5 Who Comes First?
Who Comes First?
The fundamental commandment, first in importance as well as in order, and basic to every other, is, “You shall have no other gods before me.” True religion starts with accepting this as one’s rule of life.
Loyalty
Your god is what you love, seek, worship, serve, and allow to control you. Paul calls covetousness “idolatry” (Colossians 3:5) because what you covet—houses, possessions, ornaments, money, status, success, or whatever—is “had” as a god in this sense. To have your Maker and Savior as your God in preference to any other object of devotion (which is the point of “before”) means that you live for him as his person in faithful and loyal obedience. The attitude of devoted loyalty to God, expressed in worship and service according to his Word, is that fear of the Lord (reverence, not panic!) which the Bible sees as the beginning and indeed the essence of wisdom (Job 28:28; Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7, 9:10). Heart-loyalty is the soil out of which holy living grows.
Other Gods
What other gods could one “have” beside the Lord? Plenty. For Israel there were the Canaanite Baals, those jolly nature-gods whose worship, as we know from archaeology and Scriptures like Hosea 4:11-14, was a rampage of gluttony, drunkenness, and ritual prostitution. For us there are still the great gods Sex, Shekels, and Stomach (an unholy trinity constituting one god, self), and the other enslaving trio, Pleasure, Possessions, and Position, whose worship is described in 1 John 2:16 as “the lust of the flesh and lust of the eyes and the pride of life.” Football, the Firm, Freemasonry, the Family are also gods for some, and indeed the list of other gods is endless, for anything that anyone allows to run his life becomes his god, and the claimants for this prerogative are legion. In the matter of life’s basic loyalty, temptation is a many-headed monster.
Concentrated Living
The great commandment, the first one, said Jesus, is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind (Matthew 22:37; the version of these words in Mark 12:30 adds a further dimension, “all your strength”). Quoted from Deuteronomy 6:4ff., where it is introduced with a reminder that the Lord is “one,” meaning “the only one” (the point being, first, that none of the other gods around may be identified with him, and second, that being the only proper claimant of our worship and service he may rightly ask for it all), this saying shows us what loyalty to God requires. It calls for love, responding to God’s love in making and saving you; and it demands total concentration of purpose, so that in everything you do there is just one thing you aim at—pleasing and glorifying the Lord.
“No soldier on service gets entangled in civilian pursuits,” wrote Paul, “since his aim is to satisfy the one who enlisted him” (2 Timothy 2:4). In business too, employers expect the undivided loyalty of their staff, and we think them entitled to do so. But how much stronger is God’s claim! Do we give our God the resolute, wholehearted allegiance for which he asks, and which is his due? Does he really come first in our lives?
What will it mean in practice for me to put God first? This much, at least. All the 101 things I have to do each day, and the 101 demands on me which I know I must try to meet, will all be approached as ventures of loving service to him, and I shall do the best I can in everything for his sake—which attitude, as George Herbert quaintly said, “makes drudgery divine; who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, makes that and th’ action fine.”
And then I shall find that, through the secret work of the Spirit which is known by its effects, my very purpose of pleasing God gives me new energy for all these tasks and relationships, energy which otherwise I could not have had. “I could not love thee, dear, so much loved I not honor more,” said the poet. Put “God” for “honor,” and you have the deepest truth about the Christian’s love of his neighbor. Self-absorbed resentments dissolve, and zest for life, happiness in doing things, and love for others all grow great when God comes first.
So wake up, enthrone your God—and live!
Further Bible Study
Wrong priorities:
Haggai 1
God despised, wearied, and robbed:
Malachi 1-4
Questions for Thought and Discussion
What characterized whomever or whatever a person chooses for his god? What god (or God) do you serve?
Why would one say, “Heart-loyalty is the soil out of which holy living grows”?
What does it mean in practice to have no other gods before God?