3 reasons for why God is so jealous

By Marlon De Blasio, Op-ed contributor Sunday, January 04, 2026

Humankind possesses a proclivity for spirituality, religious belief, superstition, and myth. Some athletes have pre-game beliefs that specific charms are associated with winning. Business people will sometimes wear their lucky attire. Some people even give serious consideration to palm readings and horoscopes.

Widespread religious beliefs also reveal how humanity is wired with a hankering for spirituality. The ingenuity associated with seeking supernatural influence is boundless. God anticipated humanity’s fallen inclinations and revealed His path to truth and redemption by commanding, “I am the LORD your God . . . You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2-3).

I believe there are three points of understanding why God revealed this first commandment, though the topic is surely inexhaustible.

1. God is the truth

Consider these indisputable facts: humankind has reasoning faculties; the capability to understand scientific laws; artistic talents that create recognizable beauty; and a conscience that influences moral conduct. Evidently, something metaphysical must explain how humankind flourishes. In our daily conscious experiences, the exchange of knowledge and truths are possible among us because God created with the intended purpose of facilitating communicative comprehension. When God said, “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14), He was revealing that He is humanity’s indispensable source of Truth. Without God, the foregoing facts would not be possible and our flourishing couldn’t be accommodated, because materialism per se didn’t have intelligent purpose to intend rationality in humankind.

We are also spiritual beings who seek hope in something beyond ourselves, as attested by perpetual religious beliefs and superstitious practices. God knew that we would engage in a farrago of substitutes for Him, and so the first commandment is revealed for our own good. When humanity acknowledges the “I AM,” it will be on the course of truth and the freedom of His redemption. God’s prophets consistently spoke with reminders of this perennial path: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Is. 45:22).

2. Religious affections require comprehensive direction

Ancient civilizations worshipped gods and practiced religious rituals. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans wondered about the nature of humankind’s existence in the known universe, about its moral compass, the afterlife, and they deified images accordingly. What happened to those religious beliefs? They are in the ken of superstition and mythology, because they could not provide cohesive answers to all of humanity’s necessary questions. Such as, where did we come from? Why are we here? How does humanity advance knowledge? What makes it possible for humanity to experience and understand righteousness, justice, and love? Is there an ultimate meaning? Ancient religions could not expound the human experience of reality in the world, and so they were eventually unpacked as irrelevant.

The Hebrew view of God persevered because it could answer those questions. The Hebrews knew that there was a “beginning” and that God brought time, space, and matter into existence simultaneously. God was understood not as intrinsic to the natural world, but as the giver of life with purpose. With the Moral Law, and the Levitical dietary laws, and even scriptural ethics in commerce, the Hebrews remained cognizant of God in everyday life. He was worshipped as the “I AM.” Then “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4). The grace of God and its personal efficacy for humanity is what continues to distinguish Christian faith from other contemporary monotheistic religions and worldviews.

3. Path to redemption by “the way, the truth, and the life”

The continuity from Old Testament monotheism to the grace of God’s equal Redeemer was explained by the Apostle Paul, whose inspired Christology continues to transform people. In The Resurrection of the Son of God, N. T. Wright commented:

Every step Paul took, he found in scripture ... he found that Messiah-language, when applied to Jesus, was capable of carrying ... a new god-language, to be applied to the same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This continuing experience of knowing the one true God in and through Jesus the Messiah, the lord, and of knowing this in the fellowship of the church, was what Paul was talking about.[1]

The motif of the New Testament is that sola gratia provides forgiveness for those who accept that “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). The truth of this grace remains inextinguishable and will continue to provide a believer with spiritual regeneration to befriend the true and living God. When believers have experienced that Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life,” everything will be placed in meaningful perspective. As C. S. Lewis famously said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

Christian faith gave shape to society by how its core beliefs provided foundations for universities, institutions, and civilizations. Throughout history, Christian thinkers explored scientific knowledge with the motivation that their rationality and the universe’s intelligibility were intended by God. They also acknowledged God’s moral law, humanity’s sinfulness, and that His Mediator of grace and forgiveness was experientially real. It all began by observing that God is the “I AM.”

In sum, violating God’s first commandment leaves humanity incomplete and places it on a frustrating path of false gods and psychological misdirection. Years ago, there were a bunch of palm readers gaining notoriety during weekends at a metro village. A Messianic Jewish friend of mine decided to set up a table among them. His sign read, Psalm readings. The light went on for those who discovered that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given ... by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Notes

1. (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2003), 398.