439. Why does the Decalogue constitute an organic unity?

439. Why does the Decalogue constitute an organic unity?   

(Comp 439) The Ten Commandments form an organic and indivisible whole because each commandment refers to the other commandments and to the entire Decalogue. To break one commandment, therefore, is to violate the entire law.

“In brief”

(CCC 2079) The Decalogue forms an organic unity in which each "word" or "commandment" refers to all the others taken together. To transgress one commandment is to infringe the whole Law (cf. Jas 2:10-11).

To deepen and explain

(CCC 2060) The gift of the commandments and of the Law is part of the covenant God sealed with his own. In Exodus, the revelation of the "ten words" is granted between the proposal of the covenant  (Cf. Ex 19) and its conclusion - after the people had committed themselves to "do" all that the Lord had said, and to "obey" it (Cf. Ex 24:7). The Decalogue is never handed on without first recalling the covenant (“The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb." Deut 5:2). 

Reflection

(CCC 1952) There are different expressions of the moral law, all of them interrelated: eternal law - the source, in God, of all law; natural law; revealed law, comprising the Old Law and the New Law, or Law of the Gospel; finally, civil and ecclesiastical laws. (CCC 1933) This same duty extends to those who think or act differently from us. The teaching of Christ goes so far as to require the forgiveness of offenses. He extends the commandment of love, which is that of the New Law, to all enemies (Cf. Mt 5:43-44). Liberation in the spirit of the Gospel is incompatible with hatred of one's enemy as a person, but not with hatred of the evil that he does as an enemy. 

(Next question: Why does the Decalogue enjoin serious obligations?)