The Ten Commandments describe the way God wants his human creatures to look and act as his image bearers. And the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” provides the foundation for the other nine. But what does it mean for modern people who don’t worship idols? Martin Luther’s explanation of what this commandment means can help us here: “we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”
First, all of us are afraid of losing the important things in our life, like family, money, home, job, etc., but anything we fear losing more than we fear losing God is our true god. Second, while it’s understandable that we love friendship, money, romance, hobbies, etc., if we love something more than we love God that is our true god. And third, lots of people trust in money, or in a loved one, or in their own intelligence, but if we trust any of these sort of things more than we trust in God then that is our true god.
So even though we might not bow down to idols these days, we are tempted to worship other parts of God’s creation, and the Ten Commandments call us to repent of these idolatries and worship only the one true God in Jesus Christ.
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