting character!

Reply Obj. 2. Yes, this argument is often made, that since Ezekiel acted out a parable involving such objects and Paul used the word in Philippians that our English translates as rubbish, or dung, but which is more literally a courser sense, that therefore this is a sanctified norm for us. This too is looking for excuses. Strong language (including sarcasm and mockery) was often used by the prophets and apostles, but it was never glorified. To use an analogy, it was used more like violence in a good movie: never an end in itself, but being real to life when life gets bloody. Trouble is, the people looking for permission to curse aren't in any sanctified fights. They are playing games with words, which Paul wasn't when he said it.

Brakel gives us another list, this time six things that falls under the heading of blasphemy. “This occurs:

(1) When one ascribes something absurd to God, and with either words or gestures, despises or ridicules God, causing others to despise and ridicule Him also … 

(2) When denouncing the veracity, power, or other attributes of God, and denying His providence, preservation, and government …

(3) If one attributes to others that which properly belongs to God alone and which He alone can perform …

(4) If one despises, ridicules, distorts, and slanders the grace which God has implanted in someone as well as the manifestation of that grace—that is, if one refers to the godly as hypocrites and their godliness as hypocrisy …

(5) If one denies and ridicules the truth of God as revealed in the Scriptures …

(6) If one has the name of being a partaker of the covenant, but does not live accordingly, this causing others to blaspheme the doctrine of truth and godliness.”1

Oaths and Vows

On the frontier revivals of the Second Great Awakening, as America was expanding westward, and the leaders of a new form of religion were vehemently denouncing church hierarchies and doing theology historically and systematically, one of the products was a kind of “Bible only” mindset that could no longer read the Bible as a unity. And one of the many casualties of this approach is the banishing of all oaths on the ground of the words that Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount:

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil” (Mat. 5:33-37).

And the Apostle James even adds to the seriousness with this parallel text: “But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation” (Jas. 5:12).

Two questions in the Heidelberg Catechism address this with the same basic understanding:

Question 101. But may we not swear by the name of God in a religious manner? 

Yes; when the magistrate requires it, or it may be needful otherwise to maintain and promote fidelity and truth, to the glory of God and our neighbor’s good. For such swearing is grounded in God’s Word, and therefore was rightly used by the saints in the Old and New Testaments.

Question 102. May we swear by the saints or any other creature? 

No: for a lawful oath is a calling upon God, as the only searcher of hearts, to bear witness to the truth, and to punish me if I swear falsely; which honor is due no creature.

And then, some eighty years after that Catechism, the Westminster Confession of Faith devoted a whole section to Oaths and Vows (XXII). 

Let me give you four arguments that in Matthew 5:33-37, Jesus cannot be calling all oaths in the broadest sense, a sin: (1) logical (with Old Testament); (2) covenantal / legal; (3) intertextual (whole New Testament); (4) inner-textual (in Jesus’ words themselves).

(i) The first argument: logical. If the Bible is the inerrant word of God, it simply cannot be that Jesus is forbidding all that we mean by oaths. Why is that? It is because God himself commanded oaths in the Old Testament. For instance,

If anyone makes a special vow to the LORD involving the valuation of persons (Lev. 27:2)

You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear (Deut. 10:20)

and he who takes an oath in the land, shall swear by the God of truth (Isa. 65:16);

May the Lord judge between me and you, may the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you (1 Sam. 24:12).

And in the transfer of power from David to Solomon, on the basis of God’s own word in the royal covenant, both David and Solomon took turns applying that faithful word. First, David on his deathbed, 

And the king swore, saying, “As the Lord lives, who has redeemed my soul out of every adversity, as I swore to you by the Lord, the God of Israel, saying, ‘Solomon your son shall reign after me, and he shall sit on my throne in my place,’ even so will I do this day” (1 Kings 1:29-30).

