Conventionally we call them the Ten Commandments, but the Hebrew text speaks of the Ten Words (Deut. 4:13; 10:4; Exod. 34:28). The Ten Words establish the conditions necessary for a free, loving and just community of God's people to develop and flourish. The three adjectives -- free, loving, just -- are basic to community.
Community is intricate and complex. It consists of many people of various moods, ideas, needs, experiences, gifts and injuries, desires and disappointments, blessings and losses, intelligence and stupidity, living in proximity and in respect for one another, and believingly in worship of God. It is not easy and it is not simple. The conditions, established by the Ten Words, at least make it possible. None of the conditions is onerous. All are both necessary and non-negotiable.
No community worth its salt has ever existed very long in ignorance or defiance of the conditions.
Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
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