“You shall have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3)
That is the first of the Ten Commandments and being the first one no doubt suggests that it is the most important one.
What does it mean? Consider this: Since God is love, as the apostle John records, (1 John 4:16) to put God first in our lives would be to put self-sacrificial love first in our lives.
To submit ourselves to God is to submit to living a life of love. God — and therefore love — must rule our lives to where love is the reason why we do what we do at all times.
Someone put it this way: every interaction we have with someone else is meaningless if love is not attached to it in some way. In other words, the value of all that we do will be determined by the amount of God — of self-sacrificial love — is in it.
The more we live committed — at all costs and at all times — to our neighbors complete and ultimate wellbeing, the more God is first in our lives and consequently we have no other gods before him.