Then King Solomon swore by the LORD, saying, “God do so to me and more also if this word does not cost Adonijah his life! (1 Kings 2:23) So from these and others, if the prohibition against these oaths were really universal, Jesus would be assaulting the very law of his Father! But it will be answered that the words of Matthew 5 plainly say, “Do not take an oath at all,” and that Jesus has a right to abrogate in the New what even God has ordained in the Old. The first problem with that argument is that one reason Jesus gives here for this rule is that ‘anything more than this comes from evil’ (v. 37). Not that it comes from the outmoded or outdated, but that it comes from evil. Now that is a problem! Because if any oath at all were evil per se, and if God ever commanded it at all, then God would be evil. Logically, this option is overruled.

(ii) The second argument: covenantal / legal. As we have seen, the law of speech belongs to the moral law, and not simply the ceremonial law. So it cannot belong to that category of commandments that has been abrogated. We already saw last week how and why the Third Commandment is moral law. It belongs to the image of God to render our speech to God. That is not peculiar to the priestly people. Now, in the whole covenant ratification in the Old, the people were bound by oath to God and forbidden from forming alliances and treaties (in other words oaths and vows) with other kings and nations. We see this in Exodus 24,

“All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do … All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient. And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words’” (v. 3, 7-8).

In Deuteronomy 31 it is even to be in the form of a memorial song: “Now therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel” (v. 9). And then once in the land,

“And the people said to Joshua, ‘No, but we will serve the LORD.’ Then Joshua said to the people, ‘You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD, to serve him.’ And they said, ‘We are witnesses’ (Josh. 24:21-22).

(iii) The third argument: intertextual. The New Testament contains other lawful oaths. In Romans 9 Paul appeals to God to even lose his own salvation for his kinsmen’s salvation! But what language does he use?

“I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (vv. 1-3).

In the introduction to that letter about his prayers for them, “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son” (1:9). Or even about correcting his critics on his travel plans: “But I call God to witness against me” (2 Cor. 1:23). These oaths are inspired by the Holy Spirit! 

(iv) The fourth argument: inner-textual. The word for “swear falsely” here in Matthew 5:33 is one word, ἐπιορκέω, which can also mean simply oath, and it does have the same root (ὅρκος). And this is in the quotation of Leviticus 19:12, which distinguishes between the true oath to God’s name and the essence of the false oath. And the words of Jesus that follow assume that his audience knows that pattern of laws, and so lays out the false objects in verse 34 and 35, choosing to attach the significance of the word “God” in those places, in his rationale for those two. In other words NOT HEAVEN (above God) because that’s God’s throne room. He is above it. NOT JERUSALEM (above God) because that’s his city. He is above it too. And so Jesus is not changing the moral law of our word being to God alone. He is saying it in a pointed way to an audience who already understood that moral law distinction. Clearly the word “oaths” here was being attached to all of those things less than God.

In Calvin’s commentary of the commandment itself, he adds what we hinted at last week: “God’s name is comprehended in the heavens, the earth, the temple, the altar.”2 And not only with the word for “vow” and “oath” but also in the Third Commandment, the word TAKE is less about that extreme of blasphemy or vulgar speech, but more directly about the taking of the Name as in an oath or a vow. The reason that this truth-telling function is so foreign to us is that we are a lying people. It is truth-telling itself that is foreign to us!

What was the medieval church doing that was so wrong? Rome combined violations of the second and third, in that oaths were made to relics! The bodies of the saints and the relics were objects of vow-making. Yet, Turretin says, 

“We deny that they should receive religious worship. We deservedly turn away from the superstition by which (through sheer fraud to make sport of the people) the relics of the apostles are shown, while their writings are concealed. The relics are mute and there is no danger of their muttering anything against the pope, but the apostolic writings strangle the papacy and overthrow idolatry.”3

The Anabaptists refused to take oaths at all, and used these words of Jesus, and so no one could hold them to anything either in church or state. So we can see why the Reformed documents had to steer between the extremes of Rome swearing to everything and the Anabaptist swearing to nothing. But the Reformers understood that humans are pathological liars and God has given us speech as a medium to keep us all honest.

