The Purpose of the Ten Commandments

"The calling [of the Christian] is the call of Jesus Christ to belong wholly to Him; it is the laying claim to me by Christ at the place at which this call found me; it embraces work with things and relations with persons; it demands 'a limited field of accomplishments' yet never as a value in itself, but in responsibility towards Jesus Christ."

"Now a man takes up his position against the world in the world, the calling is the place at which the call of Christ is answered, the place at which a man lives responsibly."

"The purpose of the commandment lies not in the avoidance of transgression, and not in the torment of ethical conflict and decision, but in freely accepted, self-evident life in the Church, in marriage, in family, in work and in the state."

"... the commandment fixes the boundaries and creates the space within which it can be heard and fulfilled".

"The self-tormenting and hopeless question regarding the purity of one's motives, the suspicious observation of oneself, the glaring and fatiguing light of incessant consciousness, all these have nothing to do with the commandment of God, who grants liberty to live and to act."

"[For the Christian] God's commandment is the only warrant for ethical discourse. God's commandment is the speech of God to man."

"The commandment of God permits man to live as man before God."

The above then, gives content to what Christ meant when he said: "For indeed,the kingdom of God is within you" Luke 17:21.

All quotations are from Ethics, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pages 252, 272-73, 279-80.