“You will have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3)
In a previous post, we considered what it means to have a god. What it really is all about, Martin Luther tells us, is who or what are you going to trust. As Christians, we know that well. After all, the Holy Spirit planted trust — faith — in our hearts. So, we love God. We also remember that God is holy and know that sin has its consequences. So, we respect and fear him too. What challenges us is the “above all things” part.
There are many precious things that claim a place in our hearts. We love our spouses. We love our children. Perhaps we love our country, our home, our hobbies or possessions. These are great blessings that do have a proper place in our lives. The trouble comes when they compete with God. We can easily come to invest a trust in them. We build our lives around them, invest time and money in them. It is easy to come to trust them as much if not more than God.
The problem is that, no matter how precious these things are, they cannot bear the weight of our trust. Spouses and children become ill and die. Our nation may turn on us and make us choose between it and God. Possessions break, fade away and are lost. The only thing that endures forever is God’s word. God made the world by his word, his Word became flesh and lived with us. His suffering, death and resurrection earned for us forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Because he lives forever, we know that we will rise to live with him forever.
So we fear, love and trust God above all others. Then other blessings fall into their proper place as we thank God for them. This love and trust, then, in turn, leads to obey the rest of the commands as well.
See also: The Law of God is Good and Wise | Fence, Mirror and Guidebook | The Two Greatest Commandments | The Ten Commandments
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