9. One Thing: God

Psalm 27:4 says,

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

So, after considering life, health, calling, family, comfort, friends, marriage, the Church, and theology, we return to the question with which we began:

What should ultimately be our “one thing”?

God.

Absolutely.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

God is the ultimate source, goal, and object of worship.

But how do we actually learn to live this way?

Jesus leads us there.

Jesus loved God. Jesus prayed to God. Jesus trusted God. Jesus obeyed God. Jesus depended upon God. Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Jesus describes eternal life as knowing “you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

If becoming a Christian means becoming like Christ, then becoming like Jesus should increasingly lead us toward the One whom Jesus loved, trusted, obeyed, and worshiped.

Jesus leads us to making God our “one thing.”

Again: Jesus, then, should not be a Christian’s “one thing” in the sense in which God alone is the ultimate object of worship and desire, although much Christian language can, I believe wrongly, make him sound that way. Scripture—not inherited Christian speech—must determine how we understand Jesus.

Does Scripture teach that Jesus should be worshiped as God? Does it teach that Jesus, rather than God, is the ultimate focus of Christian existence?

If not, then even while Christians rightly exalt and praise Jesus for who he is and what he has done, our worship should ultimately be directed to God.

John 4:22–23 gives us an extraordinarily simple picture: Jesus says “we worship” and then identifies the Father as the One true worshipers worship.

If we are followers of Jesus, then perhaps the most Jesus-like thing we can do in worship is exactly what Jesus did:

Worship God with him.

But one final question remains—and I think it is essential.

If God is our ultimate treasure, does that mean Jesus should not be treasured?

Absolutely not.

Even if Jesus is not God and therefore should not be worshiped as God, Philippians 3:8 uses breathtaking language about treasuring and knowing him:

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”

Paul does not speak of Christ casually.

He treasures him.

He considers knowing Christ worth losing everything else.

And John 17:3 says eternal life is not only knowing God—whom Jesus calls “the only true God”—but also knowing “Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

So any theology that corrects Jesus-worship by making Jesus emotionally peripheral has overcorrected.

God being our “one thing” therefore cannot mean becoming indifferent to Christ—or to people.

In fact, the closer we move toward God, the more deeply we should learn to treasure what God treasures.

And Jesus is uniquely precious because through him we see God with extraordinary clarity.

Psalm 27:4 itself may help us see why:

“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

How do we “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” when God is invisible?

That is a remarkable question.

Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). To see Jesus is to see a human life in which God is revealed with extraordinary clarity.

Jesus tells Philip:

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”—John 14:9

Not, I believe, because Jesus is literally the Father or God Himself, but because he perfectly images and reveals Him.

Jesus therefore does not compete with God being our “one thing.”

Jesus helps us see the God who is our one thing.

He shows us what dependence upon God looks like.

He shows us what obedience to God looks like.

He shows us what trusting God looks like.

He shows us what loving people with the love of God looks like.

And he leads us back to the One from whom everything comes.

But Psalm 27 raises another beautiful question.

How can we “dwell in the house of the Lord” continually when God is no longer approached through one physical temple in Jerusalem?

First Corinthians 3:16 says:

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

The Church is now God’s temple.

Think about what that means.

To live among God’s people is, in a real sense, to live among people in whom His Spirit dwells.

God has made His people a place where His presence is encountered in a unique and special way.

And Scripture promises something even more astonishing for the future.

Jesus will not forever be the only human being perfectly conformed to God’s image.

Christians themselves are destined to be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29), and 1 John 3:2 says:

“We shall be like him.”

Really like him.

That promise should change how we look at one another.

Psalm 139:13–14 says:

“You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.”

Wow.

Fearfully and wonderfully made—now, in our broken and unfinished state.

What, then, will humanity be like when God has finished His work and His children are glorified?

C. S. Lewis famously reflected that an ordinary person beside us may one day become a creature of such glory that, if we saw that person now as he or she will eventually be, we might be strongly tempted to worship.

His point was not that humans become God.

His point was that we will be amazed at how glorious God intends redeemed humanity to become.

And amazingly, Scripture does not only call God our inheritance; it also speaks of God’s people as His inheritance.

Deuteronomy 4:20 says God brought Israel out of Egypt “to be the people of his inheritance.” Ephesians 1:18 speaks of “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”

God treasures His people.

