Why Do We Break the First Commandment by Trying Hard to Keep God’s Commandments?

²¹you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? ²²You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?

Romans 2:21–22 (ESV)

In Romans 2:21-22, Paul challenged the religious hearers about their ability to keep God’s law just like Jesus did. Jesus said that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully commits adultery in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28). And so Paul started with the eighth commandment (stealing), then moved backward to the seventh commandment (adultery), and then talked about the second and first commandments in verse 22 (robbing the temples).

If Paul were speaking to Christians today, he could have raised the same issues, “We steal when we don’t give employers full effort for pay, or take credit for others’ work. We commit adultery in our hearts with pornography use, lustful thoughts, and emotional affairs. We are often putting career, money, success, relationships, or personal desires above God, letting hobbies or entertainment consume time and resources meant for God, and committing idolatry against Him.”

But by mentioning the eighth, and seventh commandments, and then alluding to the second and the first, Paul is showing that all sin ultimately stems from a failure to give God His rightful place in our lives. Martin Luther concurred that if you break any of the other commandments (2nd-10th), it is because you have already broken the first commandment by making something other than God your greatest joy.

When we steal, it’s often because we have made material possessions our idol. When we commit adultery, it’s because we have put our own desires above our commitment to God and our spouse. And when a Jew “robbed the temple” (although we don’t know exactly what they did), it was an indication that he put other gods before the one true God.

Paul’s progression of thought here is masterful. He is showing that outward obedience to the law is not enough if our hearts are not right with God. We can pride ourselves on not overtly stealing or committing adultery, but if these sins can fester under the surface then our idolatry against God is festering underneath as well. This is all because we “rely on the law” for our righteousness before Him.

Moralism is a subtle but dangerous form of idolatry. We may not be bowing down to physical statues, but we are putting our own moral achievements on the throne of our hearts, where only God should be. We’re relying on our own strength to save us, rather than on God’s grace. We’re saying, in essence, “I don’t need God’s mercy; I can earn it my own way.” This is a form of self-worship, and it’s the root of all other sins.

The solution, then, is not to try harder to keep the law, but to surrender our pride and self-reliance at the foot of the cross. It’s to acknowledge our need for God’s grace and to put our trust fully in Christ’s righteousness, not our own. As we do this, we’ll find the power to truly keep God’s commands, not out of a desire to earn our salvation, but out of a heart of love and gratitude for the salvation we’ve already been given.

Take a minutia sin in your life and inspect how it shows that you are breaking the first commandment ‘You shall not worship any other God’ in your heart. What do you think?

[The ideas for this week’s materials on Romans 2:17-29 were drawn from Tim Keller’s statement, “You cannot break any commandment if you didn’t break the first one first” from the second section of his talk “What is Gospel-Centered Ministry“]

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