The Commandments and moral life · Question 1

Aren't the Ten Commandments a list of prohibitions God made to take your freedom away?

Watercolor of a lamb walking through an open door onto the road of freedom

The question: “It's full of ‘do not do this’ — so how is that supposed to be love and freedom?”

The Church's answer: The Ten Commandments are the words of a covenant, given by the God who set Israel free from slavery — and given only after he had said plainly, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” They are not a table of conditions God holds out, promising to rescue later whoever obeys well enough. They are a road given to a people God has already loved and set free, so that they will not trade that freedom back for the slavery of idols, violence, lies, and greed.

The commandments don't stop at forbidding evil. “You shall not kill” is a call to respect and protect life; “you shall not steal” is a call to guard and to share another person's rights and the common good. The two commandments — love of God and love of neighbor — light up the whole of the Ten. Real freedom is not the power to act on every impulse you feel, but the power to recognize the good within the truth and to choose love.

An analogy — a signpost on the road out

For someone who has just walked out of a dangerous camp, a sign reading “this road leads back into the minefield” can be a guide that protects the freedom they won rather than a wall that takes it away. The analogy doesn't mean every moral question is as simple as finding a road; it shows the order — that the commandments are a response to having been set free.

If they press further: “So keeping them because you're afraid of punishment means nothing?” — fear of what a wrong will cost can be a starting place. But mature Christian obedience doesn't stay at a slave's dread or at a bargain struck in hope of a reward; it grows into the freedom of sons and daughters who choose the good of the God who loved them first, and the good of their neighbor, because they love them.

In one sentence: “The Ten Commandments aren't a list of prohibitions you use to buy salvation. They're the road for answering with love the God who freed you first, and for keeping that freedom out of the slavery of idols, violence, and lies.”