And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’” (Luke 4:8)

Jesus’ command is very hard to bear. The exclusionary command to worship and serve only God sweeps away human (or demonic) ambition, pride, and our insatiable hunger to be first. Jesus didn’t say, “Worship God alongside other people and all your possessions and ambitions.” His words point to a new, a greater ambition for believers in Christ: to place God first with no second in view; to have him and no other (cf. Luke 14:33); to have him with nothing of equivalent value—and there to learn that God’s glorious presence in our lives defines, evaluates, judges, and potentially redeems, every other love and longing we have. To know God is to gain everything we had longed for and to lose everything we had cherished in place of him (cf. Matthew 13:46).

From More Glory, W. Thomas Warren.