breakers of the Second Commandment exposed — Jeremiah Burroughs

“But you will say, “God forbid! What, hate God?” See that in Scripture, where the apostle reckons up the evil of those who were in their natural condition, he says that “they were haters of God” (Romans 1:30). And what the apostle there says of them, he intend of all; for it is his scope in that place to show our natural condition, and that therefore we cannot be justified by any works of our own, but it must be by faith in Christ, because we are by nature haters of God. And in the Second Commandment you have that sin exposed even of those who seem to be the greatest lovers of God, who would be thought to love God more than any people, who devise pictures to worship God by, and bestow much cost upon them. They say, “It is for the honor of God.” Who would not think that these men loved God exceedingly? Yet, though these men may be thought to be lovers of God, there is no commandment in which the breakers of it are said to be haters of God but in this commandment: “He will visit iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him (Exodus 20:5). That is upon those who, however they pretend to love Him in their false worship, yet they hate Him.”

— Jeremiah Burroughs, Gospel Reconciliation