[If we are to understand this commandment of God in its deepest essence, we must first distinguish between sin as an act and sin as a condition. For example, when it comes to this commandment about the sinful act, we should start with Cain, the first fratricide who beat his own brother to death because he simply could not stand to be around him. And if we are talking about sin as a condition, then here again we have to go all the way back to Paradise, where man fell out of fellowship with God, where man's relationship with God was corrupted. From this it follows that the very first man who came into the world in this state outside Paradise, in this corrupted relationship with God, Cain, is already a man who cannot bear that the other can be kinder than he, that the other can do better than he, rather let the other die: he beats his brother to death! So it is not the case that Cain's murder becomes the cause of more and more murders, it is not the individual evil-doer who causes the chain of other evil-doers, but Cain's sinful relationship with God, his corrupt human nature, is the reason why there are so many murders and evil-doers in the world. And since we are all by nature Cainian men, carrying within us the Cainian nature, the Cainian temper, therefore every man is a murderer of men in his heart!Our creed has a cruel thesis: 'I am naturally disposed to hate God and my neighbour' (cf. Heidelberg KT 5 K-F). There was a time - in the recent past, in the age of the philosophy of idealism - when it was thought that it was possible to educate people out of evil, that it was only necessary to live rationally, to build schools, to teach people the principles of morality, and then there would be no need for prisons, and humanity would become more virtuous. They believed in human goodness, in the natural good qualities and potentialities in man. And what was the result of this belief in the so-called good man? The terrible inhumanity of the two world wars! What could reason, logical human thinking, give, what could it produce? The perfected human slaughterhouse and two atomic bombs. Look at what man is capable of: even his piety, his piety produced by sheer human strength and good intentions, leads again and again to inquisition. Even his religiosity kills! Do you sense that there is something very wrong somewhere deep inside man? That perhaps repressed and restrained by culture, by state laws, by penal sanctions, but there lurks the Cain nature in the depths of the heart of us all?!
But it is not an exaggeration to say that deep down we are all human killers. Especially if we believe what Jesus says, that whoever is angry with his brother has already committed murder in his heart. Or what the Holy Spirit of God says to the apostle John: "He who hates his brother is a murderer of men" (1 John 3:15). Air raids, hand-to-hand fighting, sieges, bombings, the horrible images of organised massacres were on the screen. And these horrific scenes, in the wake of which immense suffering, destruction, death and mourning poured down on a region, were watched by the cinema audience as something of amusing curiosity, and applauded more than once at the end! Behold, here is the Cain spirit!
Have you not experienced, yourself or others, the bitter emotion with which one can think of another whom one feels to be an enemy? How calmly people who could not even cut the neck of a chicken could drop a nuclear bomb here or there on someone else, of course, to solve the world's problems. Can you feel the kain spirit in him? It doesn't take much to expose the same murderous impulse that brought Cain's hand down on Abel. We may have our hand restrained by half-education, or by law, or by some reasoning, and it may not become a homicidal act, but the impulse, the emotion is the same that the Scripture says is homicidal.
Let us therefore not delude ourselves: man will never be better! But Jesus did not come into this world to help make the good will in man a little better. He did not come to enhance the good qualities in man by his own example and to bring out the good in man, but Jesus came into this world precisely to become man like us, to descend into this lost world, God, to save us, to redeem us and to make us, human beings, who have become completely powerless to do good, into people who are no longer capable of hating, no longer capable of killing, but capable of loving! Jesus did not proclaim a new morality on earth, but God's grace for a lost world. He did not bring a new moral law to a depraved humanity, but brought a loving and forgiving God to a people who had turned away from God. And this commandment "thou shalt not kill" does not mean to bring more humanity into human coexistence, to do whatever it takes to develop your purest feelings, to suppress the hatred that wells up inside you, but to know that Jesus died for you and for this, and this alone, God still claims you as his own, despite your natural inclination to hate God and man. Believe this, and let this faith inspire you to do something you would otherwise be incapable of doing: to love others!
This does not mean that Cain, from now on, should always look at Abel with a smile, nor does it mean that he should promise not to hurt him any more, but that Cain and Abel will go together to Calvary, where the atoning sacrifice for both their sins will be made, where both will be accepted by God out of grace, and where a whole new relationship will be established between them. It is not that they suddenly become friends, but the realisation that God loves them both so incomprehensibly, so infinitely!
