The Ten Commandments

Commandments, the Ten

The ten commandments of God were given to the people of Israel through Moses. These commandments, like any other teaching arising through the Will of God was adapted to the receptive capacity of the people, and that was what they needed in order for them to go one step further in their ladder of spiritual development as a people.

These commandments touched upon every single aspect of their daily lives and even today is still very much applicable to the whole of mankind. They can lead to the proximity of the Kingdom of God if observed and that is the purpose for which they was given. To lead those who adhere to them closer to the Luminous Gardens of the Creator. These commandments however, were not really adhered to in their great simplicity but were dissected and expanded by the human intellect so that nothing of their original purity and simplicity was left.

They were expanded and made so rigid that nobody knew what to do with them. A set of religious scholars arose out of the people of Israel who demanded strict obedience to this rigid form, which as time went on bore no more resemblance to the real thing. In spite of the fact that these people had the Ten Commandments for over 1000 years before the coming of Jesus, He still had to come because apparently no use had been made of them. They had not been applied in the true sense and as such had not changed people's lives. The beauty in the original message had been taken from the common people and what was left was a set of observances, do's and don'ts which had no place in the free development of the human spirit.

What was given as a set of ten laws became hundreds, even thousands of pages of what became the "Jewish law". Pharisees, scribes and Sadducees all had their various ways of interpreting the law, and hundreds if not thousands of regulations appeared that the common people were meant to adhere to. The ten laws given to Moses thereby became a religion and the focus now shifted away as usual from the emancipation of the human spirit from sin to the jostling for power among the leaders of this religion. They cared no more for exhorting the people to adhere to the simple tenets but saw an opportunity to become leaders by giving the appearance of being the only ones who could interpret the laws as if these needed any interpretation. Through this, they became powerful and would do anything to maintain their positions.

When therefore, someone like Jesus came Who challenged their interpretation of the law, the predictable and inevitable reaction followed. They had to do away with this dangerous admonisher who undermined their authority and threatened with His Teaching to woo away the majority of the people from them.

Jesus, in stripping away the mass of external rules which these people had heaped upon the Mosaic law revealed this law again in its beauty and simplicity. People were overjoyed, because for the first time they met with someone who could explain these laws to them not in a demanding do and don't do manner of the Pharisees and others but in a vital, bracing way. The good in the people were aroused and they flocked to Jesus. Once again the people's innate desire to find God had been awakened and had replaced the leaden, dead teachings of the Pharisees.

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