If God treasures people, should not we?

Jesus says:

“The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Like it.

The commandments are distinct, but tied together.

First John goes even further: if we say we love God while refusing to love people, our claim to love God is false.

This is why making God our “one thing” cannot mean caring less about people.

It should mean caring about them more.

But there is still an important distinction:

God is the prize. People are treasures.

God alone is worshiped and treated as God. People are loved as those made in God’s image and deeply treasured by Him.

God is the Creator; people are God's creation.

God is our ultimate source of identity, life, joy, and satisfaction. But learning to find those things first in God should free us to love people without asking them to become God for us.

That changes relationships.

If I need another person to establish my worth, I will grasp.

If I need another person to guarantee my happiness, I will grasp.

If I need my family, friends, spouse, Church, ministry, health, calling, or theology to remain exactly as I want them in order for me to be okay, I will grasp.

But if God is truly my “one thing,” I can receive those good things as gifts rather than gods.

I can love without possessing.

I can enjoy without worshiping.

I can lose something precious without losing the deepest foundation of who I am.

I can allow other people to be people rather than demanding that they satisfy needs only God can ultimately satisfy.

And I can even hold my theology with open hands.

If I love God more than I love being right about God, then I should want Him to correct me.

If God truly is my “one thing,” then knowing Him as He actually is matters more than defending what I have previously believed about Him.

And if God Himself is the greatest gift, then love sometimes requires the courage to point people toward Him even when that message is uncomfortable.

First Corinthians 13 does not say love ignores truth.

It says love “rejoices with the truth.”

If God is truly a Christian’s “one thing,” then he or she should have the courage to love without compromising what God has said is true—and also the humility to keep asking:

“Is what I am calling truth really God’s truth, or merely something I inherited?”

And I must ask the same question of my own new theology.

Is this truly what God has revealed in Scripture?

Or have I simply replaced one inherited system with another system that I now feel personally invested in defending?

If God is my “one thing,” then the answer matters more than my pride.

Truth matters because God matters.

But truth must also produce love because God is Love.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that humanity’s chief end is to:

“Glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

John Piper famously reframes this as glorifying God by enjoying Him forever.

I would add something—not to replace the Catechism’s God-centeredness, but because I think Scripture shows what genuine God-centeredness inevitably produces:

A Christian’s chief end is to glorify God by loving and enjoying Him forever—and this is expressed by loving God and loving people.

I do not think this competes with God being our “one thing.”

I think this is what God being our one thing practically means: loving God first teaches us how to love everything else rightly.

First John tells us:

“God is love.”

Jesus made that love visible.

And Jesus calls us to follow him.

So becoming like Jesus means learning to love what Jesus loves, to trust the God Jesus trusts, to obey the God Jesus obeys, and to allow God’s love to increasingly shape how we see every person around us.

True worship is not withdrawal from creation.

It is learning to receive created gifts from God without confusing the gift with the Giver.

It is learning to treasure Jesus deeply without confusing Jesus with the God whom he reveals.

It is learning to love family without making family God.

To love friends without making friendship God.

To desire marriage without making marriage God.

To serve faithfully without making calling God.

To care for health without making health God.

To treasure the Church without making the Church God.

To seek truth passionately without making theology God.

And even to treasure life itself without making life God.

Because ultimately:

God is the prize.

God is the One from whom every good thing comes.

God is the One toward whom every good gift should ultimately lead us.

And because God is Love, making God our “one thing” should enlarge our love for Jesus and for all people, not shrink it.

Perhaps that is part of what it means to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord: to know and love God Himself, to see His beauty revealed through Jesus, to encounter His Spirit dwelling among His people, and to begin seeing every human being in the light of who God intends them to become.

So after all of these reflections—after life, health, calling, family, friends, marriage, Church, and theology—the answer remains beautifully simple:

One thing.

God.

To know God.

To love God.

To enjoy God.

To trust God.

To worship God.

To seek God.

To treasure Jesus, who shows us God and leads us toward Him.

And then, because God is Love, to learn through God how to love everyone else rightly.

God, may You truly be my one thing.

May loving You with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving and serving others, be my one thing.

May Your Kingdom come.

Amen.