What Does the Fifth Commandment Mean?

“You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) seems, at first, to be the one commandment most of us clearly keep—we’ve never killed anyone. But Jesus and Luther both refuse to let us off that easily, and once you see how far this commandment reaches, it stops being someone else’s problem and becomes everyone’s.

Jesus himself expanded it in the Sermon on the Mount: the commandment forbids not only the act of murder but the anger and contempt from which murder grows. “Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment,” he said, equating hateful contempt with the spirit of murder (Matthew 5:22). John makes it explicit: “everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). So the commandment reaches into the heart—to grudges, rage, contempt, the wish that someone were gone, the words that assassinate a person’s dignity. By that measure, none of us stands innocent.

And Luther, as with the other commandments, draws out the positive command hidden inside the prohibition. “We should fear and love God,” he writes, “so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.” The commandment does not merely forbid killing; it commands actively protecting and preserving our neighbor’s life and wellbeing. To stand by while a neighbor suffers, to withhold help we could give, is itself a way of breaking it. Love does not just refrain from harm; it does good—even to enemies: “if your enemy is hungry, feed him” (Romans 12:20).

This is why the Fifth Commandment also grounds the Church’s care for all human life—the unborn, the sick, the elderly, the vulnerable—since each bears God’s image and is our neighbor to protect.

Held against the true breadth of this commandment, the anger and coldness in our own hearts convict us. And that sends us, once again, to Christ—who, dying for his enemies while they mocked him, both kept this commandment perfectly and forgives us for breaking it.