Keeping the Commandments

Christ takes us where we are in relation to Him. But we must desire to see and know Him with more clarity and incisiveness. What this means is that we must long to understand His will for us. On the face of it, this seems hard. It is not. He tells us that if we desire or long to be one with Him, we must keep His commandments. This means that we must obey and uphold the Ten Commandments. To do so, we must pray that He would give us the Grace of His Holy Spirit to enable us to keep His Commandments. If we are breaking any of the the Commandments, we must repent and remove any triggers and catalysts that threaten their reappearance in our lives. Radical Amputation is needed. If our minds, eyes, or hands offend us, we must eliminate whatever carries them into sin. The Ten Commandments are to be taken literally. But they are also to be understood spiritually. We break them in ways that may not be technically true. We might say that we have not committed adultery because we have not cheated on our wives with other real-life women. But if we are looking at porn, we are committing adultery. We might say that we are not killing anyone because we have never literally killed a man. And yet when we refuse to forgive another, hope for another’s salvation, or love another, the other is as good as having been killed by us. We say that we have not born false witness against another. And yet perhaps we have exaggerated and embellished a tale or story about another in order to elicit a laugh that makes us more lovable. We have said that we have not coveted other men’s riches or goods. But hoarding is a sin, and if we are not giving 10% off the top before taxes to God in His Church, we are nothing but greedy bastards. The list goes on. Today let us pray about how we are not keeping the Commandments.  Let us pray that Christ will give us the Holy Spirit so that He might subdue, conquer, and overcome all sin in us. Let us pray that Christ will infuse us with those virtues by which He wins our hearts and captivates our minds in the loving embrace of His Sanctifying Grace.

©wjsmartin