“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tm. 2.5).

“For there is one God” – what a profound statement! All theology – all doctrine – begins with this fact. It is contained in the first of the Ten Commandments – “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” – because there is only one living and true God. To have other gods is to deny the one God, and He visited the sorest of His judgments upon idolaters. Idolatry is having any other god than the true God, or putting anything before the true God in our affections and our devotion. He is a jealous God and will not share His glory with another, for there is none other that has such glory.

That which Christ called the first and greatest commandment relates directly to our subject: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” Because there is no other God than Jehovah, therefore our hearts and our devotion should not be divided. All true religion flows from this greatest command, for true religion must be centered upon the adoration of the one holy God. Loving our neighbor is of utmost importance, but it is not to supplant our absolute submission to and worship of Jehovah.

“I AM,” the Lord called himself. Only He is eternal and self-existent. Only He can make such a statement or deserve such a name. He alone was in the beginning. He alone had no beginning. Only He could say, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” No other being transcends the ability of language to express His existence. Verb tenses fail when describing the one God, because only He is beyond and above time.

Because there is one God, there is one true religion – only one. It is the religion that He has instituted and commanded. To invent religion is to deny that He is the only God. For the worshipper to design his own mode of worship is to deny that the god he worships is truly God. Only the true God could have designed such a sublime religion. Jesus said that He is “the truth.” He is truth embodied; He spoke only truth; all truth is derived from what He is and what He spoke and did. True religion could have no other source, for the only true religion is that which is derived from and focuses upon the true God.

There is one God, and therefore only one hand to which we can look for comfort and deliverance. “Salvation is of the Lord,” Jonah learned. “Beside me there is no Saviour,” Isaiah taught us. To look for salvation in any other is to seek for disappointment, for there is only one God and therefore only one Savior.

If there is only one God – and there is – our eye should be single, i.e., focused solely and always upon Him. We should look to no other. We should focus our adoration upon no one else. He alone is God, and He alone is worthy to be praised.