Some people have a talent for getting to the core of things. Julius Caesar wrote a good-sized book titled On the Gallic War. It is still used as a textbook by students of Latin. However, Caesar was also able to cut through all the details and get to the nub of a matter. He wrote a sentence that has become a classic in condensation: "Veni, Vidi, Vici" — "I came, I saw, I conquered." That sums it all up.

In Jesus' day there was a group of people who pored over the ancient writings of Moses to look for every law in the book. They were called Pharisees and they were very scrupulous about the observance of all the religious laws. They counted up all the commandments of Moses and found that there were 613 of them; 248 of these were positive, and 365 of them were negative (one for every day of t…