Deut 30, 17-20 By loving the LORD, your God

(Deut 30, 17-20) By loving the LORD, your God

[17] If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, [18] I tell you now that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land which you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy. [19] I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, [20] by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

(CCC 2069) The Decalogue forms a coherent whole. Each "word" refers to each of the others and to all of them; they reciprocally condition one another. The two tables shed light on one another; they form an organic unity. To transgress one commandment is to infringe all the others (Cf. Jas 2:10-11). One cannot honor another person without blessing God his Creator. One cannot adore God without loving all men, his creatures. The Decalogue brings man's religious and social life into unity. (CCC 2070) The Ten Commandments belong to God's revelation. At the same time they teach us the true humanity of man. They bring to light the essential duties, and therefore, indirectly, the fundamental rights inherent in the nature of the human person. The Decalogue contains a privileged expression of the natural law: From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law. Then he was content to remind him of them. This was the Decalogue (St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 4, 15, 1: PG 7/l, 1012). (CCC 2071) The commandments of the Decalogue, although accessible to reason alone, have been revealed. To attain a complete and certain understanding of the requirements of the natural law, sinful humanity needed this revelation: A full explanation of the commandments of the Decalogue became necessary in the state of sin because the light of reason was obscured and the will had gone astray (St. Bonaventure, Comm. sent. 4, 37, 1, 3). We know God's commandments through the divine revelation proposed to us in the Church, and through the voice of moral conscience.