The people had been slaves in Egypt, cruelly treated. God liberated them and then cared for their needs during their escape. Having done that, He took them to Mount Sinai to make a statement: “Now that you trust Me, I want to help you with your life. Do as I say, and you’ll find happiness; and the world will see and know you are My people.”3

The late pastor and writer Ron Mehl says that these commandments are, in fact, expressions of love from a Father to His children, “a tender, heartfelt message from the very hand of God… It’s all there. He doesn’t leave anything out. These ten statements are all-encompassing, touching virtually every part of our lives. They are the parameters to live by—the truths He knows are going to provide blessing and strength, a future and a hope.”4

Going back in history, I discovered others who saw in the Decalogue an expression of God’s love. In one of his sermons, British preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “That law of the Ten Commandments is a gift of great kindness to the sons of men, for it tells us the wisest and the happiest way of living. It forbids us nothing but what would be to our injury and it withholds from us nothing which would be a real pleasure to us… God does not make laws denying us anything that would really be for our good… We ought to see the love of God in the gift of law.”5

In the past, I have not always seen the Old Testament Law as an expression of love. I wondered how the Jewish people bore the burden of all those rules and regulations that seemed to hem them in on every side. But my understanding was incomplete. Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft helped bring the truth into focus for me:

Law expresses and serves love. We do not usually understand that. That is why we do not usually understand the frequent exclamations of love and joy in the Psalms when the psalmist contemplates God’s law. “His delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law he meditates day and night” (Ps 1:2). And again: “The ordinances of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Ps 19:9–10).

We do not understand this because we think of the law as a dead and as a threatening thing. But the psalmist thinks of the law as a living and loving thing. He recognizes it as the expression of the will of the living God, and His will to us is love.6

And while we’re discussing common misconceptions, how about those who suggest that Jesus somehow made the commandments obsolete? That, since we now live under grace, we need not bother with the baggage of commandments and divine law?