At times, it is possible to confuse Newton's first law and the second law of motion, especially if you don't understand the principles that hold the two laws. Newton's first law of motion states that an object will continue to be in a state of uniform motion unless it is acted upon by an external force.
It means, as long as all the forces acting on an object are balanced, the object will continue to maintain its uniform motion. It also means an object at rest won't move unless an external force works on it. Another name for Newton's first law of motion is the law of inertia.
According to Newton's second law of motion, the acceleration of an object depends on its mass and the net force; it is directly proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass of the object. This means before an object can accelerate, the forces acting on it must become unbalanced.