What Does the First Commandment Mean?

“You shall have no other gods” (Exodus 20:3) sounds at first like a command for ancient people surrounded by statues—irrelevant to us, who own no idols. But Luther’s explanation cuts straight to the heart and shows why this commandment is the most searching of them all: “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” The First Commandment is not merely about avoiding carved images; it is about what your heart clings to for its ultimate security, meaning, and hope. And by that measure, everyone is tempted to break it constantly.

Luther put it memorably: whatever you look to for your deepest good, whatever you would be devastated to lose, whatever you organize your life around and trust to make you safe and happy—that is your god, whether or not you’d ever call it one. So the question the First Commandment presses is not “do you bow to statues?” but “what do you actually trust?” For one person it is money; for another, career, or reputation, or a relationship, or their own health, or being in control. These become idols not because they are bad—most are good gifts—but because we ask of them what only God can give. This is why Paul can call covetousness “idolatry” (Colossians 3:5): a heart set on the gift instead of the Giver has quietly enthroned a false god.

Jesus stated the positive form as the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). No divided loyalties—“you cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24).

Held honestly against this commandment, none of us stands. Our hearts are, as the reformers said, idol factories. And that is precisely where the First Commandment does its deepest work: it drives us out of the illusion that we keep God’s law, and to the only One who kept it perfectly—Christ, who trusted his Father with all his heart even to the cross, and now offers us his righteousness as a gift.