God’s commandments are instructions that help you better understand how God would live in your place and why. God’s commandments can be expressed as rules, principles, or character qualities, each expressing how God would live in your place with higher fidelity. Rules are extractions from principles, which are extractions from character. All principles are emitted from character qualities, and all rules are emitted from principles.
A rule is a fixed description of how to act in a certain situation. Rules provide a way to transmit the greatest possible blessing to people unwilling to learn and live more like God than rules provide for. Rules are easiest for people to perceive, receive, and obey, but they are the most limited in how much of God’s character they can describe.
A principle is a generalized description of a higher order purpose. Principles are emitted extractions from character qualities, just as rules are extractions of principles. Principles are more difficult for people to perceive, receive, and obey than rules, but they are capable of describing much more of God’s character than rules. Principles prescribe behavior in terms of motives, transcending the limitations of rules, which are only applicable in specific situations. Principles are a blessing because they provide greater access to better behavior for those who are not yet willing or able to adopt God’s character.
Character is the composite of a person’s purpose, qualities, values, and beliefs.1 Character qualities describe God in the greatest accuracy, depth, and breadth, but provide a standard beyond what almost anyone is willing to perceive and live. Character provides the only way to merge principles that overlap or define a priority order between principles that conflict. The fullest description that of God comes in the form of living examples of his character,2 but these examples are the most difficult for people to perceive, receive, and obey. Those few who manage to understand, obtain, and live the character of God become most like him and can act as he does with great fidelity and extremely fine resolution in all situations in which they are placed.
Since the dawn of time, it has always been the case that almost everyone1090 knew of another person who was more like God than they were. From Adam until now, God has painstakingly arranged for almost everyone to know of some other living person who had some character quality that was superior to the corresponding quality in themselves. While God’s character is most often demonstrated through someone more like him than you are, it is least perceived, received, or valued this way, due to the limitations of human nature. While the greatest demonstrations of God’s character leads to the greatest and longest lasting joy, they are also the hardest to see, as holiness is almost always far different than what people expect.
Much more of God’s character is learned from principles rather than examples of it in other humans. While it is easier to learn God’s character from principles than from human demonstration, it is much more difficult to learn as much in this way, as principles are a lower resolution channel than character. Principles are easier to perceive, receive, and value than character, but doing so still requires unusual virtue. While character is learned from the top down, through examples of those who already possess it, principles are typically learned from the bottom up, through abstraction from the rules that are emitted from them. People learn principles from observing common patterns across rules and formulating generalized representations of them. In order to extract God’s rules into principles, a person must be more intentional, honest, and alert than most people are. It is because so few are willing or able to receive commandments by character or principle that most people are most familiar with commandments given as rules. While rules reveal the least content about the character of God, they are the easiest to perceive, receive, and value.
You keep different tiers of commandments differently. Rules are obeyed, principles are fulfilled, and character is embodied and lived. Rules are the letter of the law. You obey a rule by following it exactly. Principles are the spirit of the law. You fulfill a rule by learning the principle from which it was derived. You keep a commandment of character by becoming like the one who gave it. Those that keep commandments of character think, feel, and act as the one who demonstrated the example to them at all times and in all things.