THE TELEVISION COMMERCIAL interrupts your favorite show. The announcer has a deal for you that you can’t refuse! His product can slice, dice, and chop better than anything out else on the market. And not only that, “if you will act now, you will receive a second product absolutely free! This brand item is not sold in stores, so act now, while supplies last! Do not be fooled by imitations that are inferior. Accept no substitutes!” he warns us with a raised voice. Though I have never purchased any item so advertised, I can attest to what happens when, as a husband, I am sent to the store to buy a can of this or a carton of that and I return home with an off-brand, just to save a little money. After enduring my wife’s lecture for my stupidity, I discover that, sure enough, an off- brand of cream of mushroom soup is just not as good as the name brand. I should have accepted no substitutes.
It may seem a bit strange to our twenty-first-century ears that John would end his letter with this short, terse, puzzling command: “keep yourselves from idols.” Surely no one in any civilized country would worship an idol! After all, an idol is made of stone or wood or metal. Surely only a primitive group of people somewhere in the backwoods of the world would need such a warning. We don’t have any idols in American culture, do we? Our idols may not look exactly like a wood or stone carving worshipped by some people group two thousand years ago, but we certainly do have our idols. Back in 2002 America was swept by a hot new television show, American Idol. The first-season winner, Kelly Clarkson, was catapulted into immediate stardom. Her debut single, “A Moment Like This,” became the fastest music chart-climber in history, reaching number one in less than a week. Second season winner Clay Aiken’s debut single, “This Is the Night,” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in its first week (only the twelfth song in history to do so!).1 Of course, not all who are fans of these pop stars are idol worshippers. But some of them are.
Sometimes our idols can be a conglomeration of metal and plastic, circuits and rubber, upholstery and glass, otherwise known as a car. Sometimes our idols can be flesh and blood, as in a spouse, child, grandchild, or parent. Sometimes our idols are less tangible things such as fame, position, or popularity. Ezekiel got it right when he said concerning some of the leaders of his day, “These men have taken their idols into their hearts” (Ezekiel 14:3). All these things and many more can be anyone’s idol. Maybe the existentialist philosopher Nietzsche was right when he said, “There are more idols in the world than there are realities.”2 When you think about it, John’s warning is actually not that far off the mark, is it? The fact of the matter is, every culture throughout history has always had its own idols. The human heart is an “idol factory.”3 We are prone to make idols of almost anything. We have little difficulty identifying idolatry in other cultures but are often blind to the idolatry rampant in our own backyard.
Idolatry in Ephesus
There was plenty of idolatry in John’s backyard. John lived in Ephesus, one of the centers of idolatry in the Roman world. The great goddess Diana was thought to reside in the famous Temple of Diana in Ephesus. The temple took two hundred years to complete and was 420 feet long and 220 feet wide and was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Majestic Ionic pillars soared sixty feet into the air. In the center of the temple stood the goddess Diana, robed in a veil of Persian silk. Small replicas of the temple and images of the goddess were for sale. Worship of Diana was at a fever pitch in Ephesus. In Acts 19 Paul tangled with the silversmiths who made little icons of the Temple of Diana and of the goddess Diana.
It might help us to remember just what John has been saying to us in this letter. At the top of the list is the priority and preeminence of Jesus as the Son of God and the necessity to be rightly related to him for the forgiveness of our sins. This is foundational for everything else in this life and the next. For John, Jesus is the real thing, and anything and everything else, if substituted for Jesus, is an idol. The Biblical concept of idolatry consists in that which is not only cultural but intellectual, social, and spiritual. People in Scripture are said to do three things with their idols: they love them, trust them, and obey them.4 God has three words for idols: tear them down.
Idolatry in the Old Testament
The people of Israel in the Old Testament constantly had problems with idolatry. From the very beginning, over and over again, they fell into idolatry. In Exodus, while Moses is on the mountain receiving God’s Ten Commandments, the people grow tired of waiting for Moses to return and coerce Aaron into making an idol—a golden calf. Nothing could be more ironic and tragic! The first two of those Ten Commandments speak about idolatry:
You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:3–6)
When Israel finally entered the promised land, they failed to rid the land of all the pagans who were there. Consequently, over time the people of Israel compromised with pagan cultures and intermarried with pagans. When they did, they often adopted the cultural idols to worship, despite God’s prohibition in the First Commandment that they should never have or worship any gods except Yahweh himself. Read the book of Judges and see the chaos that idol worship brought to Israel in the land. Ultimately Canaanite idolatry brought the Northern Kingdom of Israel to destruction by God himself through the hands of the Assyrians. Failing to learn from their northern brother, the Southern Kingdom, Judah, continued to tolerate and practice idolatry. The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and many others warned the people against idolatry, but to no avail. Psalm 115:4–8 reminds us that we always conform to what we worship. Speaking of idols, verse 8 says “Those who make them become like them.” Idolaters resemble the idols they worship. God made us in his image to reflect him. If we do not commit ourselves to him, we will reflect something other than God in his creation. Isaiah 57:3–13 has some potent words about idols. Idolatry destroys morality. Idolatry mocks God. Idolatry disobeys God’s word. Idolatry prostitutes God’s worship. Listen to the indictment God brings against his people Judah through Jeremiah: “As a thief is shamed when caught, so the house of Israel shall be shamed: they, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their back to me, and not their face” (Jeremiah 2:26, 27). Finally God scattered them in his judgment when they were carried away into captivity by the Babylonian Empire. It was only after this debacle some seventy years later when the people returned to the land of Israel that they were cured of their idolatry.
