“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” – Exodus 20:2 (CEB)
Read the Ten Commandments and look at verse two, before the first thou shalt. The commandments open with a rescue. Everything after that sentence is addressed to freed people, about how freed people live. That is a different document than the one most of us think we are holding. We tend to hear the commandments as a test we are quietly failing. Israel heard them as the house rules of a life that had just been handed back. Same words, and a completely different room. A rule handed to a slave is one more thing being done to you. The same rule handed to a free person is a description of what the freedom is for.
What changes if the commands you resent were written for someone already free?
God, you rescued first and instructed second. Let me hear your commands as a free person and not as a defendant. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.