Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 40, question 105. What does God require in the Sixth Commandment? That I do not revile, hate, insult, or kill my neighbor, either in thought, word, or gesture, much less in deed, whether by myself or by another, but lay aside all desire of revenge. Moreover, that I do not harm myself nor willfully run into any danger. Wherefore, also to restrain murder, the magistrate is armed with a sword. Question 106. Does this commandment speak only of killing? No, but in forbidding murder, God teaches us that he abhors its very root, namely, envy, hatred, anger, and desire of revenge. and that in his sight all these are hidden murder. Question 107. But is this all that is required, that we do not kill our neighbor? No, for in condemning envy, hatred, and anger, God requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to show patience, peace, meekness, mercy, and kindness toward him, and to prevent his hurt as much as possible. also to do good even unto our enemies. The Sixth Commandment has always been broken in the history of the world in entered into the world might remember it was just the second generation right after adam and eve that came kill his brother able out of envy out of resentment out of a desire to be seen as at least as important if not more important than able And up until today, we continue to find a number of ways that we can break this commandment. Some of them are more obvious than others. But what it's really aiming at, when it really reaches the heart, it automatically eliminates all those external forms, all those egregious ways of breaking it, like when Cain killed Abel, because it changes our mindset. It changes how we look. at other people. The Heidelberg Catechism emphasizes that. It tells us that we give away all that we discard, we dispose of everything that would count as hidden murder, everything that would tend to prejudice or damage our neighbor in some way, and instead that's replaced with the opposite. It's replaced with loving our neighbor, with doing good, even to our enemies. Now, the Hessian Catechism of 1607, when it explains the Sixth Commandment, also gets to the heart of the matter, although in a slightly different way. It asks, first of all, what does the Sixth Commandment mean? And the answer, you shall not kill. And then, what is that? What does that mean? And the answer, we shall fear and love God so that we do no wrong or hurt to our neighbor or his body, but rather help and further him in all of his bodily needs. And you see there the root that a genuine obedience to this commandment comes from. It comes from the fear and love of God. Now we're not interested in running down our neighbor in order to get ahead ourselves. We so fear and love God that on the contrary, we do what we can to help and to promote the well-being of our neighbor. Well, certainly we fall short of that, our society falls short of that. We have much need of God's forgiveness and much need of God's grace so that we would truly love our neighbor as ourselves.