The Christian religion is canonical. It is built not only on a sincere and deep faith, but also on specific laws, common truths, which, through holy people, were transmitted by God to ordinary people to atone for their sins and gain eternal soul life in paradise after death. That is why all the followers of Christianity need to know the meaning of the main terms and events in the history of their religion.
Commandments: the meaning of the term
Before you begin to study the history of the commandments and the subsequent development of Christianity, you need to understand what is the meaning of the word “commandment”. It certainly has a religious meaning and is used mainly to refer to some holy postulates transmitted from Jesus Christ to people. So, the commandments are a certain precept for the moral life of a person in accordance with religious norms. This word also has a second meaning. A commandment can be a rule, a law, a provision on any norms of human life that are not related to religion. The use of this term can be found in poems, odes, in poetry or prose of high style, since this word is a means of expressing pathos in the text.
The story of the ten commandments
Christians are known to have received knowledge of the Ten Commandments of the Lord from Moses, the son of Abraham. God appeared to the future prophet at the foot of Mount Horeb in the guise of a burning bush and ordered the Jewish people to be freed from the power of the Egyptians. Pharaoh did not want to let the slaves go, so the Lord sent ten executions of the Egyptians for disobedience to his country. Moses led his people across the Red Sea, whose waters parted according to divine will and allowed the Jews to the other side. The army of the Egyptians perished in its waves, failing to catch up with the runaway slaves.
Later, on Mount Sinai, the Lord revealed the Ten Commandments to Moses, which later became the canons of life for the Jewish people.
The Ten Divine Commandments
The Ten Commandments of God are as follows:
- May you have no other God but Me.
- Do not make yourself an idol.
- Do not just say the name of the Lord your God.
- Remember the Sabbath day, hedge it.
- Honor your father and your mother.
- Do not kill.
- Do not commit adultery.
- Do not steal.
- Do not slander your friend with false testimonies.
- Do not wish your neighbor's wife.
In these covenants, the Lord calls people to mutual love, respect, honesty, and also to love God in response to God's love for man, his creation. The fulfillment of the commandments is very important, because thanks to this, a person will be able to save his soul and find eternal peace in paradise after death for his righteousness in life.
The Significance of the Lord's Commandments
- The meaning of the first commandment is the covenant of the Lord that God is one, that a Christian cannot worship any other deity.
- The second commandment is directly related to the first, because it refers to the worship of a person to someone other than God, which a righteous Christian should not do in any case.
- The third covenant means that a person should not pronounce the name of the Lord just like that if he does not put sacred meaning in his words, reverence for God.
- The meaning of the fourth commandment is a covenant for people to fulfill all their daily duties in the first six days of the week, and to devote the last, seventh day to serving God (prayers, recognition of their sins, repentance from them). The fact is that the seventh and last day of the week used to be called Saturday.
- The fifth commandment obliges people to honor their parents who gave them life, fed, raised and educated.
- The sixth commandment states that man should not kill other people, because they are all God's creations. To kill what the Lord created is a grave sin, one of the greatest in the Christian religion.
- The seventh commandment warns a person from carnal sin as one of the most serious. The Lord warns people against this sin, unless it is associated with subsequent procreation.
- The eighth testament says that you can never take someone else's, that which is not given to you.
- You can not slander other people, exposing them in a bad light in the eyes of society. That is the ninth commandment.
- The meaning of the last commandment is that in no case should a person commit the sin of betrayal, namely, to wish his friend’s wife, because this sin is one of the worst, if not the worst.
Commandments of Christ
The commandments of Jesus Christ are no less important for any believer than the above postulates. These canons not only say what a righteous person should or should not do, but also what place people occupy on the earth (“You are the salt of the earth”, “You are the light of the world”). Rather, they give people an idea of ​​many aspects of life (for example, whom the Lord calls blessed and who should be judged for sins), rather than a set of laws, but nonetheless, they must be read to every believer.