Definition of an "idol"

[nwink]

I often hear people referring to such things as money, possessions, career pursuits, etc as things that can become "idols" for people. I understand what is meant by people calling these things "idols" in that they mean these things can take wrong priority in a person's life. But is it right to call these things an "idol"?

People will say that an "idol" doesn't have to be a stone carving but can be something like possessions or money in our lives if we love them more than God...but is there a Biblical basis for defining these as "idols"? The thing that's hard for me to understand using this terminology is that no one bows down to, worships and glorifies their car or money, but pagans do bow down to stone carvings who they believe are spiritual powers that can help them. Or would it be correct to say someone "worships" money/possessions because they love them and prioritize them more highly than God?

So what is the Biblical definition of an "idol"? Can these other things Biblically be called "idols"? Can "worshipping" not necessarily involve bowing before something believed to be a spiritual power or god...but simply having something wrongly/sinfully prioritized in our lives?

 

[Pilgrim Standard]

People will say that an "idol" doesn't have to be a stone carving

I think there can be a distinction made between an Idol and a "graven image."

1 Corinthians 10:7 Neither be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play."
Revelation 22:15 Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

 

[BobVigneault]

There are technical definitions but let me give you two practical definitions that might help.

An idol is something that we ascribe value and worth to that surpasses the supreme value and worth we ought to ascribe to God. This does not involve bowing down in a physical sense but an elevation of something above God.

The second definition that will be helpful to you is that an idol is a point of contact apart from the Word of God. When the Israelites fashioned a golden calf it was meant to represent Yahweh. The problem is that they chose a point of contact apart from God's Word - the calf became their focus point. God is Spirit, God is invisible, nothing can represent him or be a point of contact other than His Word. A cross can be an idol if we use it to aid in focusing on God. God has been specific about how we are to keep his perfections and attributes before us.

 

[py3ak]

Ephesians and Colossians expressly identify covetousness as idolatry, so it is apparent that idolatry includes the worship of images, but is also much more extensive.

 

[Jack K]

Ephesians and Colossians expressly identify covetousness as idolatry, so it is apparent that idolatry includes the worship of images, but is also much more extensive.

Yes. There's biblical grounds for saying that anything you use to give your heart what an idol gives can rightly be called an idol. In my world, it seems this isn't so much cars and houses as it is things like education, financial stability and family. These are the things we really trust, rather than God, to make us feel secure and able to prosper. Often, even Christians tout these things as the keys to security and well-being. We pursue them religiously, because they are what we really trust.

 

[jwright82]

Look at it this way. When we have an idol it is not simply that we are putting something before God it is also that we are engaged in worshipping it. When someone's idol is money than their life revolves around that idol and god, so they make sacrafices to it (like, being with their familey or worshipping God). So they worship through sacraficing time, energy, relationships, anything that they think is required to reach that goal (which they love above all else). When we love God more than anything than that to changes our lives. Our time and energy are now spent worshipping the one true God.

This is why I don't like to simply like to say "an idol is something that you put before God", no there is way more to it than that. I am proud to say that I am in celebrate recovery and we men in my group have a very keen understanding of how much we sacrafice for our "idols". An elder in my church said that he thought that we had a better practical understanding of sin than most people in our church because we all experienced just how much these "idols" reorient your life away from God. This is why Augustine defined religion as what we love the most. If you love God the most than you will revolve your life around him and all your worship. If you love yourself the most than you will revolve your life around you and all your worship.

 

[Peairtach]

If one defines the word "idol" - narrowly - as an image of a false God or as a purported image or means of worshipping the true God e.g. the Israelites said they were worshipping God by means of the Golden Calf, then maybe its not appropriate to think of money, fame, power, pleasure, etc as "idols".

But if one includes in one's definition of "idol" not just images, but false gods themselves, then it is more appropriate.

Money, power, fame, pleasure, etc, can be false gods. It becomes particularly apparent that we are treating them as false gods when we are willing to break the Ten Commandments in our pursuit of them.

I think when we talk, and Scripture talks, of things like inordinate love of money being idolatrous, it is not speaking of images but of false gods.

 

[earl40]

A cross can be an idol if we use it to aid in focusing on God. God has been specific about how we are to keep his perfections and attributes before us.

