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The Ten Commandments of God
A Guide into a Higher Life

The Message of Truth

The Second Commandment

T he second commandment reads in the Luther Bible: “You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain, for the Lord will not leave unpunished the one who takes His name in vain.”

T he Original Christians see it as an abuse of the name of God when people who know the commandments of God and the teachings of Christ and say yes to them, but do not keep them, perhaps even pointing them out to others and yet acting quite differently themselves.

God’s name is severely abused more often than is generally thought, because many fool others and themselves about the real motives of everything they do and let happen.

Christ, the prophetic Spirit, teaches us that it is not God who punishes us for what we do, but that we punish ourselves through the law that says: “What you sow, you will reap.”

It is not God who sows, but we; and what  we  sow is what  we  will reap. And so, we will come to feel the results of everything we do and let happen, because each one is responsible for himself.

If we believe in a punishing God, then we are denying this spiritual principle of sowing and reaping, through which, in the final analysis, we are indirectly guided—by way of self-recognition and clearing up our sins.

We are Christians and we should decide: Either we believe in the punishing God or in the God of love and mercy: in the God who reconciles and forgives, in the God who, out of love, sent us His Son, Jesus, the Christ.

“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

And so on the Sabbath day, the Original Christians honor our eternal Father together and consciously cultivate the inner life more than the outer life on this day. In this way, this day is a source of strength for us.

“You shall honor your father and your mother, that you may live long in the land that the Lord, your God, will give you.”

Our father and mother are also our neighbor. We should respect and cherish them, we should carry them—like all people—in our heart, but honor is due to God, our Lord, alone. So we should differentiate between “respecting” and “honoring.” We honor God by loving Him above all things, by setting Him above our human aspects and by clearing up our humanness, our sinfulness, with His power. We respect our neighbor by wishing him well from our hearts, by meeting him with understanding, by not being envious of him or belittling him, by leaving him his freedom and by doing for him first what we expect of him.

“You shall not kill.”

Whether killing or murdering—everyone knows: The one who goes to war will probably kill his brother. Since Jesus of Nazareth told us that we are all brothers and sisters, children of  one  Father, this is simply fratricide, whether killing or murdering.

Violence will always produce violence. We know the senselessness of war. Soldiers are sent to war so that there will be peace. But can one make peace with weapons, with cannons, with killing our neighbor?

What do we prefer? To be killed or murdered?
Both mean dead. Life is taken deliberately.

T he fifth commandment also holds true in our relationship with the animals. Both institutions, Catholic and Protestant, approve of animal experiments.
But animals, too, can feel! The animals scream in the slaughterhouses, because they sense that their life will be taken in a few minutes. They sense they won’t be allowed to die according to the laws of nature, but that a bullet will end their lives.
The part-souls of many animals carry these experiences, the grief and suffering of hundreds and thousands of years. This makes many animals sad and others aggressive. Who is guilty?

“You shall not commit adultery.”

If I, as wife or husband, for example, have made a bond before God with my partner, I will remain true to him, in thought, word and deed.

Is the goal of flirting to remain true to our partner and to our yes to our partner?

In this sense, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “You shall not commit adultery, but I say to you: The one who just looks at a woman in a covetous way has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

If, in Christ, faithfulness is a commandment, then there are so many possibilities of being with one another in marriage and partnership. Then we try to find ways that both can develop in personal freedom.

It is said: “On earth as it is in heaven.” Marriage is wanted by God—but not limitation. Not adultery, but being with each other.

In the Sermon on the Mount, we have the instructions which help us recognize why we have made a mistake and how we can clear it up.
No matter what sin we have to recognize in ourselves, we can always turn back and change. For God loves all of His children. He doesn’t lock any of them out of His heart. This is why there is no eternal damnation, but the turning back through the grace of God. This means that when we fall into sin, we should neither stay lying there nor continue to persist in these thoughts, these sins, but should gather up the courage to take the hand of the Eternal and to stand up. And we should clear up our sins with the help of Christ in us and no longer commit them. This is the path to freedom. This is the path to our neighbor and with our neighbor.

… what is the meaning of the seventh commandment “You shall not steal”?

