The Five Commandments of Jesus

DISCOVERING THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS

“If you love me, keep my commandments.” (Jn 14:15)

SUPPOSE YOU WANTED to look something up in the Gospels; say, for example, what did Jesus teach about prayer? Would this be difficult or easy? Surprisingly, it can be quite difficult. Some of the teachings of Jesus on prayer are in the Sermon on the Mount, Chapters 5 through 7 of the Gospel of Matthew (always a good place to start): Mt 6:5-15, 7:7-11. But the rest, and some important ones, are scattered throughout the Gospels in no particular order. I found that this is true of nearly all of the teachings of Jesus.
Suppose you wanted to find, as I wanted to find, a plan or a central organizing theme in the teachings, particularly the ethical teachings, of Jesus? Unless you do the sorting and listing exercise I describe below, you almost certainly won’t find one; until I did this exercise myself, I couldn’t see one. So I looked more closely at the Gospels. What I found was that the sayings and sermons of Jesus jump from one topic to another with no apparent plan or connection. Teachings on the same subject are scattered here and there. Some teachings are set forth in a single saying, never repeated. Others are repeated in various forms in different places, but the Gospel writers only occasionally brought them together. Read the Sermon on the Mount again, and I think you’ll see what I mean.
How did this come about? I asked myself. I began to imagine the way the writers of the Gospels had assembled their materials. I imagined a fellow with a pad of papyrus and a large leather backpack, going from one person who had heard Jesus speak to another who had written down what he remembered Jesus to have said. “What did Jesus say?” the seeker would ask. Then he’d write down the remembered words, or copy the written record or memorandum of the words of Jesus kept by the person he was questioning, on a piece of papyrus, and stuff it into his backpack. After he’d done this for a while, he’d go back to his home or his tent, get them all out, and sort them – sayings here, miracles there, parables in a third pile. He didn’t think it was his job to impose an order on the sayings. Well, perhaps the writer of the Gospel of John did. The first three Gospels are more disorganized.
This troubled me. I have an organized mind (a prerequisite for a practicing lawyer), so I started making lists, sorting, and organizing the sayings of Jesus by subject matter. To my surprise, there began to appear certain ethical teachings of Jesus which he repeated over and over, sometimes in command, sometimes in metaphor, sometimes in warning, sometimes in parable. In particular, I was able to identify five rules of ethical conduct which stood out from the rest. This is the genesis of what I call the five commandments of Jesus.
I also discovered from this exercise that Jesus gave much greater importance to his teaching activities than we usually give to them. He said that his teaching was what he came to do, and that salvation would come from his teaching. Jesus said,

I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose. (Lk 4:43) . . . .

Whoever keeps my word will never see death. (Jn 8:51)

In Jesus’s own words, his teaching activity is why he was born and what he was sent to do, and those who accept his teachings and follow them will live forever. This makes his teachings very important indeed.
Many of the teachings of Jesus are ethical teachings. He sometimes called them his “commandments” and at other times called them his “word.” He spoke repeatedly about the importance of keeping his commandments (or his “words”) in his Last Supper discourse to his disciples, Chapters 14 -17 of John’s Gospel:

If you love me, keep my commandments. (Jn 14:15) . . . .

According to this teaching, we could hardly pretend to be Christians without trying to obey the commandments of Jesus. But what are those commandments? I found I didn’t know what they are. . . .
Jesus himself indicated that he thought that some of his ethical teachings were more important than others, because he repeated the more important ones many times and illustrated them with metaphor and parable. We ought to identify these teachings if we can. The absence of a list of the commandments of Jesus leads to an absence of focus on what Jesus actually taught. A listing will shed light on what Jesus considered to be his core teachings and the center of his ethical revelation.
So I decided to sort and organize the ethical teachings of Jesus, so that I could identify his commandments. The principles of sorting and selection I developed and used are these four rules:
First, a commandment of Jesus should be an original ethical teaching of Jesus, new and different from the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures or those of any other ethical tradition of ancient times. When Jesus says “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times . . . But I say to you . . .”, this is a clue that Jesus is claiming, and delivering, a new and original ethical teaching. For this reason, among others, I don’t consider the care of the poor, important as it is, to be among the commandments of Jesus, for it’s not an original teaching. In contrast, non-judging, forgiveness, nonviolence, humility, and detachment from possessions aren’t taught in the Torah, nor with any consistency in the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. They are original teachings of Jesus.
Second, Jesus repeated some of his ethical teachings over and over, often in different circumstances and in different words, and these repetitions are found in many different Gospel sources. The emphasis which Jesus thus gave to these teachings indicates strongly that they are among his commandments.
Third, Jesus wanted his commandments to be understood and remembered. It’s a strong indication that an ethical teaching of Jesus is among his commandments if Jesus taught it both by direct instruction and in a memorable illustration, metaphor, or parable. All of the commandments set forth below are supported not only by texts of direct command but also by one or more vivid metaphors or parables.
Fourth and finally, it’s generally true that the sermon or lecture, the “stump speech,” contains the message the speaker came to convey. The answers a speaker gives to questions asked during the question-and-answer period may be important, but they address topics selected by the questioner, not the speaker, and they may or may not be what the speaker considers important. . . . I give greater importance to the teachings of Jesus which appear in his direct preaching than I do to the material he covered in the Q-and-A periods.
With these selection criteria in mind, I sorted the ethical teachings of Jesus by subject. I didn’t select the subjects; Jesus (with the help of the gospel writers, and their leather backpacks) selected the subjects. Whatever the subject matter, if the ethical teaching was original with Jesus, frequently repeated, memorably illustrated, and set forth in his direct preaching, it made the list.
Five, and only five, ethical teachings or commandments of Jesus emerged from this study. Nothing else in all of the ethical teachings of Jesus approaches these five commandments in originality, frequency, and force of expression. What follows is a list of these five commandments of Jesus. I’ve summarized each commandment in my own words, to try to collate into one short sentence the several teachings of Jesus on each subject, and I’ve followed each statement of a commandment with quotations from the teachings of Jesus which support, explain, illustrate, and elaborate that commandment.