Jesus responded, “Go away, Satan, because it’s written, ‘You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’” (Matthew 4:10, CEB)
“I was talking to a friend the other day and the subject of families came up. I asked him if he had any siblings and he stated matter-of-factly, “No, I’m an only.” I had never heard someone use “only” as a noun before. He didn’t say this with regret or remorse, just that he had no siblings. For some reason, my first response was to feel sorry for him. Is that a natural response from those of us who have siblings? That they feel like an only child has been deprived of all the peaks and valleys of sibling-hood? Perhaps. But my friend didn’t seem to think so and more and more people are agreeing as the number of single-child families has doubled since the 1960s. There are benefits of only-ness.
My church has been focusing on the story of Jesus’ temptation this Lenten season. Most of my attention has been spent contemplating things like Jesus’ being famished or tempted, but as I was reflecting on Matthew 4:1-11 last week, I spent more time looking at his responses to the tempter/devil. In two of his responses, the word “only” pops up:
4 Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.”
10 Jesus responded, “Go away, Satan, because it’s written, You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”
It’s not a groundbreaking statement to say that we fall short of worshiping God and only God. My guess is that it wouldn’t be hard to make a list the other things you serve instead of God, even “good” things, like family or work or church. The problem is when we lose sight of only. Jesus notes that we are to worship the Lord and only the Lord. I find when I focus on that only, I do a better job of serving and loving others. So here’s the beauty of only. When that is our focus, we do a better job with the many.