Stealing means that we take something from our neighbor; we steal something from him. We steal money from our neighbor here or there; we steal his goods and possessions. But we also steal time from our neighbor when, for instance, we have unimportant conversations with him. We also interfere in his life when we prevent him from following his own way, by forcing our opinions on him and expecting him to believe what we offer him as our opinion.

Christ teaches us … in His great work of revelation “This Is My Word”:

“The one who allows his fellow man to lead him by the nose, thus doing what others say although he recognizes that this is not his way, is lived. Through this, he passes by his own life, his real earthly existence. He does not use the days; he is used by those to whom he is servile and therefore does not know his path over this earth as a human being.
The one who binds his fellow man, by forcing his will upon the latter, is comparable to a vampire who sucks the energy from his fellow man. He does not know himself and at the same time, he ties himself to his victim—and vice versa, the victim who lets himself be drained also ties himself to the former. Both will be brought together again, in one of their lives, either in an earthly garment or as souls in the spheres beyond—and this will keep on happening, so often and so long, until the one has forgiven the other.”

If we look into the true motives of our words and actions, then we may discover that we have acted in an underhanded way and have thus stolen from our neighbor.

A correct trade cycle is based on the principle of “giving and receiving.” If this cycle is in balance, then we receive as much as we have given selflessly. The “being for and with one another” of a true Christian community life is based on this; and the result is the good for all, the common good.

“You shall bear no false witness against your neighbor” or “your neighbors.”

And so, we violate the eighth commandment when we say something about our neighbor that is not true. But bearing false witness also means to flatter our neighbor, to speak honeyed words to him, to praise him, to acknowledge him with a lot of words, with a lot of flowery words, in order to perhaps achieve something for ourselves, personally. Our thoughts, our desires are then totally different than our words. This is to bear false witness—it is a falsehood.

A truth, a spiritual principle of Inner Life, can thus be conveyed and passed on solely by the person who has actualized—that is, lived—this himself.

We all should check what we say every day. … If our words don’t correspond to the truth—that is, are only suppositions or opinions—and we are aware of this because our thoughts show something totally different and because we may even act totally different, then we are bearing false witness.

The ninth commandment reads: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house” and the tenth commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, servant, handmaid, cow, donkey, nor anything that your neighbor has.”

What is ours in the outer world, here on earth, is our earthly heritage, so to speak. It is a gift from God, which we should manage well, but to which we should never bind ourselves.

The conclusion from this as regards the ninth commandment, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house,” is: Be satisfied with what God has given you, with what you are granted to manage. It is your task to respect what you have on earth, to increase and care for it in a law-abiding way, but not to be envious of what your neighbor has.
Many are envious of their neighbor’s goods and property, because there is an imbalance, an inequality, in our world.

When people live the Christian ideals, the commandments of being for and with one another, of unity, togetherness, brotherliness, then the demands of the ninth and tenth commandments are no longer a question, for they are no longer tied to their personal property. Everything belongs to the community and everyone works in the community for the benefit of all.

We can also look at the ninth commandment “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house” from a spiritual point of view.
As Original Christians, we believe that each of us is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that is, the house of God.
How is it when we see the house, the temple of our neighbor, as our property, in order to do what we want with this temple, this house?

When we look into the history of the western world, we see that serfdom began in the Middle Ages. The farmers were there for the nobility, to work for them, and received only a fragment of what they produced. Let’s also think about slavery. … In Africa people were taken prisoners and auctioned off—slave trade was practiced.
[There is another form of slavery:]
Children who can’t decide for themselves, because they are still too young and thus don’t yet have the ability to tell the difference, are simply taken and bound to an institution through baptism, even though Jesus taught: “First teach and then baptize.” This means: Let your neighbor decide freely whether he wants to accept this or that religion.

We have the tenth commandment in the Luther Bible and it sounds a lot like the ninth commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, servant, handmaid, cow, donkey, nor anything that your neighbor has.”

Do we see ourselves just as the steward of what God entrusted to us? Do we pass on everything that is beyond what we need, so that equality can develop on this earth and in this world?

However, the one who strives for, that is, covets, the property of his neighbor, wants something for himself exclusively.

T o belittle our neighbor because of an attribute, an ability or something he possesses and that we are envious of is also a violation of the ninth and tenth commandments, as well as of the seventh: “You shall not steal.”