I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before me...
Many people point to the preface to the Ten Commandments to demonstrate that obedience to the Ten Commandments was (solely) a response to a salvation already received.
I have two problems with this (other than the Pauline letters!):
- Israel were not yet in the Promised Land. God may have unconditionally promised to bring the nation into Canaan, but he did not promise to bring every individual. A whole generation would perish in the wilderness because of their disobedience. Gordon Wenham himself comments "Israel is posed to take possession of the rest of their inheritance, but this depends on total obedience to the law and its demands".
- Israel were tenants who could be dispossessed if they disobeyed. This is particularly clear in Deuteronomy, but even in the command to honour your parents there is an implicit warning that disobedience will lead to ejection from the land.
Transcending these problems is the absence of holiness in the people. Kiuchi comments "though it seems the Decalogue was given within a context of 'grace', would not the difficulty of observing it in addition to the severe punishments associated with such violations... mitigate against such a conclusion...the Israelites standing befoer hte Lord in Exod. 19 are as yet unredeemed (unsaved) from their sinfulness... the spiritual reality of the people showed that they were far from being saved from their own sinfulness" (pp.27-28, Leviticus (AOTC))
"the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17)
