The Lord commanded, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27). This is a direct quote from Deut. 6:5 (Luke 11:13). To offer our devotions to God in the sense here stated and implied is to dedicate our entire beings, affections, lives, powers, and the intellect to Him.
God wrote the Ten Commandments with His own hand on stone twice. The first commandment states: “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). Being the only true God, the Lord requires that He alone be worshiped. God appeals to us to put Him before all else. To put Him first in our affections and give Him our devotions goes along with our Lord’s injunction in the sermon on the mount (Matt. 6:33).
People usually find it hard to trust in God whom they don’t see and try to place their faith in humans or things of this world (Matt. 6:19–34; 1 John 2:15–17). But we need to keep our devotions to God alone. We owe wholehearted allegiance and devotion to Him. Dependence upon humans places us in peril (Psalm 146:3; Jeremiah 17:5).
We violate the spirit of the first commandment, when we give our devotion to a mere human being like Mary, and forget the One who created all things (2 Cor. 4:18) and suffered and died on the cross to redeem us (John 3:16). There is no greater love than this (John 15:13).
Ultimately, God refuses the worship and service of a divided heart (Ex. 34:12–15; Deut. 4:23, 24; 6:14, 15; Joshua 24:15, 19, 20). Jesus Himself said, “No man can serve two masters” (Matt. 6:24).
He who truly “knows” God will keep His commandments because the “love” of God is “perfected” in him (1 John 2:4–6; Matt. 5:48). For to love God with all the heart is a fulfillment of His law (Rom. 13:10 also Rom. 8:3,4). Praise God! This kind of love is made possible by the grace of Christ (John 14:15; 15:9, 10).
In His service,
BibleAsk Team
