The First Commandment

The simple meaning of this commandment is: worship me alone as your God. But what does that actually mean? What is a god, and what does it mean to have one? Answer: A god is whatever you look to for all good things and turn to for help in every time of need. To have a god simply means to trust and believe in something with your whole heart. As I have said many times, it is the confidence and faith of the heart that make something either the true God or a false idol. If your faith and confidence are rightly placed, then you have the true God. If they are wrongly placed, you do not. Faith and God are inseparably bound together. Whatever your heart clings to and relies on, that is, in the most real sense, your god.

The intent of this commandment, then, is to require genuine faith and trust of the heart directed toward the one true God. The heart must hold to Him and Him alone. The meaning is this: let me be your only God, and never go looking for another. In other words, whatever good you lack, look to me for it. Whenever you face misfortune and distress, come to me and hold fast to me. I will meet your needs and bring you through every difficulty. Only do not let your heart cling to or depend on anything else.

I need to address this topic in plain terms so it can be understood and remembered. Here are some common examples of how people fail to keep this commandment. Many people think they have God and everything they need as long as they have money and wealth. They trust in it, boast confidently about it, and convince themselves they need no one else. Such a person certainly has a god, but it's the one Jesus called mammon (Matt 6:24), which is to say money and possessions, and that is where he has placed his whole heart. This is the universal idol of the earth. Whoever has money and wealth feels secure; he is as happy and carefree as if he were living in paradise itself. On the other hand, whoever has nothing doubts and despairs as though he had never heard of God at all. You'll find very few people who, when facing scarcity, can keep a cheerful heart without sliding into grumbling and complaint. This hunger for wealth clings to our nature until we're in the ground. In the same way, whoever boasts of great skill, wisdom, power, influence, friends, or status, and puts his trust in those things, also has a god, just not the one true God. Consider how arrogant, self-assured, and proud people become when they possess such things, and how crushed they are when those things are gone or taken away. So I'll say it again: to have a god truly means to have something in which the heart places its complete trust.

Consider what we did in our blindness under the Papacy. When someone had a toothache, he would mortify his flesh through voluntary fasting in honor of Saint Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists. Those who feared fire would claim Saint Lawrence as their patron. Those who feared plague would make vows to Saint Sebastian or Saint Roch, patron saints invoked against plague and suffering. The abominations were countless, with each person choosing his own saint to worship and call on in times of need. In this same category are those who go so far as to make covenants with Satan, seeking wealth, success in romantic pursuits, protection for their livestock, recovery of lost property, and similar things, just as magicians and sorcerers do. All of these people have placed their hearts and their trust somewhere other than in the true God. They expect nothing from Him and seek nothing from Him.

You can readily see what this commandment requires and how far its demands reach. It claims a person's whole heart and calls for trust in God alone. It's easy to understand that having God doesn't mean physically grasping Him or locking Him away in a safe. Rather, we take hold of Him when our hearts embrace Him and hold fast to Him. To cling to Him with the heart simply means to trust Him completely. He wants to draw us away from everything else and toward Himself, the one eternal God. It's as if He were saying: everything you once sought from the saints, everything you once trusted mammon or others to provide, look to me for all of it. Regard me as the one who can help you and bless you richly with every good thing.

This is the true honor and service of God, the kind that pleases Him and that He commands under the penalty of eternal wrath: the heart must seek no consolation or refuge anywhere except in Him, must never allow itself to be torn away from Him, and must stake everything on Him, placing all earthly things beneath Him. On the other hand, the evidence is plain that the world practices nothing but false worship and idolatry. No people in history have been so godless that they failed to establish and maintain some form of divine service. Everyone sets up a god of their own, someone or something they look to for blessing, help, and comfort. The ancient pagans who placed their hope in power and dominion exalted Jupiter as their supreme god; those who sought wealth, happiness, pleasure, and an easy life venerated Hercules, Mercury, Venus, or others; pregnant women worshiped Diana or Lucina; and so on, each person making a god out of whatever their heart was drawn to. Even in the minds of the pagans, then, having a god meant trusting and believing in something. But they were wrong, because their trust was misplaced: it was not centered on the one true God, beside whom there is no other god, neither in heaven nor on earth (Isa 44:6). The gods of the pagans were nothing more than the products of their own imagination and fantasy, and they put their trust in what was, in reality, absolutely nothing. This is the nature of all idolatry. Idolatry does not consist merely in the act of setting up an image and praying to it. It consists primarily in the condition of a heart that is fixed on something else, that seeks help and consolation from created things, from saints, or from devils, that has no regard for God, does not look to Him for any good or any help, and does not believe that whatever good it receives comes from Him at all.

There is also another form of false worship, and it may be the greatest idolatry we have ever practiced. It still dominates the world today. All ecclesiastical institutions are built on it. It grips the conscience that looks to its own works for help, comfort, and salvation, that presumes to wrest heaven from God by sheer effort, and tallies up how many institutions it has founded, how often it has fasted, attended mass, and so on. Such a conscience leans on these things and boasts about them, as though it expected to receive nothing from God freely, but had instead earned and acquired everything through works beyond what was required, as though God were obligated to serve us, indebted to us, and we were His lords. What is that but making God into an idol, or worse, a mere dispenser of rewards, while we elevate ourselves to His place? That line of reasoning, however, is probably too subtle for younger students to follow just yet.

Still, enough has been said here for those who are new to these ideas, so that they can carefully grasp and hold onto the meaning of this commandment: we are to trust in God alone, look to Him, and expect only good things from Him. It is He who gives us body and life, food and drink, nourishment, health, protection, peace, and every blessing both in time and eternity. It is He who shields us from misfortune and rescues us when disaster strikes. As I have said many times over, God alone is the source of all good for humanity, and God alone delivers us from all evil. I think we Germans, from ancient times, have given God a name finer and more fitting than any found in other languages, a name derived from the word "good," pointing to One who, like an eternal fountain, overflows with pure goodness, from whom all that is good originates and takes its name.

Even though we receive much good through other people, all of it ultimately comes from God, by virtue of His command and design. Our parents, all governing authorities, and even our neighbors have been commanded by God to do us good in every way; so the blessings we receive come not from them, but from God working through them. Other people and created things are simply the hands, the channels, and the instruments through which God delivers His blessings. For example, He gives a mother natural milk for her infant, and He causes wheat and other crops to grow from the ground to feed us, things that no created being could produce on its own. No one, then, should presume either to receive or to give a blessing except as God has directed; we must recognize everything as God's gift and thank Him for it, as this commandment requires. This means we should neither reject the created things God uses to bless us, nor should we arrogantly seek out other sources and methods than those God has appointed. If we did, we would no longer be receiving blessings from God; we would be trying to provide for ourselves.

Let everyone, then, treat this commandment as standing above all other concerns, and take it with the utmost seriousness. Search your own heart carefully and honestly, and you will discover whether or not it truly clings to God alone. Do you have a heart that looks to Him for nothing but good, especially in times of need and distress, and that turns away from everything that is not God? Then you have the one true God. But if your heart clings instead to something else, something from which you expect more help and more blessing than you expect from God, and if in trouble you run away from Him rather than toward Him, then you have set up another god, an idol.

To teach us that He will not allow His commandment to be ignored, God has attached to it both a sobering threat and a beautiful, comforting promise. We should study these carefully and impress them on the young so that they take them to heart and live by them. "For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments" (Exod 20:5-6; Deut 5:9-10).