We are all, by nature, murderers. In Rom. 8:7 we read: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.^”  Notice: the carnal mind, man as he is by nature, is enmity against God. This is what we are. Enmity against God characterizes our being. We do not merely kill or hate occasionally. We are enmity. And, we are not subject to the law of God, nei­ther indeed can be. This, of course, also applies to the ninth commandment.

In Matt. 22:37-39 Jesus explains the law of God, and we read: “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God will all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This second com­mandment is like, essentially like unto it. It is the same as the first commandment.

In the fifth commandment, we must love the neigh­bour in his authority. In the sixth commandment, we must love him in regard to his person. In the seventh commandment, we must love him in the state of mar­riage. In the eighth commandment, the Lord com­mands us to love him in his possessions. In the ninth commandment, we must love the neighbour in regard to his name and reputation: we must not bear false witness against him. And in the tenth commandment the Lord emphasizes the heart of the law of God: we must not covet; in other words, whereas coveting comes up from within us, we must love him with the heart, not merely externally, but internally, from with­in.

We must love our neighbour. Who is my neigh­bour? Of course, in a certain sense everybody is my neighbour. The Hottentot, the Chinese, the Japanese, etc., are surely my neighbours. And then we imagine that we are a good neighbour to them when we con­tribute in the collection plate as for foreign missions. However, specifically the neighbour is he who crosses my path. This is evident from the sixth command­ment. Of course, we do not hate or desire to kill a for­eigner who lives far from us and whom we never see, whom we do not know and never meet. Hence, my neighbour is the other man in my life. He crosses my path, is in conflict with my interests. He occupies the same position I do in the shop or office, in the school or church or state, has received gifts and talents I have, has probably received more than I. He limits me, strives for a better position in life than I have; if it were not for him, I would probably make greater head­way in life. He is my competitor in business; in fact, he may be my enemy who hates me, speaks all man­ner of evil against me falsely. So, my neighbour is the man whom the Lord places in my path.

And now I must love that neighbour. The opposite of this is to hate him. However, we ought to under­stand that all hatred is not sin. First, we must hate all sin and evil. God is surely characterized by hatred. God is love. God Himself is love. This means, funda­mentally, that the Lord loves Himself. And this means that He hates all evil. God’s hatred is the reaction of His love to all sin and iniquity. This, of course, must also characterize the people and the church of God. We now refer to Ps. 119: 1-4, 113, 128. We may also refer to Amos 5:15 and Romans 7:15. Secondly, how­ever, we must also hate people. Notice what we read in II Chron. 19:2. And very familiar are the words of the psalmist in Ps. 139:21, 22. Fact is, unto this hatred of men the people and the church of God are called. Lov­ing God, we understand, it is impossible for God’s peo­ple to love the enemies of God. It is true that Jesus admonishes us in Matt. 5:44 and 45 to love our ene­mies. However, there is no contradiction between this passage in Matt. 5 and Ps. 139: 21 and 22 where we read: “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee? and am I not grieved with them that rise up against Thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.” In Matt. 5 the Saviour exhorts us to love our enemies. In Ps. 139, however, the psalmist declares that he hates God’s enemies. Now it is true that these enemies may refer to the same people. How­ever, we may never hate anyone who is our enemy, because of what he does to me. But God’s enemies who reveal themselves as haters of God, must be the object of our hatred, be repulsive, to us.

What is the idea of this hatred of our neighbour? The hatred of sin and the wicked sinner is hatred for God’s sake. We hate sin and evil men because we love God. But this hatred, condemned in the sixth com­mandment, is the hatred of the neighbour for my own sake. Hatred is murder. We read in I John 3:15: “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” Hatred is not merely feeling or sentimental emo­tion. Of course, it is this, too, a feeling of intense dis­like, of loathing and abhorrence. But this feeling of hatred is rooted in the heart, and out of the heart, is an activity of the intellect and of the will. When we hate we desire to kill. We hate him because he crosses my path, stands in my way, interferes with my inter­ests, stands between me and things I want. Fact is, I hate him because I hate God. In this hatred, I am in rebellion against the law of God, this sixth command­ment God has placed that neighbour upon my path. God gave him his talents and gifts, probably superior to mine. And now I hate him, want him out of my way. I say, as it were, to the living God: I resent that you placed him there: I do not want him there. I hate him, desire to kill him.