There are some interesting Hebrew words for idolatry in the Old Testament. One word in its noun form can mean “pellets of dung” or “shapeless, loggy things.” There is probably some double entendre going on here. An idol is a detestable thing.5 Another word used for idols is hebel meaning “emptiness, vanity.” Still another word for idol in Hebrew is mipleṣet meaning “a thing of horror or shuddering.”
Idolatry in the New Testament
We often associate idolatry with the Old Testament, since there are so many references to it there. However, you might be surprised that such warnings occur in the New Testament as well. For example, in Acts 7:40 Stephen spoke about the continuation of idolatry begun in Egypt with the golden calf incident. According to Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council addressed the issue of idols (v. 20). Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:4, “We know that an idol has no real existence.” Paul devotes a significant amount of discussion to idols in 1 Corinthians. Ephesians 5:5 says, “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” Colossians 3:5 instructs us to put aside “evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Here it is obvious that an idol can be something nonmaterial.
John chooses to close this letter with that final statement in verse 21: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” The word “idol” comes from a Greek word meaning “that which is seen.” Ironically, though an idol is “seen,” it is unreal and is actually an illusion. An idol is something that has no substance. This statement in verse 21 is in direct contrast to the reality of Jesus that John emphasized in verse 20. John is saying Jesus is the real thing. It’s a relationship with Christ that brings about reality and substance. Jesus is the true and real God as opposed to the false gods and idols that are out there. The worship of idols leads to eternal death. The worship of Jesus leads to eternal life. There were probably many in John’s audience who were former idol worshippers.
John’s warning in verse 21 may be related to Zechariah 13:2: “‘On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more. And also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness.’”6
Modern-Day Idols
What is an idol? Whatever you cling to for ultimate reality and security is your idol. Whatever you give your heart to other than God is an idol. John Wesley pictured God as forever saying to us, “My son, give me thy heart! And to give our heart to any other is plain idolatry. Accordingly, whatever takes our heart from him, or shares it with him, is an idol.”7 In the Bible, an idol refers first to a tangible object of worship made of wood, stone, or metal, usually representing the deities of pagan society. But this Biblical definition and usage is expanded to intangibles as well. An idol is anything in your life that you worship or put in place of or above God. Anything that fits that definition is an idol in your life. At the 2007 Emmy Awards, comedian Kathy Griffin won an Emmy for the show she produced and starred in called My Life on the D-List. Griffin walked to the stage, accepted the award, blasphemed the name of Jesus, and then concluded her little speech by holding up her Emmy statuette and saying, “This award is my god now.”
There are many idols that people can worship today. Money can quickly become an idol. A job can become an idol in your life. Your clothes, car, home, family can all become idols. There are also intangible idols: your talents, gifts, and abilities can become idols. We live in a world that is enamored by beauty. The desire to be beautiful can become an idol. The desire to be young can become an idol. If ever we live in a country that seems obsessed with looking young, it is America. Everything from the fashion industry, the cosmetic industry, the advertisement industry, television entertainment, and a host of other venues makes it clear we are all about looking young and being young. Today in many cases and places youth is revered and age is disdained.
Preachers and Their Idols
Some preachers today are in captivity to the idolatry of self with their self-help, psychologizing preaching. Other preachers, enamored with the constant use of visual imagery in preaching, are in danger of devaluing the text of Scripture and allowing it to be supplanted by image. The false prophets in Jeremiah’s day offered people visual imagery over the word of the Lord. An idol is visible, but it is not real. If you watch sports on television, you may have noticed all of the billboard advertisements on the field. What you probably did not notice is that these advertisement logos on the field that you see are sometimes digitally superimposed to cover up what is actually on those billboards. The networks sell advertising and then superimpose the company name of the advertiser over the real advertisement on the field. The networks restructure your reality for their own profit. Some of today’s preaching offers people virtual reality but not reality. Such preaching is an attempt to restructure spiritual reality for the preacher’s own profit. We superimpose our images over that of the Word of God.
This is exactly what happened in Jeremiah’s day! Good King Josiah came to the throne after fifty-seven years of his father’s and grandfather’s evil reigns. They had led the nation into idolatry. Idolatry is the quintessence of virtual reality, image-based worship. The first case of idolatry in Israel occurred when Moses returned with the Ten Commandments and found the people worshipping the golden calf. Think of the difference: a golden calf (image), the Ten Commandments, (God’s Word). The second of those commandments prohibits the making of any “image.”
