Just because I haven’t shed someone’s blood, doesn’t mean I’m innocent. My heart and mind have harbored thoughts and feelings that are as foul as murder. We kill people all the time with our contemptuous anger, our animosity and malice, our hostility and gossip.
Little hidden murders.
– Alistair Begg in Pathway to Freedom
What makes life so precious is that every human being is made in God’s image. God has put his stamp on every one of us the way a great artist signs his name to a work of art. Therefore, to damage a life is to deface one of God’s masterpieces.
– Philip Graham Ryken in Written in Stone
The great need for this [fifth] command is to be found in the fact that we are by nature, rebels. We have a natural dislike for authority. It is within the family that children are to learn respect for authority.
– Alistair Begg in Pathway to Freedom
One of American’s defining characteristics is its rugged individualism. Autonomous individuals often recoil at the thought of submitting to authority. Yet such individualism, or self-rule, is at odds with a prominent teaching of Scripture to submit to the authority of God and the authorities whom he appoints. Submitting to authority is the primary focus of the fifth commandment.
– J. V. Fesko in The Rule of Love
We must honor God not only by our loyalty (first commandment) and thought-life (second commandment) and words (third commandment), but also by our use of time, in a rhythm of toil and rest; six days for work crowned by one day for worship. God’s claim on our Sabbaths reminds us that all our time is his gift, to be given back to him and used for him.
– J. I. Packer in Growing in Christ
What does the fourth commandment mean for the Christian? Like the Israelites, we are made in the image of a working, resting God. We still need to work, we still need to rest, and we can still receive the creation blessing of God’s holy day.
– Philip Graham Ryken in Written in Stone
How many people in the church,
which bears the name of Christ,
violate the third commandment
by allowing their misconduct
to bring reproach upon the name of Christ?
– J.V. Fesko in The Rule of Love
The positive thrust of the Third Commandment against the misuse of God’s name is a powerful admonition to make every effort to reverence His name.
– R. Kent Hughes in Disciplines of Grace
The problem with images is that they tend to do whatever we want them to, whether they should be doing it or not. And so, images are very different from the God we worship. God can’t be manipulated by human beings as if he were a puppet on a string.
– Anthony Tomasino in Written upon the Heart
Imagination is a wonderful gift, but when we use it to conjure up our own image of God it leads us astray. It is quite common to hear people say, “I like to think of God as…” and then add whatever picture they have in mind. The problem is that our view of God is to be defined by His revelation of Himself in the Bible, and when we conceive of Him apart from that, it will be misleading at best. Anything we imagine will be inevitably less than God, and when that which is less than God is used to portray God, we are led quickly to blasphemy and idolatry.
– Alistair Begg in Pathway to Freedom
Brian J. Mikul 