Deuteronomy 6:4. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.
Note that he himself explains the First Commandment in a positive way, namely, that the Lord is one. For the name used here is the Tetragrammaton, which is applicable solely to God.1 But he treats this unity of God in the Spirit; that is, he makes the point not only that God is one, but also that He should be regarded as one by us. Merely to say that He is one God conveys no meaning to us. However, that He is regarded as one God and as our God (as he says here) is salvation and life and the fullness of all the Commandments. Thus in Gen. 28:21, Jacob says: “The Lord shall be God to me.” In what way shall the Lord be God to him? As though He had not been that before? It is only that through a particular rite and worship he determined to have none but the Lord as God. Thus God becomes God and changes in accordance with the change in our feeling toward Him.2 As Ps. 18:26 says: “With the holy Thou wilt be holy, and with the perverse Thou wilt be perverse.” Hence Antichrist is exalted above every God (2 Thess. 2:4); that is, he will set up his own worship of God, which he will raise above every true and false worship of all gods, because the word of no one is more feared and adored. Therefore the first assertion of Moses concerning the First Commandment is this: The Lord our God is to be regarded as one Lord; that is, He is not to be worshiped by this or that rite which we ourselves have devised but only by that rite which He Himself has established."
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