Protestant Ethics Today : The Third Commandment
Be sure to check out part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this series on Protestant Ethics Today.
I have found that most Christians, when reflecting on the third commandment to “not take the name of the LORD your God in vain” (Exod 20:7), think it is simply about not using God’s name as a curse word. God’s name certainly is used in that way often (being nearly ubiquitous in movies, music, and common speech), and just as certainly, this is a sinful use of God’s name. However, the commandment goes much deeper than that. To take the name of the LORD in vain is to use God’s name, or anything that is associated with God and his name, in a way that conveys the idea that God is not the righteous, sovereign creator and ruler of the universe. It is to act as if God is not who he says he is in his word. In short, it is to tell lies about God, his word, or the world he made.
Taking God’s name in vain includes particularly egregious examples like blasphemy, which is cursing God or using contemptuous speech about God (Lev 24:15–16). A more indirect, yet still egregious, form of taking God’s name in vain happens when one calls down a curse on someone falsely. Saul does this in the midst of Israel’s battles with the Philistines when he rashly calls down a curse upon anyone who eats anything prior to total victory over Israel’s enemy:
And the men of Israel had been hard pressed that day, so Saul had laid an oath on the people, saying, ‘Cursed be the man who eats food until it is evening and I am avenged on my enemies.’ So none of the people had tasted food (1 Sam 14:24).
This is a form of taking God’s name in vain because it treats God as a genie who exists simply to give one one’s heart’s desire. It is not always the case that cursing a person is prohibited in Scripture. God curses the serpent and the world in (Gen 3:16–17). The imprecatory Psalms call down curses on God’s enemies (e.g., Ps 5:10). But curses can be rash, unthinking attempts to manipulate God. As such, they violate the third commandment.
An instance of taking God’s name in vain that might not immediately come to mind is hypocrisy. Whenever a Christian (or false professor of Christ) attempts to appear virtuous on the outside, without attempting to reflect true holiness and righteousness on the inside, that person is taking God’s name in vain because he or she is telling lies about God’s work of redemption and sanctification. These are the kinds of people the apostle Paul has in view in 2 Tim 3:5, when he writes that they are those “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”
There is also a positive commandment implied in the third commandment’s prohibition. It is the necessity of being reverent not just with regard to God and his name, but with regard to everything associated with God. We must approach God, and his worship, “with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:28–29). There must not be any “filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking” (Eph 5:4) in our speech, especially when speaking about the things of God. This would include how we talk about God’s word, the sacraments, prayer, Christian sanctification, and more. It is much easier to go astray in this than we might at first think. Even pastors will routinely find it easy to make jokes in their sermons that make light of some aspect of biblical teaching. Flippancy about the things of God is a temptation for every Christian and is a violation of the third commandment.
An interesting application of the third commandment given in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms pertains to oath-taking. On the basis of a misunderstanding of Matt 5:33–37 Anabaptists (past and present) claim that Christians may not ever take oaths. What Jesus was teaching against in that passage was a Pharisaical casuistry that attempted to appear virtuous outwardly by the use of oaths, while inwardly one would do everything he could to avoid keeping the oath. In our normal, everyday interactions and speech, we don’t need special means to guarantee the truthfulness of things we promise to do. Jesus says that we should simply keep our word when we give it.
There are, however, legitimate oaths in the Bible. In instances where a theft has occurred, but cannot be proven, one who is suspected by the victim can swear an oath instead of being required to make restitution (Exod 22:8–11). A similar procedure is valid in cases of suspected, but unproven adultery (Num 5:19). Leviticus 5:4 distinguishes between legitimate and rash oaths. The high priest Caiaphas at Christ’s trial demands that Jesus pledge an oath as to whether he is the messiah or not, which Jesus is willing to do (Matt 26:63–64). Paul in several places in his letters, testifies to the truthfulness of what he writes using oaths (Rom 1:9; 9:1; 2 Cor 1:23). God himself swears oaths, such as that sworn to Abraham (Gen 22:15–18; Heb 6:17).
Although we still have oaths today in legal and political proceedings, contemporary Christians may be surprised to see how much older theologians wrote about oaths and the nature and importance of oath-taking. Chapter 22 of the Westminster Confession teaches that oaths are legitimate on certain, particularly solemn or important occasions. It then moves to explain how oaths should be taken, the weightiness of calling on God as a witness of the truthfulness of what is pledged, and what constitutes a true and valid oath. Falsity regarding oaths would include idolatrous ones, not keeping an oath, trivial or unnecessary oaths (the thing Jesus addresses in Matt 5:33–37) since oaths are to be undertaken only for particularly serious matters in the Bible, sinful oaths (such as Jephthah’s vow in Judges 11), and oaths entered into under false pretenses. Certain oaths between one or more people can cease to be binding if one party is not faithful to the terms of the pledge (such as marital unfaithfulness; see Matt 19:9; 1 Cor 7:15). Legitimate oaths must be kept even if doing so greatly disadvantages the one who made the oath (Ps 15:4). Unlike in Islam, the Westminster Confession (22.4) argues that oaths are not “to be violated, although made to heretics, or infidels.”
Oaths are not merely matters of importance in the individual interactions we have with other individuals. The Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck has written (in Reformed Ethics, Volume 2, pp. 205–14) incisively on the way in which oaths are, in fact, necessary for the well-being of civil society. Oaths clearly would not be necessary if we did not live in a fallen world. Since we do, however, oaths are sometimes necessary. “Like war,” Bavinck writes, “the oath presupposes sin, the lie, and human untrustworthiness. Betrayal on the one hand and suspicion on the other are father and mother of the oath” (205). “The state and its system of justice,” he continues, “need a safeguard that people will speak the truth” (206). Oaths, which call down God’s judgment on oath-breakers, are that safeguard. They are thus to be employed on particularly important occasions in the life of a community or nation: the inauguration of leaders, in courts of law, and so on. Bavinck is well aware that oaths do not guarantee truthfulness. They don’t have to, however, because even though the “oath does not deter scoundrels . . . it certainly restrains many ordinary people and those in between” (211). Such deterrence is sufficient for the healthy functioning of civil society.
Bavinck also writes that oaths must be made to God. In his own day (as in ours), some urged “civil oaths” that had no reference to God. A “simple, moral, civil oath, without calling on God,” Bavinck rightly argued, “is an absurdity” (206), because
apart from God there is no longer truth, justice, or goodness. At that point, good and evil, justice and injustice, falsehood and truth are human products with no power above humanity itself (207).
“The oath,” therefore, “is the cement of the state, or justice; it is the cornerstone of the edifice of the state” (207). Without divinely-sanctioned oaths, every man simply does what is right in his own eyes.
It turns out, then, that the third commandment has much more to teach Christians than might initially seem to be the case from a reading of Exodus 20:7. It teaches us that we must not call on God, or anything associated with him, in a way that denies who he is and what he is doing in the world. We must, in short, take the Lord’s name upon our lips only according to the truth of who he is.
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