[AI translation] As you already know, we have been studying the Heidelberg Bible in our Thursday Bible studies. The commandment I have just read is the sixth one, "Thou shalt not kill". The reason why I am happy to bring this passage and this theme to the church instead of a Thursday Bible study is so that we too can be more involved in spirit and prayer in the great struggle that is of primary concern to Christians around the world these days. Today in Prague, the Second World Assembly for Christian Peace begins, with some 1,000 delegates and observers from all over the world, perhaps at this very hour, listening to the preaching of Pastor Niemöller of Hesse-Passau in the Bethlehem Chapel, during the universal service which opens the whole assembly. Obviously, the same problems are at stake there as in our word."Thou shalt not kill" - that is God's sixth commandment. And our 400-year-old KJV explains it this way: 'What does God want in the sixth commandment? Answer: 'That I should not revile, hate, injure, or slay my neighbour, either in thought, word, or deed, either directly or through others; but that I should put away from me all desire of revenge; that I should not injure myself, nor rush recklessly into evil. For this reason the secular superiors also bear the armed power to prevent murder." (H.K. Question 105 - Answer)
"Thou shalt not kill" - these two little one-syllable words have the effect in today's world of a drop of water falling on the surface of a hot stove: it sizzles for a moment, then it is gone. "Thou shalt not kill" - what does such a word matter in a world crowded with armoured cars, machine guns, nuclear and hydrogen weapons, political tension, racism, exploding passions, passion? "Do not kill!" Does this command not sound so very distant, does it not seem naive, outdated, impossible? Does this command still have any meaning, any validity in today's world?
Yes! And perhaps more urgently and emphatically than ever before. God said, "Thou shalt not kill." And the two-edged sword of God's word is a more powerful weapon than any instrument of mass destruction ever invented by mankind. And today it is of particular interest to the whole earthly world that this weapon of God's law should protect the lives of mankind from a great destruction unimaginable in its dimensions. By this eternal law, God intends to defend the sanctity and integrity of human life against all attacks. God also protects man's marriage in the 7th commandment, man's property in the 8th, man's honour in the 9th, but above all: life. God's order is this: life first. Not as it has been so often in the world, that wealth, love, oil fields, coal mines have come before human life. No! Life comes first with God! Man can acquire wealth and a wife for himself, he can exploit the riches of coal mines and oil fields by his own efforts, but he cannot create life. Life is a direct gift of God and therefore belongs to God. It is your life and everyone else's. That is why life is such an inexplicable mystery.
Yes, that is why life is such a mystery to man, because the eternal Being - as God revealed his being to Moses at the burning bush - the eternal Being, the eternal Living is its direct source. Just as the origin of life is not in the power of any human science or authority, so God has not placed its abstraction in the hands of men. God alone is sovereign over life. And it is human life in particular that is at stake here. Human life, which in a very special way is the vessel of God's thoughts, the mirror of God's life. In this vessel, however vaguely, the majesty of God himself wants to be reflected. So respect the vessel, or you will offend the majesty of God! And even if this vessel is made of broken pots, even if it is no longer of any value or use, the majesty of God is still reflected in some fragment of pottery, and even then it carries an eternal plan that God intended to carry out. That is why every human life is so precious in God's sight. This precious human life is surrounded like a ring of protection by the commandment "Thou shalt not kill".
Or, as our Catechism expands this protective ring when it says: "I shall not insult my neighbour in thought or word, or in my own dress, much less in deed, whether directly or through others, nor shall I insult, hate, injure or kill him..." It is as if our Catechism sent the vanguards of defence far in advance, so that they could sound the alarm at the slightest move of the enemy. For what begins with annoyance can easily continue with hatred, insult, and end in blood. Human life is such a priceless treasure that even from a distance, from the distance of thought, emotion, words, it is forbidden to hurt, to embitter, to make it difficult. In the words of our Catechism, "I shall not insult, hate, or offend my neighbour in thought, word, or deed, either directly or through others..." Because offensive thoughts radiate and contaminate the atmosphere more than radium radiation. One can destroy the life of another with a devastating glance or a telling gesture, a wave of the hand, a sharp sword of the tongue. These poisoned killing devices kill more people in the world every day than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. "Thou shalt not kill": i.e. down with all weapons that can attack another person's life with spite, hatred, insult or even with a knife, nuclear weapons. Because life is sacred. Life is inviolable. Life belongs to God.
Not only the life of another, but also my own. That's why in our Catechism, in the same place, we have this phrase: "I shall not harm myself, nor rush foolhardily into danger". So deep in our souls is the instinct to kill that God is compelled to protect our own lives even from ourselves. No one has the right to shorten or destroy his own life, whether by excessive drinking, or by the pursuit of sensual pleasures, or by the recklessness of sports mania, or by overwork, never resting, never resting. You have no right! If he does, he is condemned by the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". How many murderers there are in this land!
There is also a great sentence in our KJV: "Therefore the temporal ruler also bears armed authority to prevent murder." God so loves, so fears human life, that in addition to the weapon of His command "Thou shalt not kill," He protects it with the weapon of secular authority. Notice how modern this 400-year-old Bible is! It says: the secular authority has a weapon to prevent murder. All those weapons that are being made and are ready, all those bombers, missiles, nuclear warfare devices, all those weapons are there to prevent mass death, to prevent bloodshed. Authority is not given by God to destroy life, but to protect life. Thank God that, after the immense misery of the Second World War, more and more secular authorities are seeing this same truth, and are making more and more efforts to ensure that the weapons in their hands do not kill human life, but protect it, protect it, prevent mass murder.
