Fifth Commandment
What is the fifth commandment?
You shall not murder.
What does this mean?
We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.
By continuing on in the second table of the Law we continue to examine our relationship to our neighbor and our duties therein. As an aid to our study of the fifth commandment, we can take Luke 10:25-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan, as a biblical foil for our thoughts. Though charities, laws, and foundations have been named after the Good Samaritan, and of all the parables this is likely one of the most well-known and well-worn, it is worth continuously meditating on, especially considering our subject matter: care for the neighbor.
The first thing that this parable elucidates for us is that the care for neighbor is one of two chief topics that the bible presents to us. When asked, “What is written in the Law?” Jesus’ interlocutor replies that the Old Testament contains two doctrines, faith and love, or “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” These two doctrines perfectly summarize the two tables of the Law which treat our relationship to God and our relationship to the neighbor. What we owe God is faith and what we owe our neighbor is love, and when these two duties are fulfilled, the whole Law is fulfilled. By faith we stand before God and in love we stand before our neighbor and through these nothing is lacking.
But the lawyer that asks this question is not satisfied with Jesus’ answer. The word that Jesus speaks is a word of Law which stands against him and serves as a mirror of his own fault and lack, and thus he commits himself to the project of justifying himself. In order to make himself right over and against God he asks, “And who is my neighbor?” This is as much to say, “That one must love neighbor is, of course, obvious, Jesus. But who one must love is open to interpretation. Surely, we mustn’t love everyone or unconditionally!” But by attempting to put conditions on the unconditional love that God demands, this lawyer is only further confirmed as an obstinate sinner with a heart as hard as stone.
The answer that Jesus gives to this cold and loveless lawyer is the parable of the Good Samaritan which identifies two parts of being a neighbor. The first is that to be a neighbor means to walk down the same road as someone else, to see them and to be near them. Whoever you are near is your neighbor. Thus, the Priest and the Levite who come near the half dead man are both neighbors, but, according to Jesus and the lawyer’s own admission, they did not prove to be neighbors which is the second part of being a neighbor. The one who both is a neighbor and proves to be a neighbor is the Samaritan who, most shows himself to be a neighbor by “showing mercy” and having “compassion” on the one in need.
How this Samaritan shows mercy and compassion is also useful for understanding the mercy and compassion we are given to have. The Samaritan takes on the form of a servant. After the example of Isaiah 53, he “bears” this man’s griefs and “carries” his sorrows. He places him on his own animal, binds up his wounds as if they were his own, and takes him to an inn and pays for it as if it were his own stay. The man’s wounds become his own. The man’s pain becomes his own. And the man’s expense becomes his own. He becomes incarnate and “wears” his neighbor, and finally then, loves his neighbor truly as if he were himself.
This parable certainly is foundational for Luther’s own explanation of the fifth commandment. Naturally, hurting and harming our neighbor in his body are forbidden, which can be carried out with hand, heart, word, gesture, or by aiding and abetting another, but he also includes the command to help and support the neighbor with hand, heart, word, and aid. This multidimensional picture of murder is supported by Jesus’ own Sermon on the Mount where he includes not only physical harm but harming one’s brother in word (“You fool!”) and in thought (“hating your brother in his heart”). Such a person who breaks the fifth commandment in thought, word, or deed, Jesus says the “hell of fire” awaits him. The first epistle of John states the same with strength and severity saying, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar… whoever loves God must also love his brother.” Hatred of brother and love of God cannot co-exist. One casts out the other. The positive element of “help” and “support” is ably demonstrated by Isaiah 53, as previously mentioned, but also by Romans 12 which also takes up the theme of “offering your body” as a living sacrifice for the sake of the neighbor. This has been memorably put by one theologian as “dying in the most useful way possible for your neighbor.”
Practically speaking, this commandment applies to a wide variety of situations in life. God’s great gift of life is threatened in nearly every stage of life, the beginning, middle, and end. Life is threatened at the outset with what is often euphemistically labeled “reproductive health care,” but what this commandment illuminates and exposes as “murder” plain and simple. This happens with even greater frequency today because of the medical advances in genetic screening and in vitro fertilization where embryos are discarded or destroyed because they are “defective”, “unnecessary”, or “unwanted”. The dissolution of the family unit and the increasingly mechanistic and utilitarian way in which we approach life have also aided and abetted the death of millions. “Procreation” has been bastardized into “re-production” and the body has become “what” a person “has” instead of “who” a person “is”. Biblically speaking, we do not “have” a body; we “are” a body. You are an embodied spirit and an inspirited body.
Life continues to be threatened from within and without after conception and birth. From without, life is threatened by domestic abuse, bullying, and harassment on an individual level, and likewise by racism, prejudice, and hatred on a national, ethnic, or credal level. From within, life is threatened by self-destructive tendencies and actions such as drug and alcohol abuse, cutting and self-harm, and anorexia and bulimia. Again, with the advance of medical science to help the body, we have also advanced medical science to harm the body. Drugs have never been more potent or addictive and surgeries that alter and harm the body have never been cheaper and easier. Today the influx of so-called, “gender reassignment” surgery is a tragic example of the magnitude of destruction and harm that people can commit against themselves.
Life is also and especially endangered at the end of life. It has become increasingly more common and socially acceptable to devalue human life on account of suffering, pain, and inconvenience. The consequence is a dramatic uptick in suicide, physician assisted suicide, and euthanasia. This final challenge to life, however, brings to the fore the true Christian stance on life: that all life, no matter how supposedly small, weak, unwanted, unnecessary, defective, different, abled, disabled, young, old, embittered, or pained, is valuable and precious in the sight of the Lord. God has declared his own estimation of the body by his total trinitarian work. God the Father designed the body, created the body, and preserves the body. God the Son assumed a body and through a body redeemed our bodies. And God the Holy Spirit sanctifies our bodies, dwells in our bodies by faith, and will raise our bodies on the last day. There is nothing that we can bring to bear or assert that can undo and undermine God’s own value and love for the body.
In view of the great and many sins against the fifth commandment, it is important to remember that there is no sin too great nor are there sins too numerous that Christ cannot forgive. All who repent and believe in Jesus, who confess their sins and ask for forgiveness, such ones have a gracious and loving God who pardons all offenses and covers all shame and sin. Likewise, one of the reasons the church exists in the world to this day is to show forth the love of Christ and bear the sins of their neighbors, to come alongside and care for people who are broken and lost. The work of the Good Samaritan and our Good Samaritan, Jesus Christ, is the work of the church in the world.
Prayer: Lord God, by your Law you guard and defend every human life from violence and destruction. Give us wisdom never to hurt or harm our neighbors in their bodily life and give us hearts of mercy to help and support them in every physical need; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
