What are the Ten Commandments?

The Commandments don't begin with a rule; they begin with a rescue. Before God says "do this" or "don't do that," he reminds the people who he is: the one who brought them out of slavery. That opening line is the key to everything that follows. The Commandments are given to a people God has already freed and bound to himself in covenant. They're less like a fence erected by a stranger and more like the ground rules a family lives by because they belong to one another.

There are ten of them, and the tradition naturally groups them into two "tables." The first three concern our relationship with God: worship him alone and reject idols, honour his name rather than treat it carelessly, and keep holy the day set aside for him. The remaining seven concern our relationships with each other: honour your parents, do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not covet your neighbour's spouse, and do not covet your neighbour's goods. (Different Christian traditions number these slightly differently — Catholics and Lutherans follow one ancient counting, while many other churches follow another — but the content is the same.)

Jesus himself shows how to read them. When asked for the greatest commandment, he names love of God with your whole self, and love of neighbour as yourself, saying everything hangs on these two. That's exactly the shape of the two tables: the first three are how love of God takes concrete form, and the last seven are how love of neighbour does. So the Commandments aren't ten unrelated prohibitions; they're a single law of love spelled out in specific, livable ways. The "thou shalt nots" are simply love drawing clear lines around what love will never do — love does not betray, exploit, lie to, or discard the people it claims to care about.

It's also worth noticing how many are stated as negatives. That's not pessimism; it's protection. A negative command guards something precious by naming the few things that would destroy it, while leaving enormous room for creativity in the positive. "Do not steal" fences off a small, ruinous behaviour and leaves wide open every generous, honest way of handling property. In that sense each prohibition is the floor, not the ceiling — the minimum that love requires, beneath which a relationship cannot survive.

Finally, the Church receives these commandments not as expired ancient law but as permanently binding, deepened and interiorised by Christ. Jesus pushes them inward: not only "do not kill" but do not nurse murderous contempt; not only "do not commit adultery" but guard the heart. The Commandments, read through him, become a portrait of the renewed heart God's grace makes possible — which is why the Church has always used them to examine conscience and to teach the basics of a good life.

In a culture that often treats morality as private taste, the Commandments insist there are real obligations written into how we were made — toward God and toward each other. They give moral life a backbone: clear, memorable, non-negotiable commitments that protect the most vulnerable goods (life, marriage, property, truth, reputation). And because Jesus binds them to love, keeping them is never mere compliance; it's how love keeps faith with God and neighbour in practice.

• Exodus 20:1-17 — the giving of the Commandments at Sinai, opening with God's reminder that he freed the people from Egypt.
• Deuteronomy 5:6-21 — the second scriptural statement of the Decalogue, reaffirming it for the next generation.
• Matthew 22:37-40 — Jesus reduces the whole law to love of God and neighbour, revealing the inner logic of the two tables.
• Matthew 19:17-19 — Jesus tells the rich young man that entering life means keeping the commandments, then lists several of them.

• CCC 2052, 2055, 2056, 2057, 2061, 2062, 2065, 2067, 2070, 2072, 2074
• The Catechism treats the Decalogue within the covenant and reads it through Christ's summary of the law as love of God and neighbour.