Romans 1:18–25,

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness; 19 because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: 21 because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves: 25 for that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions: for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature:

  What is the reason why our minds and hearts become “futile” and “darkened”?

“A careful reading of the Old and New Testaments shows that idolatry is nothing like the crude, simplistic picture that springs to mind of an idol sculpture in some distant country. The idea of idoltary is highly sophisticated, drawing together the complexities of motivation in individual psychology, the social environment, and also the unseen world. Idols are not just on pagan altars, but in well-educated human hearts and minds (Ezekiel 14).

The beginning of idolatry

In the beginning, human beings were made to (1) worship and serve God, and then (2) to rule over all created things in God’s name (Genesis 1:26–28). Instead, man chose to sin.

Adam and Eve, instead of keeping God  at the center, each of these God image-bearers thinks he or she is at the center. God? Well, he’d jolly well better serve me, or else, I’ll find another god. That’s the beginning of idolatry. So what kind of God do you believe in? It’s a stupid question, isn’t it? The real question is what kind of God is there? Otherwise, you’re just manufacturing your own. It’s called idolatry.

Meanwhile, because I think I’m at the center of the universe, I’ll reshape God so that he, she, or it suits me. Otherwise, I’ll find another god that suits me a little bit better, since obviously, whatever god is there has to suit me.

It is degrading God, it is de-Godding God. That is the beginning of idolatry, and that is why wrath in the Old Testament is so connected with idolatry.

When Paul summed up the fall of humanity into sin, he did so by describing it in terms of idolatry. He said that we refused to give God glory (that is, to make him the most important thing) and instead chose certain parts of creation to glorify in his stead: “[They] exchanged the glory of the immortal God … and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator”

The Law against idols

The great sin of the Mosaic period was the making of a golden calf, Exodus 32. The Ten Commandments’ first two and most basic laws are against idolatry. The first commandment prohibits worshiping other gods; the second commandment prohibits worshiping God idolatrously, as we want him to be. After God’s code of covenant behavior is given in Exodus 20–23,

Exodus 23:24Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works; but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and break in pieces their pillars.

We will either worship God or we will worship some created thing (an idol). Every human personality, every human community, and every human thought-form will be based on some ultimate concern or some ultimate allegiance to something.

Praying Against Idols

In the Psalms, the prayers of the people are not only toward God but are also against idols. Psalm 24:3–4 says, “Who may ascend the mountain of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.”

The Prophets were against idols

Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel leveled an enormous polemic against the worship of idols. First, they said that an idol was empty, nothing, powerless. An idol was nothing but what we ourselves had made, the work of our own hands, Isaiah 2:8; Jeremiah 1:16. An idol is something we make in our image. It is only, in a sense, worshiping ourselves, or a reflection of our own sensibility.

Isaiah 44:10–13.

An idol is, paradoxically, a spiritually dangerous power that saps us of all power, and brings about terrible spiritual blindness of heart and mind Isaiah 44:9, 18.

Whatever controls us is our lord.

Idolatry in the New Testament

Every sin is rooted in the inordinate desire for something, which comes because we are trusting in an idol rather than in Christ for our righteousness or salvation.

The reason we create idols is because we want to control our lives, though we know that we owe God everything. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him” Romans 1: Since we need to worship something because of how we are created, we cannot eliminate God without creating God-substitutes. “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie” v 25.

Don’t go back to idolatry.” Paul reminded the Galatians that they had once been enslaved “to those who by nature are not gods. (Galatians 4:8–9). The danger to the Galatians was following those who were telling them to be circumcised and who were trying to lure them into moralism, thereby clouding their understanding of salvation. Paul talked of this as a return to idolatry. The implications are significant. If anything but Christ is our source of salvation, we are falling into idolatry. Whether we sacrifice to a statue or seek to merit heaven through conscientious morality, we are setting up something besides God as our ultimate hope, and it will enslave us.

The last verse of 1 John is, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” John had not mentioned idolatry by name once in the entire letter, he was summarizing all he had been saying in the epistle about living in the light (holiness), love, and truth.  It seems he meant that the only way to walk in holiness, love, and truth is to keep free from idols.

Identifying Our Idols

Why do we lie, or fail to love, or break our promises, or live selfishly. Do those actions indicate that there is something besides Jesus Christ that we feel we must have to be happy, something that is more important to our heart than God, something that is enslaving our heart through inordinate desires.

Thomas Oden wrote: Every self exists in relation to values perceived as making life worth living. A value is anything good in the created order, any idea, relation, object or person in which one has an interest, from which one derives significance.  These values compete, and in time one is prone to choose a center of value by which other values are judged. When a finite value has been elevated to centrality and imagined as a final source of meaning, then one has chosen a god.

