What if I have broken these commandments?

There is no ‘what if’ in this respect. God’s verdict on all mankind is clear and damning – All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Sin is either failing to do what God commands or doing what God forbids. I do what God forbids when I commit murder, adultery, theft, slander, or when I worship something or someone other than God. I fail to do what God commands when I do not give God first place in my life, when I fail to worship Him as I should or when I do not honour my parents. These are sins of commission (what I do) and sins of omission (what I do not do). We are all guilty of both of these types of sin.

And, though you may not have committed what you think are the worst sins, if you have sinned in any way at all, you are guilty of breaking God’s Ten Commandments. For ‘whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.’ James 2.11. You and I may not have committed murder, but if we have even failed to give God first place in our lives, we have sinned. And ‘the wages of sin is death’.

The law of God, (the Ten Commandments) was given, first of all to show God’s moral standards for you, and secondly to show you that you have failed to meet these standards. In Old Testament times, when someone knew they had sinned against God, they brought a sacrifice to God to show their sorrow for that sin and to seek God’s forgiveness. Strictly speaking, we don’t need to do that today. We don’t bring God sacrifices of sheep, or goats or cattle any more. But the law was given to bring us to admission of sin and then to bring us to Christ. Why to Christ? His is the ‘sacrifice’ I must bring to God. It would be better to say He is the sacrifice I must bring to God. What must you do, then, about your sin? You look at the commandments and realize you have broken them. You need to confess to God your sin, your miserable failure to keep His law, and you need to remind Him as you pray that He has provided a sacrifice for sin. When God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on a cross at a place called Calvary, He made Him to be sin, though He knew no sin. Christ suffered, the just (sinless one) for the unjust (sinful ones) to bring us back to God. He bore the judgment of God for sins He had never done. He died as a substitute for sinners, bearing their sin and shame and enduring the judgment of God that was due to them. So now, if you come to God by faith and in prayer, and ask Him to forgive your transgressions of His law, your failure to keep His Ten Commandments, God will forgive you because His Son ‘died that we might be forgiven, He died to make us good, that we might go at last to heaven, saved by His precious blood’.