The Ten Commandments do more than just provide the moral framework for a civil society.
First, they help us know what God is like.
They reveal him to be just, fair, righteous, and holy. They also inform us about what he considers sinful.
Second, the commandments affirm that we are made in God’s image.
Some of the commandments seem intuitively obvious—the prohibitions against lying, stealing, and murder, for instance.
This is because we share God’s sense of right and wrong, although ours has been damaged by sin and is now less accurate than his.
Third, the Ten Commandments help us recognize our inability to live up to God’s standard of holiness, and thereby qualify for heaven. They help us realize why Jesus had to die for our sins.
God wants this awareness to motivate us to repent of our sinfulness, so he can forgive us, manifest his true contentment in us, and give us eternal life.
This is the ultimate reason God gave us The Ten Commandments.
