How Should We
Live?
“There are two ways: a way
of life and a way of death and there is a great difference between them. The
way of life, then, is this: First, you shall love God who made you; second,
love your neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what
you would not want done to you.… And the second commandment of
the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you
shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not
steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you
shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born. …
The way of death is this: …They show no
compassion for the poor, they do not suffer with the suffering, they do not
acknowledge their Creator, they kill their children and by abortion they cause
God’s creatures to perish. They drive away the needy and oppress the suffering.
They are advocates of the rich and unjust judges of the poor. They are filled
with every sin. May you ever be guiltless of all these sins!”
Didache (first century ad)
When Christians first began to be
noticed in the
What does the Bible tell us about how we should live?
From the beginning of His relationship with the Israelites God showed them how to live as His people. He established a relationship with them that we call a Covenant or agreement: He would be their God and they would follow His way of living. Through Moses He gave them the Ten Commandments, a basic guide to respecting God and others:
- I am the Lord your God: you shall not have strange gods before me, nor shall you make idols of them and serve them.
- You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
- Remember to keep holy the Sabbath.
- Honor your father and your mother.
- You shall not kill.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.
God alone was to be worshipped, His name was to be respected and a day set aside to worship Him. God’s people were to respect the life, the family, the property, the reputation of others.
The Ten Commandments identify several most basic sins (idolatry, murder, adultery, etc.). They also show us the heart of what sin is. For a believer, sin is not merely breaking a law. Sin is a refusal to follow God’s way for our life and therefore is a breaking of the Covenant He has made with us.
Is God’s way just a question
of “don’ts”?
For the most part the Ten Commandments were expressed in negative ways (“You shall not kill,” etc.), just as we tell our children to avoid what will harm them before they understand the reason why. The Israelites under Moses were infants in their relationship with God and the Ten Commandments were their ABC’s in learning the ways of God.
As they grew in their life with God the Jews came to see that respect was not just a matter of avoiding disrespect but of positively showing due respect to God and others. They expressed these basics of relationship in positive terms: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuternomy 6:5) and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).
If you love your neighbor, you don’t just refrain from killing him – you do what you can to protect his life. You defend those who are most dependent: those who are too weak, too young, too disabled, too elderly to help themselves. You don’t just refrain from robbing your neighbor; you use your belongings to assist him in need. You uphold honorable marriages and encourage others’ sense of self-worth.
Jesus would say centuries later that loving God was “the greatest and first commandment” and that loving one’s neighbor was like it. “On these two commandments,” He added, “hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). If a person loved, then keeping and even exceeding the precepts of these Commandments would follow.
These Commandments are still fundamental for living a godly life. However the Apostles began observing Sunday as the Lord’s Day, since it was on a Sunday that the resurrection of Christ was revealed and it was also on a Sunday that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church. Our Church still observes the Sabbath (Saturday) as a remembrance of the original creation, but gives greater honor to Sunday, the day of the new creation in Christ.
Why is loving one’s neighbor like loving God?
The
first book of the Bible depicts God as saying, “Let us make man in our
image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26) and so it happened. In our deepest self we are all the
image of God and we are meant by God’s grace to “become participants of
the divine nature” (2 Peter
1:4) It is not our individual personalities, education or wealth that command
our respect. Rather it is our universal common being as the image God, the
Lover of mankind, which makes the way we treat others equal to the way we treat
God. God has identified Himself with us to such an extent that Christ would say
in the Parable of the Judgment, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to
one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
Did Jesus give us any commandments to follow?
Jesus upheld the commandments of the Old Covenant but also gave us a guiding precept for the New Covenant: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). The heart of this New Commandment is that we should love as Christ loves.
Throughout the Gospels we see examples of Christ’s way of loving. Among them:
- He is merciful and calls to us, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).
- His love is universal and He tells us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45).
- He forgives, even as He hangs on the cross, and reminds us, “Forgive and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37).
- He puts His Father’s will first and teaches us to do the same: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matthew 6:33).
This New Commandment is at the
heart of the Lord’s Prayer which He taught us and which we say so often: “Thy
kingdom come… thy will be done… forgive us as we forgive…”
When will this
The Lord teaches us that the fullness of God’s Kingdom will only be manifest at the end of time, but that already in Christ “the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:21). At the last supper He instituted two great signs of the New Covenant pointing to His presence in our midst, which we are to continue through the ages. The first is, of course, the Eucharist: “Do this in remembrance of me…” (Luke 22:19). When we gather at the Divine Liturgy Christ is mystically present, making us one body with Him.
Christ gave us the second sign of the New Covenant when He washed His disciples’ feet at table saying, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (John 13:14-15). We are to serve others “even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
What are the Beatitudes?
The Gospel depicts Jesus beginning the Sermon on the Mount with this summary of His teaching: “Blessed are the poor in spirit… those who mourn… the meek… those who hunger and thirst after righteousness…” and the rest (Matthew 5:3-11). These are the characteristics of those who seek first God’s Kingdom, a kind of model for those who strive to live the Christian life. The New Covenant is not marked by rules or prohibitions, but by the invitation to a richer life: the way of the Kingdom. The Beatitudes are exemplified in the lives of the saints, which is why we seek to know how they lived. They are the theme-song of the Christian life and will be sung over us at our burial, to represent the way we have been called to live.
This isn’t the way I was
raised!
For one reason or another many of us have come to think that Christian life is a matter of doing the absolute minimum to “get into heaven.” This kind of living is not “life,” any more than simply breathing is “being alive.” We would not be content living on bread and water – we should not be content with a watered-down religious life. In the Parable of the Vine Jesus says, “He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” (John 5:5). To abide means to remain ever united to Him who is the Source of our life. This is the great gift we are offered. Our way of life should reflect the generosity of Him who calls us.
Melkite
Greek Catholic
Eparchy of
Office of Educational Services