Therein, you’ve heard the passive methods in keeping these commandments, how you are to be in service to your neighbor. If you stand idly by while someone else robs your neighbor or slanders him, you have also broken these two commandments.

This what is meant by asking yourself, with regard to these two commandments, “What have I done and what have I left undone?” On a self-examination handout that I use in catechesis class is asked these questions:

• Have I schemed or tried to get another’s possessions?
• Have I misrepresented goods in selling or trading?
• Have I given regularly to my church? Do I rob God?
• Am I holding grudges?
• Is there anyone to whom I am not speaking?
• Have I listened to or spread gossip about someone?

These questions cover the gamut of doing and leaving undone. “Did I do this?” “Have I not done that?”

The Seventh Commandment is a relatively easy one to understand. If it doesn’t belong to you, don’t take it without permission—no way, no how. Do not outright take it. Don’t scheme to get it. Make as sure as you can that the rightful owner keeps it. If there is something relatively obscure to learn from the Seventh, it’s that God supports the private ownership of property—something belongs to your neighbor or something belongs to you.

On the other hand, there’s that pesky Eighth Commandment. Lutherans seems to have, generally speaking, a faulty understanding of the Eighth, and that translates into a horrible application and use of the Eighth. Someone says something to you with which you don’t agree or which causes you offense, and, true or not, you cite the Eighth Commandment as having been breached because, in your estimation, that something wasn’t explained in the kindest way.

Dear hearers, that’s not what this commandment means. To explain the truth in the kindest way is to give the benefit of the doubt or to make an effort to protect a person’s reputation, not to refrain from causing offense and certainly not to abstain from disagreement. The truth is the truth, and sometimes it is offensive. The Scriptures say that the Gospel is an offense, but that doesn’t make it any less the truth. As such is the case, there may be times when the truth is spoken and you cannot help but be offensive in speaking it. Fortunately, in the case of the Gospel, you do not need to defend that truth, but in speaking of your neighbor, you are commanded to protect his reputation.

So, what to do? Surely in one way or another, you can admit that you have been convicted by the reading of these Commandments. You may not outright stolen, but in thought and word, you are guilty of taking or keeping something that does not belong to you. You also may not have outright told a lie, besmirching someone’s reputation—or maybe you did—but there are certainly times that can come to mind when you did not tell the whole truth, when you didn’t speak as well of someone as you could have. What to do? Repent and believe the Gospel.

First of all, for you Jesus kept these commandments perfectly. He stole nothing and gave everything. He spoke well of all, even when speaking the harsh truth. And for you, He laid down His life and took it up again.

Now, He is at the right hand of majesty from which He gives you all good things—those things which are rightly His, but that He freely gives for your benefit. These are the things that, for Christ’s sake, you can lay claim to: forgiveness, life, and salvation. He also speaks well of you before His Father and yours: “Yes, that one has sinned, but that sin is atoned for, and that one is covered in my blood, they have a rightful claim to my righteousness.” There is no greater truth in love than the words uttered at the throne on your behalf.

There, Jesus reigns as your intercessor, pleading His life, death, resurrection, and ascension for you. The Law says, “Do this”—do not steal, do not bear false witness—and it is never done; therefore, you are a sinner. The Gospel says believe in this—Jesus Christ has redeemed you from the bondage to sin, cleansed and saved you by His blood—and everything is already done! Everything? Absolutely, your life and death is done in the life and death of Jesus Christ. This is what the Christ pleads: “I have died for that one;” therefore, you are forgiven for all of your sins.