We often don’t go deeply enough to analyze our idol-structures. For example, “money” is of course an idol; yet, in another sense, money can be sought to satisfy other very different idols.

Richard Keyes, in his essay The Idol Factory, wrote;

All sorts of things are potential idols. If this is so, how do we determine when something is becoming or has become an idol?. As soon as our loyalty to anything leads us to disobey God, we are in danger of making it an idol. An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a pleasure, a hero.

Work, a commandment of God, can become an idol if it is pursued so exclusively that responsibilities to one’s family are ignored.

Family, an institution of God himself, can become an idol if one is so preoccupied with the family that no one outside of one’s own family is cared for.

Being well-liked, a perfectly legitimate hope, becomes an idol if the attachment to it means that one never risks disapproval.

If are honest, do any of the statements below really speak who we are and how we operate?

 Life only has meaning/I only have worth if  I have  power and influence over others.” (Power Idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if I am loved and respected by ________.”

(Approval idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I have this kind of pleasure experience, a particular quality of life.”    (Comfort idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I am able to get mastery over my life in the area of ________.”            (Control idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … people are dependent on me and need me.”

(Helping idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … someone is there to protect me and keep me safe.”            (Dependence idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I am completely free from obligations or responsibilities to take care of someone.”           (Independence idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I am highly productive and getting a lot done.”

(Work idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I am being recognized for my accomplishments, and I am excelling in my work.” (Achievement idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I have a certain level of wealth, financial freedom, and very nice possessions.” (Materialism idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I am adhering to my religion’s moral codes and accomplished in its activities.” (Religion idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … this one person is in my life and happy to be there, and/or happy with me.” (Individual person idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I feel I am totally independent of organized religion and am living by a self-made morality.”          (Irreligion idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … my race and culture is ascendant and recognized as superior.” (Racial/cultural idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … a particular social grouping or professional grouping or other group lets me in.” (Inner ring idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … my children and/or my parents are happy and happy with me.” (Family idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … Mr. or Ms. ‘Right’ is in love with me.”

(Relationship idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I am hurting, in a problem; only then do I feel worthy of love or able to deal with guilt.” (Suffering idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … my political or social cause is making progress and ascending in influence or power.” (Ideology idolatry)

“Life only has meaning/I only have worth if … I have a particular kind of look or body image.”

(Image idolatry)

If you circled one of the first four statements on the previous list, the following table may help you think through some of the issues involved.

 

If you seek	Your greatest nightmare	People around you often feel	Your problem emotion
POWER (Success, winning, influence)	Humiliation	Used	Anger
APPROVAL (Affirmation, love, relationships)	Rejection	Smothered	Cowardice
COMFORT (Privacy, lack of stress, freedom)	Stress, demands	Neglected	Boredom
CONTROL (Self-discipline, certainty, standards)	Uncertainty	Condemned	Worry
What things tend to be too important to us? What are our idols?

Displacing Your Idols

Three approaches to personal change appear below.

The “moralizing” approach

Basic analysis: Your problem is that you are doing wrong. Repent!

This approach focuses on behavior but doesn’t go deeply enough. You have to find out the why of your behavior. Why do you find you want to do the wrong things? What inordinate desires are drawing you to do so? What are the idols and false beliefs behind them?

Telling someone (or yourself) to “repent and change your behavior” is insufficient, because you still hold a belief that says, “Even if you live up to moral standards but don’t have this particular thing that you treasure, you are still a failure.”

You must replace this belief by repenting for the sin beneath it all—your particular idolatry.

 The “psychologizing” approach

Basic analysis: Your problem is that you don’t see that God loves you as you are. Rejoice!

This approach focuses on feelings, which seem to be “deeper” than behaviors, but it also fails to go deeply enough. You must also find out the why of your feelings. Why do you have such strong feelings of despair (or fear, or anger) when this or that happens? What are the inordinate desires that are being frustrated? What are the idols and false beliefs behind them?

Telling someone (or yourself) that “God loves you, so rejoice!” is insufficient, because you still hold a belief that says, “Even if God loves you but you don’t have this particular thing that you treasure, you are still a failure.”

You must replace this belief by repenting for the sin beneath it all—your particular idolatry.

 The “gospel” approach

Basic analysis: Your problem is that you are looking to something besides Christ for your happiness. You have been worshiping an idol and rejecting the true God. Repent and rejoice!

This approach confronts a person with the real sin underlying the particular sins and behind the bad feelings. Our problem is that we have given ourselves over to idols. Every idol-system is a way of our-works-salvation, and thus it keeps us “under the law.”

Paul told us that the bondage of sin is broken when we come out from under the law—when we begin to believe the gospel of Christ’s-work-salvation. Only when we realize in a new way that we are righteous in Christ does the idol’s power over us break. “Sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14).