In the past, even decades ago, they did not dare to proclaim the validity of the sixth commandment in the face of the problem of war between peoples, trying to justify wars with all sorts of explanations, with the need to protect national and economic interests. But today there is simply no justification for war. Anyone who cares anything about what God says, and who says in the sixth commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill', can only have one attitude to war today: a firm and unequivocal 'no'. No - because there is nothing, really nothing, in the world that can or even should be justified only at the cost of hundreds and hundreds of millions of deaths. The view that there will always be war as long as there is man on earth is all satanic delusion. God created man to live, not to be subjected again and again to the horrific spectacle of a dimensionless battle arena. Would that the emissaries of the Christian churches of the world in Prague could now proclaim to the world in the most powerful words the divine truth which our Catechist formulated 400 years ago. If only they could proclaim this with such credibility that they could make amends for the terrible omissions that Christianity has made in the past on the question of war and peace.
But the elimination of war and the possibility of external peace is far from settling the validity of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." It cuts much deeper than that, lest it should reveal in any of us the lurking evil: that there is murder, deep down in our hearts. In the heart of all of us. Summing up the relevant truths of God's Word, the KJV continues: 'But is not this commandment merely about the prohibition of murder? Answer. (H.K. Question 106 - Answer)
The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" goes down to the very root of murder. And then it suddenly becomes clear that under the cloak of civilized, well-bred and religious feelings and desires, there are not at all any civilized, well-bred and religious feelings and desires hidden in man. It would be good if we could see for once who we really are underneath this layer of restraint and concealment, what demonic beasts lurk and wait somewhere inside: envy, hatred, anger, revenge. And how one or the other bursts forth as soon as the external opportunity gives way to it. This is why Nietsche, for example, says that our whole culture is nothing but a thin apple skin over a glowing, simmering chaos. All it takes is a small perceived insult to move something within us. Just to see another's success is enough to stir up envy. It only takes a time of marching on the front lines for anger to erupt. Our apparent virtues are really not our merit, but only the lack of opportunity, the fortunate development of external circumstances. Otherwise, however, in all of us, without exception, lurks every possibility, from the most sublimated egoism to the most brutal assassination, ready to spring. This is why our Bible-based Catechism calls envy, hatred, anger and revenge murder by the name of insidious murder. Insidious because it is not visible. Only God sees it. But it is murder, because it destroys, devours, complicates - kills - the life of the one it is directed at.
Do you know how it is? Because we all want to look a little bigger than we are. And the easiest way to do that is to pull the other person down, to degrade, to blacken. In thought, in myself, or even in front of others. Even in front of the person, if necessary. I try to make the other person a dark background against which even I can shine. I blacken the other person so that I can shine more brightly against the dark background. In such cases, it is only lack of courage and lack of consistency that prevents me from physically putting the other person out of the way, thus drawing the final conclusion of my feelings for him. This dark final consequence is just the magnifying glass through which we see the micro-murder in our hearts. And if one can see this magnified image of the emotions in one's own heart and not shudder at it, one is not human! Envy, hatred, anger, revenge: insidious murder! Or there is another murder weapon, prejudice. How quickly we use it against the other! To arouse a little prejudice against someone in the other, all it takes is a certain look of contempt on the face, all it takes is to say in that usual dismissive tone: aha, we know him! Such a contemptuous word expresses something akin to murder. For in that little word, "aha", God hears the hidden hate of my whole heart. And who can list all the many shades of envy, hatred, anger, revenge, with which we daily kill the soul, the joy, the happiness of another human being?! With which we kill the brother in the other. "Thou shalt not kill," says God. Who is there who, under the judgment of this command, does not realize that I am a murderer?! Yes, we are murderers many times over. We are insidious mass murderers! That is why God says to us, to you and to me: "Thou shalt not kill!" If we were not murderers, God would not have to hold our hands, our hearts and our tongues with this commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."
And if for some this is not enough, our KJV goes on to say, "But is it enough not to kill our neighbour in the manner mentioned? Answer, It is not enough, for when God condemns envy, hatred, and anger, he desires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to show patience, peace, gentleness, mercy, and kindness toward him, to avoid his harm as far as we can, and to do good even to our enemies." (Q.H. 107 - answer)
This is the positive side of the sixth commandment: love. Not a sentimental wave of good feelings, which is good for me, because the other is so kind, so worthy of love, but the love that "covers all, believes all, hopes all, endures all." (1 Cor 13,8) Even towards the enemy, not only towards his immediate family. Or even towards his immediate family, not just the enemy. The one who loves the other as he is. In fact, in spite of what he is, he loves him. So that you can see that love in something. Somehow, the way God loves me, even though he knows me, even though he knows who I am, even though he knows what I am like, he still loves me.
That is the yet-love. Here is the whole secret of the sixth commandment, that God loves you, loves me, even though... But! He still loves me. So much so, that in the person of Jesus of Nazareth He came into this world of murderous passions, and here Himself became the victim of the most terrible murder. But miracle of miracles: it is by this that He took upon Himself the sin of the murderer, and it is by this that He sheds into the world the heavenly fountain of His love. It is at this fountain that we can draw our hearts full of love, so that others may have some of it. Good friend, enemy, family member, stranger. Jesus said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, rivers of living water shall flow from within him." (John 7:37-38)
Amen
Date: 28 June 1964.
Lesson
Mt 5,21-26