“Little children, keep yourselves from idols. (1 John 5: 21 KJV).
When we think of idolatry, we think about pagans bowing down to graven images of stone, wood, gold, silver, iron, and brass (Is. 2:8; Dan. 5:23). Idols are insensible and insentient (lacking perception, consciousness, and animation). They have eyes but can’t see, ears but can’t hear, mouths but can’t speak, noses but can’t smell, hands but can’t handle, and feet but can’t walk (Psalm 115: 4-7). They can’t help themselves or anyone else.
Every idol began in the imagination with an idea of a god in an attempt at the ideal. The image on the ground represented the idea in the imagination (Ezek. 14: 3, 4). The power of the idol was only imagined power, for it had no real power. The idolater submitted to subjective truth at the expense of objective truth: God’s Word.
Modern civilization has more idolaters than ancient civilization had. We don’t bow down to images, but we do submit to ideas that are based solely in the imagination, without any support from the Word of God. In the days of Noah and in Israel, it was the imagination that got men in trouble with God (Genesis 6: 5; Jer. 3: 17; 7: 24; 9: 14; 11: 8; 13: 10; 16: 12; 18: 12; 23: 17).
Today we have no material images, apart from a few exceptions, but we have a mind full of ideas that we embrace and that empower our lives. Though these ideas have no material presence, they still remove God off the throne of our heart. A.W. Tozer said, “An idol of the mind is just as offensive to God as an idol on the ground.”
John in our text is telling the Christian to not embrace and follow any false teaching or idea of Christ and end up following “another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11: 4).
We know we have idols in our life when, before we follow God’s will, we first check to make sure His will doesn’t interfere with the will and plans we have for any of our idols, such as our family, career, money, or anything else. None of these things have any power, but they exercise power over us and become idols when we put them before God.
To see if you have any idols, look inside your heart. How many do you have?
