Why did the Lord Christ say, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve’” (Matt. 4:10; Luke 4:8; Cf. Deut. 6:13)?

St. Cyril the Great says, “Seasonably He made mention of this commandment, striking as it were his very heart. For before His advent, Satan had deceived all under heaven, and was himself everywhere worshipped: but the law of God, ejecting him from the dominion he had usurped by fraud, has commanded men to worship Him only Who by nature and in truth is God, and to offer service to Him alone.”²⁸

God forbade the worship of anyone else but Him (Ex. 20:3–5; Deut. 5:6–9). When Nebuchadnezzar erected his golden statue and commanded all his subjects to fall down and worship the statue, the three saintly youths refused utterly to worship anything other than God, no matter what this would cost them; and so they were thrown into the fiery furnace. But the Lord preserved them, so that “[the king] saw these men on whose bodies the fire had no power; the hair of their head was not singed nor were their garments affected, and the smell of fire was not on them” (Dan. 3:27), because they obeyed God more than people.

God does not need humans or even heavenly beings to worship Him, but when His rational creatures in heaven and on earth worship Him in love and obedience, His splendor is reflected upon them.