“I am the LORD your God, which has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me”(Exodus 20:2,3).

There is only One who can stand uncondemned regarding this Commandment. Jesus of Nazareth lived a life without sin; He was perfect in thought, word, and deed (see Hebrews 4:15). Everything He did pleased the Father absolutely. The cross not only revealed that He loved His Father with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength, but it proved that He loved His neighbor as much as He loved Himself.

The duties required in the First Commandment are, the knowing and acknowledging of God to be the only true God and our God; and to worship and glorify Him accordingly, by thinking, meditating, remembering, highly esteeming, honoring, adoring, choosing, loving, desiring, fearing of Him, believing Him, trusting, hoping, delighting, rejoicing in Him, being zealous for Him, calling upon Him, giving all praise and thanks, and yielding all obedience and submission to Him with the whole man; being careful in all things to please Him, and sorrowful when in anything He is offended; and walking humbly with Him.

Sinful humans, however, don’t love God. They don’t delight to do His will. Instead, the Law of sin and death has written its bloody signature across the godless human breast (Romans 7:21–24). Our inborn cry is, “Not Your will, but mine be done!” The devil is our father and his will we gladly do. The carnal mind is not subject to the Law or God, nor indeed can it be (Romans 8:7). See how the Law condemns us. We fail to love the God who gave us life.

We no longer feel ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home and therefore obliged to make our behavior conform with a set of preexisting cosmic rules. It is our creation now. We make the rules. We establish the parameters of reality. We create the world, and because we do, we no longer feel beholden to outside forces. We no longer have to justify our behavior, for we are now the architects of the universe. We are responsible to nothing outside ourselves, for we are the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.