The Decalogue, or the Ten Words, as the Ten Commandments are also called, is one of the central documents of biblical revelation. The Decalogue stood at the center of the Law in the Old Testament era, and it did not lose its significance after the establishment of the New Covenant. In addition, over the more than three millennia that have passed since the revelation of the Decalogue, it has had, and continues to have, an exceptional and incomparable influence on culture and civilization. What modern people call "universal human values" is, in essence, the moral component of the Decalogue. Given to the Jews, the commandments of the Decalogue entered Christian and Islamic tradition unchanged.

The Decalogue, unlike the rest of the Law, came about through direct revelation from God, given to Moses on Mount Sinai. This event can be dated approximately to 1250 BC. According to tradition, God Himself mysteriously inscribed the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets prepared by Moses.

The content of the Decalogue is plainly divided into two parts. The first, which includes commandments 1-4, speaks about a person's relationship with God and the ordering of people's spiritual life. The second, which includes the last six commandments, speaks about the moral ordering of life and of people's relationships with one another. The most important feature of the Decalogue is that it joins these two sections into one whole. The Decalogue gives equal weight to both of its parts; in this way morality becomes a form of worshiping God, and not only a set of principles for the best ordering of earthly life. At the same time, only in the unity of a person's religious and moral life does that moral life receive firm foundations. Thus the Decalogue became, for all time, the chief manifesto of biblical ethical monotheism.

The first four commandments speak about the key aspects of honoring the One God, and the most important among them is the first commandment. It proclaims the revelation of God the Savior, the Living God, who manifests His power by sovereignly intervening in the course of history. The mention of a concrete saving action, the exodus from Egypt, like the mention of Pontius Pilate in the Christian Creed, emphasizes the reality and concreteness of God's action in people's lives. At the same time, it is fundamentally important that the Decalogue says nothing about God except by mentioning His saving action. The mystery of divine being remains hidden; the Decalogue only emphasizes the uniqueness of the Invisible God, the Lord of heaven and earth. God also reveals Himself in these words as a jealous God, who calls people to worship only the one true God.

The second commandment forbids making an image of the Invisible One. The true God, who surpasses everything that can be conceived and cannot be contained by all creation, cannot be adequately represented by any image. In the historical context of the Ten Commandments, images of any other object or subject inevitably drew people toward pagan idolatry. The second commandment does not merely forbid depicting anything at all; its most important meaning is the prohibition of worshiping and serving anything other than the One God. Nothing in the world except the Almighty Himself is worthy of a person's devoting life to it. The text of the second commandment also contains words about God's jealousy, His punishment, and His blessing. Since God Himself reveals to people through the prophet Ezekiel that each of us answers only for our own sins, the meaning of these words comes down to contrasting punishment, to the third and fourth generation, with immeasurable blessing, to a thousand generations. The incomparability of the life bestowed by God and sinful death is also emphasized in a number of texts close to the Decalogue.

The third commandment requires reverence toward God and His Name, which is closely bound up with His invisible presence. This commandment is also reflected in the prayer that the Lord Jesus Christ gave His disciples: "Hallowed be Your name." In addition, the third commandment also forbids using the Creator's Name for spells and oaths. Only the sacred awe of prayer is a worthy context for invoking the Name of God.

The fourth commandment speaks about the sanctification of a person's earthly life, requiring every seventh day to be dedicated to God. In this way it establishes a weekly rhythm not only for work, but above all for spiritual life. Such a rhythm becomes the source of the sanctification of all time. In the Old Testament, the day dedicated to God is called the Sabbath; for Christians this day became the day of Christ's Resurrection. The Sabbath becomes a sign of the Covenant made at Sinai. Over time the meaning of the day dedicated to God becomes so great that the fourth commandment comes to be perceived as a symbol implying all the other commandments of the Decalogue.

The last six commandments speak about relationships between people and the moral ordering of life before the face of God. Despite their apparent simplicity, they set a very high moral standard, one that humanity still cannot fulfill. The fifth commandment requires respect for the gift of life, which a person receives from God through parents; honoring them becomes an important condition for possessing life. The sixth commandment confirms God's sovereign right, established already in the covenant with Noah, to govern human life, and forbids murder. Here the text of the Decalogue allows both a broad and a narrowly specific understanding of murder; only the Lord Jesus Christ finally establishes an absolute ban not only on every murder, but also on the anger and hatred that lie beneath it. The seventh commandment, which requires faithfulness in marriage, looks like a difficult ideal against the background of the realities of ancient Near Eastern life; today it is also often perceived that way. The laws of Moses make broad allowances compared with the Decalogue's requirement of monogamy, yet the Lord Jesus Christ announced to His disciples that this was a concession to people's hardness of heart, not the will of the Creator. The seventh commandment, by forbidding adultery, sanctifies marriage as a mysterious union of two people that takes place before the face of God and has eternal meaning. The eighth commandment, which establishes the principle of the inviolability of property and forbids theft, is also based on respect for the gift of life that God gives. This life is sustained by material means that God gives to each person according to His own judgment. The ninth commandment originally concerned lying in court and in civic relations; later this prohibition is extended to every form and manifestation of lying. Finally, the last, tenth commandment requires humility before the will of the Creator, who gives to each as He desires. Envy is regarded in the Decalogue as resistance to this will of God, and therefore it is forbidden.

The Lord Jesus Christ gives the most concise formulation of the commandments of the Decalogue when answering the scribe's question about the greatest commandment. "The first of all the commandments is: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength; this is the first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these," says the Lord. The meaning of the Decalogue is therefore summed up in worship of the One God and love for one's neighbor.

In His answer to the scribe, the Lord Jesus quotes two passages closely connected with the Decalogue: the prayer "Hear, O Israel" and the expanded statement of the moral requirements of the law in Leviticus 19. Both of these texts, already in the Old Testament era, took on the character of authoritative interpretations of the Ten Commandments. Another crucial text that records the ancient understanding of the Decalogue took shape in the era of the kingdoms; it was written no earlier than the tenth century and no later than the seventh century BC. These are the words of Deuteronomy 30. Here the Lord says that the commandment He has given, in this case the Decalogue is called a commandment in the singular as one expression of the Creator's will, is accessible to knowledge and fulfillment. A person must consciously choose between fulfilling and not fulfilling the Decalogue, and this is a choice between life and death. The fulfillment of the commandments is called good and life here; failure to fulfill them is called evil and death. This text lays the foundation for the biblical understanding of life as unity with God and of death as separation from Him. It is also essential that God is not indifferent to what a person's choice will be; He calls that person to choose life.

Later, at the turn of the seventh to sixth centuries BC, the Lord again emphasizes through the prophet Jeremiah that the meaning of the Covenant is not the fulfillment of a set of separate, "independent" commandments, but obedience to the clearly expressed will of the Creator. This, and not splendid worship or abundant sacrifices, is what God needs, and this is the essence of the Covenant. This truth is repeated many times through the prophets. The most important words here are those of the prophet Hosea, from the middle of the eighth century BC: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hos. 6:6), and the words of the prophet Micah: "O man, you have been told what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love deeds of mercy, and to walk humbly before your God" (Mic. 6:8).

The final fullness of the commandments is revealed in the Sermon on the Mount by the Lord Jesus Christ, who calls people to be perfect, as the Heavenly Father Himself is perfect.