By Michael Peabody
Don’t settle for stone when you’ve been given a Savior.
The push to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom doesn’t come from a place of malice. It comes from people who care. I know some of them. They pray over their schools. They weep for their children. They see the confusion, the violence, the isolation—and they want to push back with something firm, something sacred. To them, the law of God is not just a rulebook. It’s an anchor.
And they’re not wrong to love the law. Scripture says plainly, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). God gave it, not to burden, but to reveal. The desire to post it on the walls of our classrooms springs from a real fear that our world is losing its moral memory. They believe, if we could just get the words back in front of the next generation, maybe they would listen. Maybe things would change.
I understand that. I really do. But I also remember my own life, haunted by the sense that I could never measure up. I knew the commandments, could quote most of them by the time I was a teenager. But they never made me righteous. They made me afraid. I knew I had broken them—some in secret, some in the open—and I knew what that meant. “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). And with that knowledge came shame. Not repentance. Not hope. Just the dull ache of knowing I had failed again.
No poster on a wall ever brought me peace.
What changed me wasn’t exposure to the rules. It was someone who told me that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me (Romans 5:8). That Jesus took my lawbreaking, all of it, and carried it in His own body on the cross. That He didn’t just give me a second chance—He gave me His own record. That He loved me in the very moment I thought I was unlovable. That the voice of God is not just thunder from Sinai but a whisper from Calvary, saying, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
I don’t oppose Ten Commandments posters because I hate the law. I oppose them because I love the gospel.
We don’t need less truth. We need more grace. The law can point to the problem, but it cannot fix the heart. “If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law” (Galatians 3:21). But it never could. Only Jesus can change a heart hardened by fear, shame, or sin.
I worry that these posters will make us feel like we’ve done something bold, when in truth, the real boldness is found in the much harder work of loving broken kids. Sitting next to them in their silence. Praying with them in their pain. Showing them that they are not beyond the reach of grace. That Christ doesn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up—He enters our mess and calls us His.
The law says, “Do this and live” (Luke 10:28). But none of us have done it. That’s why the gospel says, “Believe and live.” And that message cannot be captured in a laminated poster. It has to be carried by people who have been wrecked by grace and rebuilt by mercy.
Put up the poster if you want. But don’t stop there. Don’t settle for stone when you’ve been given a Savior.