"Thou shalt not kill!" This commandment leads us to Calvary, the scene of the most horrible murder of man, of God, where I can now say to my enemy with all my heart, Cain can say to Abel, Abel to Cain: I am reconciled to you, because God is reconciled to me. I accept you as my brother, just as you are, because God has accepted you as his child, just as I am. I forgive you everything, because God has forgiven me everything. I love you without any ulterior motives, because God loves me and you the same way! And then it no longer matters whether the other person is likeable or dislikeable, whether his closeness is pleasant or annoying, whether he shares the same or opposite worldview to me, nor how much I benefit or suffer from living and living as he does, but only that Jesus was born and died for him just as he died for me. And then, in the other, you no longer see the hated figure who must be exterminated, who "deserves to be struck by a benevolent guta" or "hit on the head by an atomic bomb", but you see in the other the man whom God loved so much that Jesus died for him, and who must therefore never, under any circumstances, even in thought, be killed!
It is impossible to speak of the VIth Commandment without shedding light on the universal threat to humanity that this Word brings: war. It is difficult to say anything new here, since many responsible statements and irresponsible speeches have already been made against war. One of the world's greatest authorities, the pastor-physician-organist-missionary Albert Schweitzer, in connection with his well-known protest, a West Berlin newspaper asked another of the world's greatest authorities, the well-known theology professor Károly Barth, what his opinion was on this issue. In his reply, Károly Barth appealed directly to humanity, saying: let people take their own affairs into their own hands. By all means let them make it clear to their governments and their press that they do not want to exterminate others or themselves. This is not about principles, ideologies, systems or political interests, this is about life. It is about people, it is about humanity!
God has placed a sacred protective veil around human life with the Sixth Commandment. Life belongs to God! He gives it. He can take it away! He alone reserves to Himself the right to give or take life. And the life that God has given, no one can take from the giver. That would not only be robbing man, but also robbing God. Even the giver himself cannot do with his life what he will. He did not give you life, so he cannot take it away from you. God says: "Man, whoever you are, do not kill. A very thought-provoking moment occurred when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The crew of the plane did not know exactly what was happening, they only knew that they were testing a new kind of bomb. At 9.15 a.m., when the white flash of lightning which then killed 100,000 people flashed, the peculiar thing happened that several members of the crew, as if by mouth, burst out in this cry: GOD! It would be difficult to know what these men were feeling or thinking when they cried out, but it is certain that where men are killed, it is not only men who are involved: it is also God, the God who owns all life! Where man is killed, man is responsible before God! So it is from the first man who killed another man.
During the First World War, the then assistant chaplain at Kálvin Square visited wounded soldiers in the hospital on Üllői út. Among other things, he asked a very sad-faced young man who came to his bedside, "Which part of his body was injured? In my soul, the boy replied! And he told me that he had to go for a needle attack. He too rushed, a mad scramble ensued, enemy soldiers were facing him, both stabbing him with bayonets, he managed to stick his bayonet into the other's eye first. The hard steel penetrated the skull, and when the other fell, he still refused to come out. He had to keep running. He pulled out the bayonet, it wouldn't come. Then, in his agony, he stepped on the other man's neck and pulled the weapon out of his skull. He finished his horrific narrative: 'The soldier lying on the ground looked at me with his one eye in the frightened wonder of life dying. Ever since, I have seen that look in my mind's eye!
My brothers! This is war! Only now on a much larger scale! In the Second World War, 23 million people lost their lives and 30 million were wounded in body and how many hundreds of millions were wounded in spirit? This latter injury is not recorded in the statistics! When we think about it, does not every part of us, even if we are not people of faith, say that never again should one man confront another man in this way! And if you even hear the Gospel of Christ, which says that you should love people not because they are so kind and sympathetic, or so pitiable and miserable, but because Jesus Christ was born and died for them, because they are of unspeakable value in the sight of God. Yes, when you hear this gospel of Christ, that is all you can really say: No and a thousand times no! I must not hurt man, I must not hate man, I must not kill man, I cannot!
There are those here who still remember that in 1943-44, here in our congregation, too, the then nationally known prayer group for the survival of Hungary was founded! Even now, more and more prayer communities are being formed all over the world for the preservation of the world and for the reconciliation of people with God and with each other! Let every praying person join in in their own place, with their own supplication, and beg that God would be merciful to this world!
Amen
Date: 23 February 1958.
Lesson
1Móz 4,1-13