Article 1: The First Commandment

Catechism of the Catholic Church · Part Three › Section Two › Chapter One · Article 1 (§§2084–2141)

Paragraphs · 58

The Catechism's text is under copyright, so each paragraph is quoted briefly here with a link to the full text at vatican.va.

I. "You Shall Worship the Lord Your God and Him Only Shall You Serve"

§2084 — God makes himself known by recalling his all-powerful loving, and liberating action in the history of the one he addresses: "I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."vatican.va
§2085 — The one and true God first reveals his glory to Israel. The revelation of the vocation and truth of man is linked to the revelation of God.vatican.va
§2086 — "The first commandment embraces faith, hope, and charity. When we say 'God' we confess a constant, unchangeable being, always the same, faithful and just, without any evil.vatican.va
§2087 — Our moral life has its source in faith in God who reveals his love to us. St. Paul speaks of the "obedience of faith" as our first obligation.vatican.va
§2088 — The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against faith: Voluntary doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief.vatican.va
§2089 — Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. "Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is…vatican.va
§2090 — When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity.vatican.va
§2091 — The first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption: By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins.vatican.va
§2092 — There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit).vatican.va
§2093 — Faith in God's love encompasses the call and the obligation to respond with sincere love to divine charity. the first commandment enjoins us to love God above everything and all creatures for him and because of him.vatican.va
§2094 — One can sin against God's love in various ways: - indifference neglects or refuses to reflect on divine charity; it fails to consider its prevenient goodness and denies its power.vatican.va

II. "Him Only Shall You Serve"

§2095 — The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity inform and give life to the moral virtues. Thus charity leads us to render to God what we as creatures owe him in all justice.vatican.va
§2096 — Adoration is the first act of the virtue of religion. To adore God is to acknowledge him as God, as the Creator and Savior, the Lord and Master of everything that exists, as infinite and merciful Love.vatican.va
§2097 — To adore God is to acknowledge, in respect and absolute submission, the "nothingness of the creature" who would not exist but for God. To adore God is to praise and exalt him and to humble oneself, as Mary did in the Magnificat, confessing with gratitude…vatican.va
§2098 — The acts of faith, hope, and charity enjoined by the first commandment are accomplished in prayer. Lifting up the mind toward God is an expression of our adoration of God: prayer of praise and thanksgiving, intercession and petition.vatican.va
§2099 — It is right to offer sacrifice to God as a sign of adoration and gratitude, supplication and communion: "Every action done so as to cling to God in communion of holiness, and thus achieve blessedness, is a true sacrifice."vatican.va
§2100 — Outward sacrifice, to be genuine, must be the expression of spiritual sacrifice: "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit...." The prophets of the Old Covenant often denounced sacrifices that were not from the heart or not coupled with love of neighbor.vatican.va
§2101 — In many circumstances, the Christian is called to make promises to God. Baptism and Confirmation, Matrimony and Holy Orders always entail promises. Out of personal devotion, the Christian may also promise to God this action, that prayer, this alms-giving, that pilgrimage, and so forth.vatican.va
§2102 — "A vow is a deliberate and free promise made to God concerning a possible and better good which must be fulfilled by reason of the virtue of religion," A vow is an act of devotion in which the Christian dedicates himself to God or promises him some good work.vatican.va
§2103 — The Church recognizes an exemplary value in the vows to practice the evangelical counsels:vatican.va
§2104 — "All men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and his Church, and to embrace it and hold on to it as they come to know it."vatican.va
§2105 — The duty of offering God genuine worship concerns man both individually and socially. This is "the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ."vatican.va
§2106 — "Nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others, within due limits."vatican.va
§2107 — "If because of the circumstances of a particular people special civil recognition is given to one religious community in the constitutional organization of a state, the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom must be recognized and respected as well."vatican.va
§2108 — , immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right.vatican.va
§2109 — The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a "public order" conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner.vatican.va

