In school, I'm studying the Reformation. As part of this study, I've been looking at The Shorter Catechism. Right now I'm studying the section covering the ten commandments and since I honestly can't think of anything else to blog about, I decided to write my thoughts on each of the commandments.
The thing about the commandments is that they tell us what is required as well as what is forbidden. So I'm going to try to incorporate that into my posts.
#1
Exodus 20:3 - "You shall have no other gods before me.
The requirement: Deuteronomy 26:17, 1 Chronicles 28:9, Matthew 4:10
We are required to serve God with wholehearted devotion. This means walking in His ways, keeping his decrees, commands, and laws, and obeying him in everything.
The forbidden: Romans 1:21, 1:25
We are forbidden to allow our hearts to because foolish or let our thinking become futile causing us to neither glorified Him as God nor give thanks to Him. We are not to exchange the truth of God for a lie, serving the created things rather than their Creator.
There is a reason for not putting our trust in any other God but the One True God. Hebrews 4:13 tells us that God sees everything. That means nothing can happen to us without His knowledge. So why would we even want to put our trust in something else that can offer us less? Deuteronomy 32:16 also gives us a good reason for worshiping God alone. He is a Jealous God and the worship of idols angers Him. He is THE all powerful God, angering Him is NOT a good plan.
Very true. If we are not following god wholeheartedly, can we say that we are truly christian? As Mathew 7:16 says, you will know them by their fruits. If we allow ourselves to stray, and follow the ways of the world, we need to question how genuine our faith really is.
ReplyDeleteI´m not sure if "before me" is actually the right translation - if you would translate the first commandment in german to english it would mean "beside me", which would be stricter. I don´t speak hebrew and i don´t know any other translations than the english and the german, but since those 2 differ a little bit i would really be interested what the original said or if it even was translatable in a clear way.
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