You Shall Not Murder

As a church we got back to our series on the ten commandments, coming now to the sixth commandment “You shall not murder.” Our key text for today is Genesis 9:1-7.

Here we see three reasons to value life. 1) Because to take human life is a capital crime that deserves capital punishment. That seems plain from the text. To state this positively is also helpful: human life is so valuable that no price can be paid to make right the taking of it. No matter how wealthy a murderer is, all the money in the world cannot satisfy the demands of justice. 2) We should also value human life because human life belongs to God. “It is He who made us and we are His” (Ps 100:3). No human has the right to take another human’s life. We also don’t have the right to take our own lives. 3) The third reason is because we are made in God’s image. Thomas Watson uses the analogy of a person tearing the picture of a person they don’t like. This is what we do when we hurt or harm God’s image. We must be so careful not to do this. We must be careful to set up barriers in our lives to ensure we don’t hurt others. Keeping the speed limit is one such barrier. Not taking foolish and unnecessary risks is another.

In all this, we should remember what is the greatest evidence that God values His image in us. That He sent His only Son, who is the image of the invisible God, so that we might be saved and renewed in knowledge after the image of our Creator.