III. "You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me"

§2110 — The first commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to his people. It proscribes superstition and irreligion. Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion; irreligion is the vice contrary by defect to the virtue of religion.vatican.va
§2111 — Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. , when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary.vatican.va
§2112 — The first commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of "idols, (of) silver and gold, the work of men's hands.vatican.va
§2113 — Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc.vatican.va
§2114 — Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. the commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration.vatican.va
§2115 — God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it.vatican.va
§2116 — All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future.vatican.va
§2117 — All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion.vatican.va
§2118 — God's first commandment condemns the main sins of irreligion: tempting God, in words or deeds, sacrilege, and simony.vatican.va
§2119 — Tempting God consists in putting his goodness and almighty power to the test by word or deed. Thus Satan tried to induce Jesus to throw himself down from the Temple and, by this gesture, force God to act.vatican.va
§2120 — Sacrilege consists in profaning or treating unworthily the sacraments and other liturgical actions, as well as persons, things, or places consecrated to God. Sacrilege is a grave sin especially when committed against the Eucharist, for in this sacrament the true Body of Christ is made substantially present for us.vatican.va
§2121 — Simony is defined as the buying or selling of spiritual things. To Simon the magician, who wanted to buy the spiritual power he saw at work in the apostles, St.vatican.va
§2122 — The minister should ask nothing for the administration of the sacraments beyond the offerings defined by the competent authority, always being careful that the needy are not deprived of the help of the sacraments because of their poverty."vatican.va
§2123 — "Many . . of our contemporaries either do not at all perceive, or explicitly reject, this intimate and vital bond of man to God. Atheism must therefore be regarded as one of the most serious problems of our time."vatican.va
§2124 — The name "atheism" covers many very different phenomena. One common form is the practical materialism which restricts its needs and aspirations to space and time.vatican.va
§2125 — Since it rejects or denies the existence of God, atheism is a sin against the virtue of religion. The imputability of this offense can be significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances.vatican.va
§2126 — Atheism is often based on a false conception of human autonomy, exaggerated to the point of refusing any dependence on God. Yet, "to acknowledge God is in no way to oppose the dignity of man, since such dignity is grounded and brought to perfection in God...."vatican.va
§2127 — Agnosticism assumes a number of forms. In certain cases the agnostic refrains from denying God; instead he postulates the existence of a transcendent being which is incapable of revealing itself, and about which nothing can be said.vatican.va
§2128 — Agnosticism can sometimes include a certain search for God, but it can equally express indifferentism, a flight from the ultimate question of existence, and a sluggish moral conscience.vatican.va

IV. "You Shall Not Make For Yourself a Graven Image . . ."

§2129 — The divine injunction included the prohibition of every representation of God by the hand of man. Deuteronomy explains: "Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act…vatican.va
§2130 — Nevertheless, already in the Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically toward salvation by the incarnate Word: so it was with the bronze serpent, the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim.vatican.va
§2131 — Basing itself on the mystery of the incarnate Word, the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787) justified against the iconoclasts the veneration of icons - of Christ, but also of the Mother of God, the angels, and all the saints.vatican.va
§2132 — The Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, "the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype," and "whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it."vatican.va

In Brief

§2133 — "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength" (Deut 6:5).vatican.va
§2134 — The first commandment summons man to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him above all else.vatican.va
§2135 — "You shall worship the Lord your God" (Mt 4:10). Adoring God, praying to him, offering him the worship that belongs to him, fulfilling the promises and vows made to him are acts of the virtue of religion which fall under obedience to the first commandment.vatican.va
§2136 — The duty to offer God authentic worship concerns man both as an individual and as a social being.vatican.va
§2137 — "Men of the present day want to profess their religion freely in private and in public" (DH 15).vatican.va
§2138 — Superstition is a departure from the worship that we give to the true God. It is manifested in idolatry, as well as in various forms of divination and magic.vatican.va
§2139 — Tempting God in words or deeds, sacrilege, and simony are sins of irreligion forbidden by the first commandment.vatican.va
§2140 — Since it rejects or denies the existence of God, atheism is a sin against the first commandment.vatican.va
§2141 — The veneration of sacred images is based on the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God. It is not contrary to the first commandment.vatican.va

Scripture cited · 167 verses

The First Commandment