The First Commandment

The simple meaning of this commandment is, You shall worship me alone as your God. What do these words mean and how are they to be understood? What is it to have a god, or what is God? Answer: A god is that to which we look for all good and where we resort for help in every time of need; to have a god is simply to trust and believe in one with our whole heart. As I have often said, the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and confidence are right, then likewise your God is the true God. On the other hand, if your confidence is false, if it is wrong, then you have not the true God. For the two, faith and God, have inevitable connection. Now, I say, whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.

Therefore, the intent of this commandment is to require true faith and trust of the heart with respect to the only true God. The heart must cling only to him. The meaning is: Take heed that ye allow me alone to be your God, and that ye never seek another. In other words: Whatever good you lack, look to me for it and seek it in me. And whenever you suffer misfortune and distress, come, cling to me. I, even I, will supply your want and help you out of every need. Only, let not your heart cling to, nor rely on, any other.

Now, I must treat this theme in plain language, that it may be understood and remembered. I will cite some common examples of failure to observe this commandment. Many a one thinks he has God and entire sufficiency if he has money and riches; in them he trusts and proudly and securely boasts that he cares for no one. He surely has a god, called mammon, Mt 6, 24—that is, money and riches—on which he fixes his whole heart. This is a universal idol upon earth. He who is in possession of money and riches deems himself secure; he is as happy and fearless as if he were in the midst of paradise. On the other hand, he who has nothing, doubts and despairs as if he had no knowledge of God. Very few persons are found who, cheerful of heart, are not stirred to murmuring and complaint by scantiness of substance. This desire for wealth cleaves to our natures until we are in our graves. In like manner, he who boasts great skill, wisdom, power and influence, and friends and honors, and trusts in them, has also a god, but not the one true God. Notice, again, how presumptuous, secure and proud people are when in the enjoyment of such possessions, and how despondent when without them or deprived of them. Therefore, I repeat that to have a god, truly means to have something in which the heart puts all trust.

Notice what we have been doing in our blindness under the Papacy. When one had the toothache he would mortify his flesh by voluntary fasting to the honor of Saint Apollonia; he who feared the perils of fire, would seek Saint Lawrence as his patron saint; he who feared pestilence, would pay his vows to Saint Sebastian or Saint Roch; and there were innumerable like abominations, each one choosing his own saint, whom he worshiped and invoked for aid in time of need. Of this class are those who go so far as to covenant with Satan to give them abundance of money, to help them in love affairs, to preserve their cattle, restore their lost possessions, and the like, as magicians and sorcerers do. All these fix their hearts and trust elsewhere than in the true God. They look to him for no favors, they seek nothing from him.

You readily recognize the nature of this commandment and the extent of its requirements. It claims man's whole heart and his trust in God alone. One can easily understand that to have God does not mean to lay hands upon him, nor to put him in a purse or lock him in a safe. But we lay hold of him when our hearts embrace him and cleave to him. Now, to cling to him with the heart is simply to fully trust in him. He desires to turn us away from everything else, and to draw us to himself, the only eternal God; as if he should say, All you have heretofore sought from the saints, or for which you have trusted in mammon and others, expect from me—regard me as the one who can help you and richly bless you with everything good.

Behold, this is the true honor and service of God, pleasing to him and even commanded by him under penalty of eternal wrath—this, that the heart should know no consolation or refuge elsewhere than in him, and, never suffering itself to be torn from him, should stake on him and subordinate to him all that is upon earth. On the other hand, you have plain evidence how the world practices nothing but false worship of God, and idolatry. No people have ever been so godless as not to establish and maintain some divine service. Everyone sets up a god of his own, to whom he looks for blessings, help, and comfort. For example, the heathen who placed their hope in power and dominion exalted Jupiter as their supreme god; they who sought riches, happiness or pleasure, and a life of ease, venerated Hercules, Mercury, Venus or others; women with child worshiped Diana or Lucina; and so on, each making that his god to which his heart inclined. So, even in the minds of the heathen, to have a god meant to trust and believe. But they erred in that their trust was false, was wrong; for it was not centered in the only God, besides whom there is no god, neither in heaven nor upon earth, Is 44, 6. Therefore, the god of the heathen is the creature of their own dream and fancy, and they trust in that which is absolutely nothing. So it is with all idolatry; for idolatry does not consist merely in the act of erecting an image and praying to it. It consists chiefly in the state of a heart that is intent on something else and seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints or devils; that neither cares for God nor looks to him for any good, even for help, nor believes that the good it receives comes from God.

There is, moreover, another false divine service, the greatest idolatry we have as yet practiced; it still reigns in the world. Upon it all ecclesiastical orders are founded. It sways the conscience that seeks in its own works help, consolation and salvation, that presumes to wrest heaven from God, and reckons how many institutions it has established, how often it has fasted, attended mass, etc. Such a conscience relies upon and boasts of these things, as if it would receive nothing from God gratuitously, but has acquired and earned all by works of supererogation; as if God were under obligation to stand at our service, indebted to us, and we were his lords. What is that but making God an idol, yea, a mere dispenser of apples, and esteeming and exalting ourselves as God? But such reasoning is a little too subtle to be understood by young scholars.

This much, however, has been said to the inexperienced that they may carefully note and retain the meaning of this commandment: We are to trust in God alone and look to him, expecting from him only good; for it is he who gives us body and life, food and drink, nourishment, health, protection, peace, and all temporal and eternal blessings. It is he who protects us from misfortune and saves and helps when calamities befall. It is God alone, as I have often enough repeated, from whom man receives all good and by whom he is delivered from all evil. I think we Germans, from ancient times, have called God by a name finer and worthier than any found in other languages—derived from the word "good," and meaning one who, as an eternal fountain, overflows with sheer goodness, from whom springs all that is good and is called good.

Even though we receive much good at the hands of men, it all comes from God by virtue of his command and ordinance. For our parents, all authorities, and even they who are our neighbors, have received the command to do us all manner of good; so we receive our blessings, not from them, but from God through them. Creatures are only the hand, the channel and instrument, by which God bestows all his blessings. For example, he gives the mother natural food for her infant, and he permits wheat and other products to grow out of the ground for our food—things which no creature of itself can produce. No one, then, should presume to accept or bestow a blessing other than as commanded by God; we must acknowledge all to be God's gifts and thank him for them, as this commandment requires. Therefore, God's creatures, as instruments by which we receive blessings, are not to be rejected; nor are we to seek, by presumption, other ways and means than those commanded by God. If we did, we should not be receiving blessings from God, but seeking them from ourselves.

Let each, then, take heed that he regard this commandment as exalted above every other thing, and treat it not as a light matter. Examine your own heart diligently and inquire of it, and you will surely find whether or no it cleaves to God alone. Do you possess a heart that expects from him nothing but good, especially when in need and distress, and that renounces and forsakes all that is not God? Then you have the only true God. On the contrary, does your heart cleave to something from which it expects more good and more aid than it does from God, and does it flee, not to him, but from him? Then you have another god, an idol.

To instruct us that he will not allow his commandment to be cast to the winds, but that he guards it well, God has attached to this commandment, first a terrible threat, and then a beautiful, comforting promise. These we should carefully study and should impress them upon the young so that they may take them to heart and keep them. "For I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments," Ex 20, 5-6; Deut 5, 9-10.