“The Pharisees, thinking that they did God service by lovelessly serving the law, depersonalized all relationships and dehumanized themselves, and Jesus damned them for it. Loving relations with God, and with others for his sake, are what his service, as set forth in the Decalogue, is really all about” (J.I. Paker, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 33).
“The ten directives, which embody the Creator’s intention for human life as such, are here presented as means of maintaining a redeemed relationship already given by grace. And for Christians today, as for the Jews at Sinai, law-keeping (that is, meeting the claims of our God, commandments 1-4, and our neighbor, commandments 5-10) is not an attempt to win God’s admiration and put him in our debt, but the form and substance of grateful, personal response to his love” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 30).
“Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17) that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it; that is, to be, and help others to be, all that God in the Commandments had required” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 26).
“Jesus himself is in fact the embodiment of the Ten Commandments” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 18).
“God’s love gave us the law just as his love gave us the gospel, and as there is no spiritual life for us save through the gospel, which points us to Jesus Christ the Savior, so there is no spiritual health for us save as we seek in Christ’s strength to keep the law and practice the love of God and neighbor for which it calls” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 12).
“Whether as persons we grow and blossom or shrink and wither, whether in character we become more like God or more like the devil, depends directly on whether we seek to live by what is in the Commandments or not. The rest of the Bible could be called God’s repair manual, since it spells out the gospel of grace that restores sin-damaged human nature. But it is the Commandments that crystallize the basic behavior pattern that brings satisfaction and contentment, and it is precisely for this way of living that God’s grace rescues and refits us” (J.I. Packer, Keeping the Ten Commandments, 11-12).
“Fundamentally, depending on the relationship, we are all called to respect and follow those whom the Lord has placed in positions of leadership over us. For example, in speaking to believers about their relationship to civil government, even the ruthless Roman government, Paul writes, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1). This recognizes that civil government, as imperfect as it can be, is designed by God to provide order and protection for our daily lives” (Timothy Z. Witmer, The Shepherd Leader At Home, 68).
“[M]arriage was designed by God to bring blessing and order to his creation. Together with the creation ordinances of work and Sabbath rest, marriage would provide rhythm to life. Therefore, we must affirm that he ordained foundational principles not only for the natural order but also for the moral order of his creation” (Timothy Z. Witmer, The Shepherd Leader At Home, 19).
“An even clearer testimony to the authority of Scripture is Scripture itself. Its focus is heavenward, like no other book. Its teaching transforms. Its prose and poetry have moved men and women for thousands of years. And readers old and new continue to marvel at the weight and density of this book, and the way in which the various parts of the Bible inform and illumine each other. And this is only the beginning! Is there any other book that has so perfectly achieved its purpose of giving all glory to God? Is there another place where we can learn all that we need to know about the one way of salvation? Really, there are so many incomparable excellencies to which we could point, such overwhelming evidence of perfection, that we can only conclude that the Bible ‘abundantly evidence[s] itself to be the Word of God’. In a very real sense, we can say that Holy Scripture is self-authenticating” (Chad Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, 14).
“If this is God’s Word, then little wonder that it is to be our rule of faith and life. Here we learn who and how to worship, who and how to trust for our salvation and all of our needs, and how to live our lives. It is for this reason that the whole Bible should be read frequently by all Christians, and should be at the centre of the Christian church” (Chad Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, 10-11).