Exodus 20.3; Deuteronomy 5.7

“…You shall have no other gods before me.”

To “have” God, as we have seen, means to possess Him with all the conviction, commitment, and faithfulness with which He has come to possess us. It is to find our eternal satisfaction and love in Him alone, and not in created things. This is the first aspect of what it means to “have” God.

Second, God regards all creatures and things, other than Himself, as “gods”, albeit, false ones, when His people ascribe to them the blessings they daily enjoy. Here we must not think only in terms of pagan deities or the false gods of major religions, past or present. Whatever human beings turn to in order to secure the blessings of God through their own hands are gods, after a fashion. This also implies that all worldviews other than that which God reveals in His Word are, in the nature of the case, religions, since they focus on unseen promises, give devotion to supposedly ultimate powers (even if only the human imagination and will), and involve rituals and routines designed to engage those powers for those unseen but hoped-for ends. Made in the image of God, all human beings have a sense of transcendence and of the ultimate good, toward which they strive in order to achieve wellbeing.

God would have His people know that He will tolerate no other gods, of any kind, as objects of His people’s devotion and service. God requires exclusive devotion to His Name, in the form of love and service, from those He has redeemed. One implication of such devotion is that we who have been redeemed would seek no other word or law by which to live than that which our eternal and loving God provides for us. To have God involves taking His Word to heart and working out the salvation He has accomplished for us through obedience to His Law (Phil. 2.12, 13; Matt. 5.17-19; 1 Jn. 2.1-6; Rom. 3.31; etc.).

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