Unlawful oaths include evil things vowed. Jephthah’s vow was evil. He said to God, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30-31). And evil vow is an evil thing multiplied. One is clearly not obliged to agree to it in the first place. I cannot tell you the amount of people who have asked me if they are either bound to stay in abuse or who believe some deal with the devil is still binding.

The Certainty of Judgment: Whether Now or in the End

The phrase MAY ESCAPE PUNISHMENT FROM MEN has signalled to some that this is not a matter of civil law. But that would be an inference and certainly not anything stated. 

YET THE LORD OUR GOD WILL NOT SUFFER THEM TO ESCAPE HIS RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT. So, the passages cited from 1 Samuel (e.g. 2:12, 17, 22, 29) tell the story of Eli’s sons, who were wicked priests, and provided an early example of what Malachi 1 would later condemn: “And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them” (1 Sam. 3:13).

One principle here is that if wearing the Name of God’s people brings a stricter judgment than for the pagan’s “common profanity,” then bearing that Name as a priest, or minister, of Christ is even greater. 

A key verse that summarizes the whole spirit of this law, its prohibitions and certainty of punishment, comes at the end of Israel’s time in the wilderness, in that chapter of blessings and cursings:

“If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God, then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting” (Deut. 28:58-59).

APPLICATION 

Use 1. EVANGELICAL USE. Luther made a vow in a lightning storm to become a monk. And he only made it to St. Anne, but he understood that this was to God. He also took an oath as professor at Wittenberg, to defend the truth of God. That second one was less rash, but he learned that when it comes to our speech, we will either be in trouble with God or with men.  Have you ever made a careless vow? Have you ever pleaded with God in order to get out of a jam? If you did, you were using God’s name as a mere expedient, a genie in a bottle, where instead of rubbing the lamp to summon his help, you made a promise of some kind. Remember the sermon from last week:

“I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Mat. 12:36).

When Abraham asked God, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” (Gen. 15:8), he essentially called God to oath. The God who cannot lie was doubted by a lying son of Adam. Now God, in His grace, condescended and formed this covenant that is called three times in Deuteronomy 29, “the sworn covenant” (vv. 12, 14, 19).

Use 2. CIVIL USE. Why would the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Heidelberg Catechism spend so much ink on oaths and vows? In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, we must understand a few issues. First, the earliest Reformers had previously taken monastic vows and holy orders, whether as monks or priests in the Church. And so if you think, as a member of one of the newer Evangelical traditions in the modern world, that the Reformed tradition didn’t take this as “hard core” as you do, think again! This was no light matter. But for us, we may still be scratching our heads, that if our word is to God, and if civil society doesn’t care about God, why then the oath with the hand on the Bible? The answer it this: When it comes to the oath of office, the oath in a courtroom, the whole rest of the law standing in between the image of God and the violence of the mob is at stake. That’s why the Patriarchs assembled stones as witnesses. And that’s why the principle of two or three witnesses. They weren’t confused, adhering to the Third Commandment on the one hand (our word to God alone) and then stacking up stones foolishly on the other. 

Use 3. DIRECTIVE USE. You can make a vow against truth. You can make a pact (even without words) with the lies of a moment, just in order to get on, and to excuse yourself on the ground of some other commitment. Letting our Yes be Yes and our No be No includes not compromising on the full range of words we know that must be said, and all the more so if they are about the truth of the gospel or the law of God. Where our words are deliberately edited by us for a paycheck or for approval or merely for appeasing the wrath of the mob, there is a taking of the Lord’s name in vain. Paul says that the ethic is higher here for the church: “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” (Eph. 4:25).

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1. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:120-21.

2. Calvin, Commentaries: Volume II, 409.

3. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.8.2