“You shall not murder.” – Exodus 20:13
Q: What is the sixth commandment?
A: You shall not murder.
What does this mean?
Because we worship and love God, we shouldn’t hurt or harm other people, but instead we should help them like a friend would.
Do you know what an image is? Could you describe it in your own words? An image is a visual representation of something. Like a photograph. If you take a picture of your house, the picture would be an image of your house. You can look at the picture and know what your house is like. You can’t see all of it, but you can get a good idea of what it is all about.
God says that we are made in his image. Human beings are different from all of God’s other creations because he says that we are a picture of him. Because of that, we are more valuable to him than all other creation. That doesn’t mean that the rest of creation has no value. It truly does. But human beings are simply God’s highest creation.
We should value what God values. And he values us greatly! He took great pleasure in giving us life. Because of this, God commands us not to murder. Human life is precious to him and we don’t have the right to take life since human life didn’t come from us. We don’t own it. God is the owner of all life since he is the giver of life. We can’t take matters into our own hands. We should trust God.
Read Genesis 1:26–28:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
- Whose image are we created in?
- How does this text show us that we are the highest form of God’s creation?
- Why would God want us to be fruitful and multiply?
- How does all this connect with God’s command to not murder?
Prayer
Our Father, thank you that you have given us the gift of life! And life that reflects you! It is an honor and a privilege to carry your image in our being. May we honor you by cherishing that fact and valuing other humans being as brothers and sisters. In Jesus’ name, Amen.