Q.48. What are we specifically taught in the first commandment by the words before me?

A. The words before me in the first commandment teach us that God, Who sees everything, notices and is very offended by the sin of having any other god.

There is a Latin phrase that expresses this very well: Coram Deo. This means before the face of God. Everything that we do is coram Deo – before the face of God. All that we do is all done in His presence and with His knowledge. Although we can hide things from the people around us, we can hide nothing from God.

Since there is nothing that we do that is not before Him, these words command us to never put anything in God’s place.

Psalm 44:20-21

²⁰ If we had forgotten the name of our God
or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
²¹ would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.