You Can't Love What You Idolize

It’s impossible to love what you idolize. God is love, and we’re His image bearers. He is the only one worthy of our worship. When we make idols for ourselves, we not only turn away from God, but we unknowingly give our idols the love and worship that belongs to God. The “love” we give to our idols is not the love of God, but it’s rooted in self-love. Self-love is actually hate (unrighteous hate) and wickedness. The reason self-love is hate and wickedness is because it’s not rooted in God Himself. That’s why idol worship is so dangerous, and that’s why God hates it so much. In our day we’ve become sophisticated in the way we create idols. In our day our idols may not be a golden calf. Instead, our idols may be people, mainly, ourselves. That’s what I want to focus on in this post. Idolatry starts with the individual, not the idol itself. Idol worship comes from a false view of God, and a warped view of satisfaction. If the triune God is not on His rightful throne in our hearts, we will find something, or someone else to worship.

We’re wired that way; we were made to worship something. As God's image bearers we’re made to worship and enjoy Him. Because of sin, we’ve lost the correct view and thirst when it comes to love and proper worship. Foolishly and aggressively we seek false gods. It’s impossible to love what you idolize. God is love; and in Him we see His love through His Son Jesus in the way He laid His life down for us because of our sin. We respond to this love by the Holy Spirit and through Him we are reconciled to God because of the perfect life, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Christ.

In being reconciled to God through the gospel, we are able to daily worship God in spirit and in truth because of His love for us in Christ. The gospel shows us who we are to worship and the love and grace that captures us to do so. Idolatry is when we ignore God’s love in the gospel. In ignoring God’s love for us in the gospel, we subconsciously make for ourselves gods based off the love we have for ourselves. We then expect our idols to idolize us the way we idolize ourselves. For example, when a spouse, child, mom, dad, friend, neighbor, enemy, etc. does something to move or bring discomfort to our “false gods,” we react in an ungodly and selfish way. This happens because we feel like we’re not being worshiped correctly.

The negative and selfish reaction is because of idolatry. We expect the person, or people, to do and react in a way that will satisfy the false gods in our hearts. We idolize ourselves, so we expect the people we idolize in idolizing us to walk in a way worthy of our idolatry. Ouch. In this cycle the love of God is absent. When God calls us to worship Him, He doesn’t take away our joy or the ability to love. No, He takes away our false view of love and worship and replaces it with Himself. In Him there is an overflow of love that points back to proper worship to Him. It’s amazing. This is why we need the gospel daily. We need the promises of God daily. Sadly, we make idols in our heart every second of the day. We need daily reminders of the love of God in the gospel to pump that mess out so that it can be replaced with proper worship and love. In that, I believe we will worship God in spirit and in truth because of His love for us in Jesus. In that, we will know how to love others properly by keeping them and ourselves away from the throne that belongs to God and Him alone. Amen.

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. (1 John 5:20, 21)