1. I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but me.
2. You shall not make for yourself any idol.
3. You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet.

The Ten Commandments are a summary and outline of God’s Law.

God’s Law is God’s direct pronouncement of his will, both for our good and for his glory.

After delivering his people Israel from slavery in Egypt, God established a covenant with them by giving them his Law through Moses.

Jesus summarized God’s Law by saying: “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.”

For our sake, Jesus fulfilled God’s Law by teaching it perfectly, submitting to it wholly, and dying as an atoning sacrifice for our disobedience.

As I trust in Jesus’ fulfillment of the Law for me and live in the power of the Holy Spirit, God grants me grace to love and obey his Law.

Sin has corrupted human nature, inclining me to resist God, to ignore his will, and to care more for myself than for my neighbors. However, God has begun and will continue his transforming work in me, and will fully conform me to Christ at the end of the age.

I should understand them as God’s righteous rules for life in his kingdom: basic standards for loving God and my neighbor. In upholding them, I bear witness with the Church to God’s righteousness and his will for a just society.

They teach me that God judges the corrupt affections of this fallen world, the cruel strategies of the devil, and the sinful desires of my own heart; and they teach me to renounce them.

They reveal my sin in the light of God’s righteousness, guide me to Christ, and teach me what is pleasing to God.

Because they both contain God’s prohibitions against evil and direct me toward his good will, I should both repent when I disobey them and seek by his grace to live according to them.

The first commandment is “I am the Lord your God. . . . You shall have no other gods before me.”

It means that I have faith that the God of the Bible is the only true God and that I entrust myself to him wholly.

It means that there should be nothing in my life more important than God and obeying his will. I should worship him only and love, revere, and trust him above all else.

I am tempted because my sinful heart seeks my own desires above all else and pursues those things which falsely promise to fulfill them.

I am tempted to trust in myself, my pleasures, my possessions, my relationships, and my success, wrongly believing that they will bring me happiness, security, and meaning. I am also tempted to believe superstitions and false religious claims, and to reject God’s call to worship him alone.

No. Only our Lord Jesus Christ worshiped and served God perfectly; but I can seek to imitate Christ, knowing that my worship and service are acceptable to God through him.

The second commandment is “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.”

God’s people are neither to worship man-made images of God or of other gods nor to make such images for the purpose of worshiping them.

Israel neglected God’s Law, worshiped the gods of the nations around them, and brought images of these gods into God’s temple, thus corrupting his worship.

Israel’s neighbors worshiped and served false gods by means of idols, believing they could manipulate these counterfeit gods for their own benefit.

No. God forbade the making of idols and the worship of images, yet commanded carvings and pictures for the tabernacle depicting creation. Christians are free to make images—including images of Jesus and the saints—as long as they do not worship them or use them superstitiously.

No. Anything can become an idol if I look to it for salvation from my sin or comfort amid my circumstances. If I place my ultimate hope in anything but God, it is an idol.

It teaches me that my ultimate hope is in God alone, for he alone is God and he made me. I must not look for salvation and fulfillment in myself, another person, my wealth or occupation or status, or any created thing. Only in God will I find perfect love and fulfillment.

Satan tempted Jesus to bow down and worship him, promising him an earthly kingdom without the pain of the Cross. Instead, Jesus served and worshiped God faithfully and perfectly all his life, and calls us to do the same.

If I worship and serve idols, I will become like them, empty and alienated from God, who alone can make me whole.