A Christian repents murdering others with their attitude and sass and picks up the cleaver to begin murdering the sin that caused it. A Christian is the one who picks up the bayonet and goes to war, as Romans 8:13 says, not one who continually succumbs to their hostilities and rage. Here is what I am saying, dear Christian, the good and the sweet confidences of our Christian faith (the assurance of salvation) are not for the sluggard and slothful but for those who are waging an all-out war against their sin.
You shall not murder. – Exodus 20:13
The Murder of Disordered Passions
Embedded within the command “thou shalt not murder” is the understanding that it reaches far beyond the mere prohibition of physically taking another person’s life. The Westminster Larger Catechism in question 135 elaborates on this brilliantly, stating that
“the duties required in the sixth commandment are all careful studies, lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes and by subduing all passions, which tend to the unjust taking away of any life.” – Westminster Larger Catechism Q135
This catechetical exposition highlights that murder is not just the bloody and homicidal result but actually begins before the knife is drawn, before the gun is aimed and before the bomb is thrown. As the catechism teaches, murder begins with disordered passions. Before a person will ever dream of performing a sinister coup de grâce, their heart will have executed that person a million times through anger, malice, bitterness, jealousy, envy, and even a million micro-annoyances.
We are All Serial- Killers
For this reason, the commandment not only calls us to be innocent of grabbing the Tommy gun and mowing down our adversaries and not only innocent of planting claymores in our enemy’s tomato garden; it also calls us to a life of inward purity of heart. We are called by God to mortify our sinful passions and to beat them into submission so that anger no longer walks unchecked within our serial-killing hearts.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us full license to speak, think, and interpret this commandment in this way. He intensifies the understanding of what murder is by exposing the pickled and festering root lying dormant underneath it. And that, Jesus tells us, is good old-fashioned anger.
For instance, in Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus says this:
“21 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” – Matthew 5:21-22
Contrary to many popular opinions of who Jesus is, He did not loosen the standard. In fact, he ratcheted it up so that even the sweetest, pillowy-handed grandmother can be considered (in some ways) on the same level as John Wayne Gacy and Jeffery Dahmer. Like those fiendish men, she has a pile of bodies that she has dismembered with a thousand glares, hacked with ten thousand razor-bladed comments, and buried with a million mental weapons like agitation, frustration, bitterness, and resentment.