Devotional #106

Question 106. But this commandment seems only to speak of murder?

Answer: In forbidding murder, God teaches us, that He abhors the causes of murder, such as envy (a), hatred (b), anger (c), and desire of revenge; and that He accounts all these as murder (d).

(a) Proverbs 14:30: A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.
Romans 1:29: They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

(b) 1 John 2:9: Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.
1 John 2:11: But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

(c) James 1:20: For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
Galatians 5:20-21: Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

(d) 1 John 3:15: Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

For your personal reflection:
There is a story of a Jewish man, true or not I do not know, who came very close to death in a concentration camp during WW2.  When the Allies liberated the camp the Commandant escaped.  For many years the Commandant remained on the most wanted list of war criminals.  Finally, he was captured.  After forty-some years the prisoner was now face-to-face with his captor and tormentor.  Imagine what he must have felt.  Actually, we don’t have to.  The former prisoner said that upon seeing the Commadant he burst into tears.  When at last he composed himself he said that it was not the evil in the German man that moved him to tears, but the veil in himself.  Until that moment, he said, he was not aware of the depth of hatred in his own heart nor how like the Commandant he had grown in his hatred.  It was this commandment that spoke truth to his condition.
Whom do you hold captive in judment?  What word does this commandment speak to the condition of your heart?