All Other Gods False

All Other Gods False

Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:7

“…You shall have no other gods before me.”

To “have” God, as we have seen, means to possess Him with all the conviction, commitment, and faithfulness with which He has come to possess us. It is to find our eternal satisfaction and love in Him alone and not in created things. This is the first aspect of what it means to “have” God.

Second, God regards all creatures and things, other than Himself, as “gods,” albeit false ones, when His people ascribe to them the blessings they daily enjoy. Here we must not think only in terms of pagan deities or the false gods of major religions, past or present. Whatever human beings turn to in order to secure the blessings of God through their own hands are gods, after a fashion. This also implies that all worldviews other than that which God reveals in His Word are, in the nature of the case, religions, since they focus on unseen promises, give devotion to supposedly ultimate powers (even if only the human imagination and will), and involve rituals and routines designed to engage those powers for those unseen but hoped-for ends. Made in the image of God, all human beings have a sense of transcendence and of the ultimate good, toward which they strive in order to achieve well-being.

God would have His people know that He will tolerate no other gods, of any kind, as objects of His people’s devotion and service. God requires exclusive devotion to His Name, in the form of love and service, from those He has redeemed. One implication of such devotion is that we who have been redeemed would seek no other word or law by which to live than that which our eternal and loving God provides for us. To have God involves taking His Word to heart and working out the salvation He has accomplished for us through obedience to His Law (Phil. 2:12, 13; Matt. 5:17-19; 1 John 2:1-6; Rom. 3:31; etc.).

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.