Josiah started a spiritual reformation that was a return to the Word of God. He began to tear down the idols. The revival that occurred in Josiah’s day was Word-based! It was a rediscovery of God’s Word that brought revival and the destruction of idols. He destroyed the virtual reality, the idols, in order to give people back the true reality, God and his Word! Every preacher should read and heed Arthur Hunt’s warning that the current devaluation of “text” and its “hostile supplanting by the image” is nothing less than “a direct assault upon ‘the religion of the Book.’”8 Hunt cogently reminds us that the Renaissance was image-based, attempting a revival of pagan Rome; while the Reformation was Word-based. The Renaissance was a return to pagan Rome with its images. The Reformation was a return to first-century Christianity with the preaching of the Word. The money quote in the entire book is: “Pagan idolatry is biblicism’s chief competitor because one thrives in the absence of the written word and the other cannot exist without it.”9 Today’s culture is primarily image-based. A culture enamored with image is an idolatrous culture. The idea of a man standing to preach the Word to listening people is considered by some to be outdated. Drama, props, video clips, and clever gimmicks replace the simple exposition of the Word. When preaching crowds out the verbal Word of the living God for image, it becomes idolatrous preaching!
Some churches today are in captivity to the idolatry of self. “We are trying to hold at bay the gnats of small sins while swallowing the camel of self.”10 The modern-day cult of the self is alive and well with such phrases as self-help, self-image, and self-esteem. While a good self-image is important, it must be defined Biblically or we will soon degenerate into burning incense to ourselves. The balloon of ego can only hold so much air before it bursts. Some may remember how several years ago movie star Shirley MacLaine championed the cult of the self by saying, “Each soul is its own god. You must never worship anyone or anything other than self. For you are God. To love self is to love God.”11
Guard Your Heart
The list of possible idols seems endless. John says, “Keep yourselves from idols.” I don’t think John was worried about their bowing down in front of a graven image. He knew there were things besides false religions that they could worship; there was the possibility of worshipping tangible and intangible things that could usurp God in their lives. The word “keep” means “to guard against.” Idolatry is something we must guard against in our lives on a daily basis. The world, the flesh, and the devil, our three great enemies, constantly play their siren music in an effort to cause Christians to bow down to whatever is idolatrous in their lives. To fulfill this command, “keep yourselves from idols,” will take constant daily vigilance in our thought life. We will have to guard how and where we spend our time, to what we give our money and other resources, and how we think about the world system. To keep ourselves from idols means self-accountability.
When you think about it, John’s puzzling final imperative actually is a fitting conclusion to the entire letter. From start to finish John has been at pains to say that the ultimate reality is God through Jesus Christ. Only Jesus is “the true God and eternal life” (5:20). Failure to put him first is to fall prey to idolatry. Luther was right when he said that the first of the Ten Commandments begins with idolatry because the fundamental motivation behind breaking God’s laws is idolatry.12
The Docetic Gnostics whom John opposed were actually promoting idolatry in their false teaching. To claim that Jesus is not fully human or is not truly God is idolatry. The secessionists who left the orthodox doctrine of Christ and thus left the church (1 John 2:19) were committing idolatry. The false prophets whose teaching originated with the spirit of antichrist were engaged in idolatry. The failure to love others indicates we are making self an idol. The failure to live righteous lives is motivated by many things, but the heart of it all is idolatry. Everything John addresses in this letter is in one way or another related to idolatry.
The early Italian Reformer Savonarola is well known for his desire to cleanse Florence of materialism and immorality by having people cast away their material possessions that tempted them to have an immoral lifestyle in the “bonfire of vanity.” Savonarola once saw an elderly woman worshipping at a statue of the Virgin Mary. He observed her daily trek to pay homage to the statue and was impressed with her devotion and virtue. A fellow priest, however, warned Savonarola that things are not always as they appear. Savonarola learned that this woman in her youth had been the model for the artist’s sculpture of Mary. She had worshiped at the statue ever since. In the Christian church today we need a “bonfire of vanities” in our heart. All idolatry begins in the heart and must be exterminated there first.13
Last words stick. “Keep yourselves from idols.” This practical injunction will save us from many a heartache. In our weakness we can never afford to neglect to keep ourselves from all false worship. These golden words in their simplicity, in their depth, in their certainty, in their comprehensiveness are worthy to be the last words of John’s letter. They stand through the ages as the solid foundation and the shining apex of Christianity.14 To the twenty-first century believer, John warns, “Keep yourselves from idols.” Another famous John, with the last name of Wesley, also spoke about idols in a one-sentence prayer we all should pray: “And as the shadows flee before the sun, so let all my idols vanish at thy presence!”15 Don’t get high on anything but God.16 Accept no substitutes!