And now we must love the neighbour, also and especially my enemy. First, we must love ourselves. Does not Jesus command us: love the neighbour as thyself. So, we must love ourselves. Of course, this does not mean that we seek ourselves, do what we do for the sake of ourselves. But it does mean that we seek the good for ourselves; we must seek God for our­selves. Failing in this, we do not love ourselves. And, secondly, we must love our neighbour as ourselves. This means that we must seek the good, God, for him. We must reveal to him the love of God, seek for him that love of God. And this also applies, and this emphatically, also to our enemies. This is, positively, the idea of this sixth commandment.

Indeed: “thou shalt not kill.” On the contrary, we must love our neighbour, also and emphatically our enemies, as ourselves. What an impossible command­ment! Hatred and murder are so deeply embedded in our nature and being, in our hearts, the center and source of all our life. This sin of murder is set before us in Lord’s Day 40 of our Heidelberg Catechism. We cannot treat all these sins now in detail. We read of anger, envy, and desire for revenge. Besides, this hatred one can and does reveal in various ways and degrees. We can kill our neighbour in our thoughts. And this is murder before God. Or, we may kill him in our words. These words need not necessarily be back­biting and slander: these particular sins are covered by the ninth commandment. But these words are words of hatred, words which we speak to him with hate and murder in our eyes. Or, we may also kill by our gestures. We may reveal our hatred by a wave of the hand, or turn up our nose at him, or a smile of utter contempt. Then, there is also the act of suicide. The actual taking of one’s life. We read of this in Answer 105 of our Heidelberg Catechism. Suicide is not an act of bravery but of cowardice. Because he does not trust in God, cannot cope with the situation in which he finds himself, one takes his own life. Sam­son, we understand, did not commit suicide. He did not take his life as contrary to the will of God. But he prayed to God. And now, in answer to that prayer, the Lord gave him strength to pull down the temple of the god of the Philistines, destroying more of the enemy in his death than in his life, and in this he was a type of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Victor over all His enemies in His death. And our Lord Jesus Christ, of course, did not commit suicide. He did not take His life, but He gave His life, in harmony with the will of God Who had sent Him. And this also applies to the sword of the magistrate. He does not kill a murderer; he exe­cutes him.

Again: “thou shalt not kill.” We must love our neighbour, also and even our enemies, as ourselves. How is this possible? This is possible only of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Love is divine. God is love in Himself. God loves Himself. And we can love only if God has first loved us and pours out His love into our hearts. Then we will also love our enemies, especially our enemies. Did not God love us while we were His enemies? Can whatever a neighbour does to us compare to what we have done to the Lord? And when the Lord pours out His love in our hearts, and we love Him because He first loved us, then we will also love our enemies, seek their good, seek God for them. If God loved us while we were His enemies, despite our great sin against Him, shall we refuse to love our enemies because of his little sin against us? May this characterize us, also as young people. Indeed, love God, and, in that love, love your neigh­bour as yourselves.

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“There is a form of self-control that says yes to what we should do as well as that which says no to what we shouldn’t do. For example, I seldom want to study the Bible when I first begin a study. There are too many other things that are mentally much easier to do, such a reading the newspaper, a magazine, or a good Christian book. A necessary expression of self-control, then, is to set myself down at the dining room table with Bible and notebook in hand and say to myself, “Get with it!” This may not sound very spiritual, but neither does Paul’s exclamation, “I beat my body and make it my slave”.”

-p. 162, ‘The Practice of Godliness” by Jerry Bridges, Navpress 1983