The Six Commandments?

Interestingly enough if you go a bit further you get this:

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Giving your money to the poor is not a commandment, though it could be extrapolated from love your neighbor. The point was that Jesus knew that this man had done a good job of following the commandments, but not a perfect one. I'm sure that he knew that the young man honored God in the appropriate ways. Ultimately though he was unable to sacrifice his will for God's. We all fall short and even if there were just one commandment we'd manage to mess that up. So your friend has a point that all ten aren't mentioned here. But I don't think that means Jesus was advocating graven iomages or having other gods. The point isn't for Jesus to give us a checklist of some sort to follow.

Go to the end of that chapter and see this

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We are to be willing to sacrifice all of the things in our life that we deem important and put God's will first. That is the essence of the Commandments

I forget the exact wording, but George Carlin broke the Ten Commandments down into one; it basically being, don't be an asshole.

Actually, if we want to get technical, the list commonly referenced as THE 10 commandments is never actually called that. They are simply the list cited by Moses when he comes down from Mt. Sinai in Exodus 20:2-17, but they were never inscribed on any stone tablets. Moses makes a second trip up the mountain in Exodus 31:18, and gets the first set of stone-carved commandments, but then immediately destroys them in the midst of Golden Calfgate in Exodus 32:19.

Finally, he goes back a third time, and God gives him a replacement set.

Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. -- Exodus 34:1

THESE are the only set ever actually referred to as The Ten Commandments. (And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. -- Exodus 34:28) However, it should be noted, that the account of this set of commandments is quite different from the ones Charlton Heston would have us hanging in every public school classroom. It reads as follows, from Exodus 34:14-26:

1) Thou shalt worship no other God.
2) Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
3) The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep.
4) Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.
5) Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks.
6) Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God.
7) Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.
8) Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left until the morning.
9) The first of the firstfruits of thy land shalt thou bring unto the house of the Lord thy God.
10) Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

So, if it's possible that God himself could get the commandments COMPLETELY mixed up in only a matter of days, wouldn't it be reasonable to suggest that Jesus, too, might have just FORGOTTEN the other four commandments?

<strong>But if it's not a checklist, why single out those six above the others? Why not just say, "Do what you can as well as you can" without getting specific?</strong>

Probably to give the young man the opportunity to show his pride (also a sin).

<strong>It seems to me that by going down a list he's saying in effect, "Okay, these are the really important ones." </strong>

I don't think that was his intention. Though it is possible. There are actually over 600 commandments and these would be among the most important. He was trying to show the young man that his weakness came in the area of loving others and thus these are the commands he picked out.

<strong>Perhaps he's not saying, "Forget all about the one's I didn't mention," but it seems he's certainly pointing out that some are more important and applicable than others.</strong>

And actually he points out the most important commands in Mt 22.

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So you could certainly argue that some are more important to God than others. But I think really what it boils down to is verse 40. All of Gods commands boil down to those two concepts. And since we can really do neither of these things that shows us our need for a saviour.

And since these
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are vital to loving God, they can't be left out utterly.

And if you want to really get technical Ray, God gave his people over 600 laws to follow.

Yes, 612, to be exact. But again, that latter list is the only one ever specifically called the ten commandments.

Yep. Because there are ten and they are commandments. Thanks to Moses' photographic memory we have the original 10 thankfully. wink

And it's wothwhile to point out that yhe last word in verse 28 should be translated as words. And its a lot more than ten words.