THE FIRST COMMANDMENT - “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

About:

 408

"You shall have no other gods before me" appears in Exodus 20:3. and is the First of the Ten Commandments

The Old Testament continues to describe God as one among many. In Exodus 20 it says:  " I, the Lord, am your God, a jealous God, who punishes the sins of fathers upon their sons until the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, then again in  Exodus 34   "you must not worship any other god, for the Lord is called Jealous, for he is a jealous God.

This continues in Deuteronomy   "You were shown these things so that you would know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides Him." and then in Isiah it says, "For I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me".

Clearly the Old Testament sees God as one of many,  jealous of the others, vengeful, and very knowable.

Whereas in the New Testament God is good and Unknowable.

In Acts 17 the Apostle Paul says:   For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.  The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,  nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. and again in Hebrews is said,"  In previous times, God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways through the Prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he created the universe".

Why the change in God? I would say because the God of the New Testament is the Greek Platonic version of God which gives us a Trinity of the Father Son and holy spirit. 

To understand this you must know that the Apostle Paul is saying these things at a time when the known world had just been conquered by the Romans, and this world had been Greek since the time of Alexander the Great, 350 years before Christ, and this is why the Bible was written in Greek. The Minora is a testament to this fact, it represents the Maccabean Revolt  which occurred 150 years before Christ. In this revolt the Jews were fighting to keep their Jewish traditions, since many were becoming Greek in their ways and beliefs. 

The Greek Platonic religion is almost exactly as described in John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people".

John describes God, as alongside the "word", logos or Jesus Christ. For the Greeks, the Logos comes from a Unknowable yet Good God, there is only one and this is why they call God the ONE.    Christ is an emanation from this Unknowable God, created at the beginning of creation to tell us this truth. The Apostle Paul believed he was living in the end times and that Christ had come to teach us how to live in these times, that the conflict between Good and Evil were now coming to an end.     

2 Corinthians 4:4 says, "In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."  Here, Paul is referring to how Satan actively blinds the minds of those who don't believe in Jesus. The Apostle Paul' believes that Satan rules over the world, and that Christ, is the Logos for the coming age. Obviously the new age never came. 

 What we should know is that: "There is only one Unknoable God - and it is understood only in what is Good" 

God is approached through understanding the concept of the good, it is our purpose, the only meaning to living is to become wise and live good lives harmoniously in Christ. 

God does not command us to be wise, but clearly condemns the ignorant to difficult lives filled with hardship. 

Other than the obvious, little can be known of an Unknowable God. God requires us to evolve from childhood into old wise Souls, although many miss the mark, through this evolution we come closer to God.

We are not born wise nor intelligent, instead we evolve and on the way we will believe in all sorts of nonsense. Intelligence and wisdom require honesty, time and effort, this is the object of the living, and is the only path to understand some aspects of ourselves and God.   

Finally I can say that the Bible describes two different Gods, along with many religious and philosophical themes from neighboring civilizations and cultures. To know the truth you must approach God through Christ, the Logos, your Soul must mature, and gain in intelligence and wisdom, then you will be able to discern the truth.  

as it says in Luke 3:      

And as the people were in expectation, and all musing in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ, John answered and said to them all, I baptize you with water, but one stronger than I is coming after me, whose shoe latchet I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  He has his fan in his hand, and will purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his barn; but the chaff he will burn with fire that never shall be quenched.

Just as Christ will separate the good from the bad, you too must separate what is good from what is bad, the light from the dark, and you must do this on your own.