You will only be “under grace” and free from the controlling effects of idols to the degree that you have both (1) repented of your idols and (2) rested and rejoiced in the saving work and love of Christ instead.

To replace idols, you must learn to rejoice in the particular thing Jesus provides that replaces that particular idol of your heart.

Whenever you see your heart in the grip of some kind of disobedience or misery—some temptation, anxiety, anger, and the like—always ask, (1) How are these effects being caused by an inordinate hope for someone or something to give me what only Jesus can really give me? and (2) How does Christ give me so much more fully and graciously and suitably the very things I am looking for elsewhere? Next, rejoice and consider what he has done and what he has given you.

Thomas Chalmers understood this when he wrote in The Expulsive Power of a New Affection:

It is seldom that any of our [bad habits or flaws] are made to disappear by a mere process of natural extinction. At least, it is very seldom that this is done through the instrumentality of reasoning … [or by] the mere force of mental determination. But what cannot be thus destroyed may be dispossessed—and one taste may be made to give way to another, and to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind. … The heart[’s] … desire for having some one object or other, this is unconquerable. … The only way to dispossess [the heart] of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. … It is … when admitted into the number of God’s children, through the faith that is in Jesus Christ [that] the spirit of adoption is poured upon us—it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires, and is the only way in which deliverance is possible.

Name your idols

In prayer, name these things to God. Lord, these are the things I have built my life and heart around

Repent of the idols

Recognize how weak and poor those things are (in themselves). In prayer, confess that these things are good, but finite and weak, and praise God for being the only source of what you need.

Recognize how dangerous these things are to you, confess that these things are lethal and ask our strong God for his help.

Recognize how grievous these things are to Christ. Realize that when you pine after idols, you are saying, “Lord, you are not enough. This is more beautiful, fulfilling, and sweet to my taste than you.

 Rejoice in Christ

It is not only important to spend time repenting and rejoicing in fixed times of solitude and prayer; you must also “catch” your heart when it begins falling into idolatry during the day, and you must draw on your hard work of reflection by learning to quickly repent/rejoice your heart into shape on the spot.

“Lord, only in your presence are fullness of joy and pleasures forever more [Psalm 16:11], yet here am I trying to find comfort in something else. This thing I am tempted by is just a

To replace idols, you must learn to rejoice in the particular thing Jesus provides that replaces that particular idol of your heart.

Whenever you see your heart in the grip of some kind of disobedience or misery—some temptation, anxiety, anger, and the like—always ask, (1) How are these effects being caused by an inordinate hope for someone or something to give me what only Jesus can really give me? and (2) How does Christ give me so much more fully and graciously and suitably the very things I am looking for elsewhere? Next, rejoice and consider what he has done and what he has given you.

Thomas Chalmers understood this when he wrote in The Expulsive Power of a New Affection:

It is seldom that any of our [bad habits or flaws] are made to disappear by a mere process of natural extinction. At least, it is very seldom that this is done through the instrumentality of reasoning … [or by] the mere force of mental determination. But what cannot be thus destroyed may be dispossessed—and one taste may be made to give way to another, and to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind. … The heart[’s] … desire for having some one object or other, this is unconquerable. … The only way to dispossess [the heart] of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. … It is … when admitted into the number of God’s children, through the faith that is in Jesus Christ [that] the spirit of adoption is poured upon us—it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires, and is the only way in which deliverance is possible.

Name your idols

In prayer, name these things to God. Lord, these are the things I have built my life and heart around

Repent of the idols

Recognize how weak and poor those things are (in themselves). In prayer, confess that these things are good, but finite and weak, and praise God for being the only source of what you need.

Recognize how dangerous these things are to you, confess that these things are lethal and ask our strong God for his help.

Recognize how grievous these things are to Christ. Realize that when you pine after idols, you are saying, “Lord, you are not enough. This is more beautiful, fulfilling, and sweet to my taste than you.

 Rejoice in Christ

It is not only important to spend time repenting and rejoicing in fixed times of solitude and prayer; you must also “catch” your heart when it begins falling into idolatry during the day, and you must draw on your hard work of reflection by learning to quickly repent/rejoice your heart into shape on the spot.

“Lord, only in your presence are fullness of joy and pleasures forever more [Psalm 16:11], yet here am I trying to find comfort in something else. This thing I am tempted by is just a pleasure that will wear off so soon, while your pleasure, though it may start small, will grow on and on forever [Proverbs 4:18]. Please remove my idol of pleasure, which can never give me the pleasure I need.”

Meditate on John 6:5–13 and 32–40.

“Lord, I live by your sheer grace. This means that even though I don’t deserve to have things go right, I know you are working them all out for good [Romans 8:28], because you love me in Christ. My security in life is based neither on luck nor hard work but on your gracious love for me.