Bob in your opinion would it be improper if we see a cross on the side of the road for us to be reminded of what Jesus did for us? I will say that happens to me all the time when my focus is directed at that image while driving every time I pass a church.

 

[Edward]

"idolatry, in having or worshipping more gods than one, or any with or instead of the true God"

Proof texts: Jeremiah 2:27-28. Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us. But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble: for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah. 1 Thessalonians 1:9. For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.

-------

An idol is anything that we hold as dear or dearer than we hold God. A good place to start looking for idols is by examining your checkbook.

 

[BobVigneault]

Earl, there's nothing wrong with seeing a cross and being reminded of Christ's work. My caution would be for those who put up the cross and why? The cross is a symbol and can become an idol if it is seen as some kind of antenna to God or a talisman. I have preached in a particular church (ELCA) where during the Lord's Prayer, every one turned and faced the cross. Idolatry? Probably not. Creepy? Oh yeah!

Over the years I've become more devoted to the idea that Scripture tells us how our faith and our God should be represented or not represented. To use any symbol or picture to represent the Godhead is going to diminish our comprehension of God. I'm also personally against wearing team related shirts to Sunday worship or any symbol of endorsement or promotion. It is a day of expressing God's supreme worth for only He is supremely worthy and that He shares his glory with no one. I know of a church that has team shirt Sunday and I find that ghastly. I also believe that is idolatrous. Do I point that out to the wearer? No. I smile and fellowship but if they ask for my opinion or given the opportunity I am pleased to GENTLY relate what I've said here. I wouldn't walk out of a church that has a cross on the front wall but I'm always relieved when I don't see one.

 

[rookie]

I would agree with Bob, and even go one step further.

If (for example) you see something as more valuable than God (money, house, family, car, sport and the list can be endless), it not only makes you an idolator, it also makes God and idolator...since it has more value than God's own love for Himself and His own glory.

And since there is nothing of more worth than God's glory and love for Himself, that makes us unintentional idolators on a regular basis. Watching a movie instead of reading my scriptures. Washing my car instead of praying.

When God commanded us to love Him and worship Him with all our heart, mind and soul...there is a reason we fall short. It's IMPOSSIBLE to do this from a human perspective.

I know some might not agree with me, but I will be the first to admit that I fall very short of the first 2 commandments.

 

[nwink]

I'm enjoying where this thread is going, and it's helpful to hear insights from others. The direction I initially wanted to take this discussion is how Ruben (py3ak) answered...he gave some references to Scripture that show how covetousness (not just carving some wood into a god) is idolatry. What other Scriptures can we turn to that show it is Scriptural to call something that a person loves more than God to be an "idol"? I'm just hoping to Biblically establish what the definition of an "idol" is.

 

[BobVigneault]

It is helpful to find a Biblical definition for idolatry but it is also important that we understand from the beginning that all of us are steeped in idolatry. Calvin said we are idol factories and indeed we are. Jesus didn't summarize the commandments into two in order to simplify our keeping them, he summarizes them into the impossible, as Ray pointed out. We cannot even keep those two but fall hopelessly short. We should watch in our lives and churches that we don't unwittingly encourage idolatry but should quickly accept the fact that we are idolaters and need a Savior. My obedience in the category of idolatry is imperfect, just as my obedience is imperfect in the both tables of the Law. Christ is my righteousness, my cloak, and in Him there is no idolatry. The bottom line is, no matter how we strain to remove the speck of idolatry from our lives, we are left with a plank of it but because my Father hates it, then I will seek to remove it from my life because I love him. This attitude will protect us from becoming witch hunters.

 

[rookie]

I can't take the credit for the following, but here it is...

When Anything or Anybody Gets What God Alone Deserves
Ex 20:3-4 (NIV) "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below."


God destroys idols; He is the great iconoclast. Even good things can become idols, and while reveling and boasting seem good at the time, it is a grave disservice to idolize anything or anybody. The result is God's wrath, on you and the idol. God will not be eclipsed.
2 Ki 18:3-4 (Amp) Hezekiah did right in the sight of the Lord... He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until then the Israelites had burned incense to it; but he called it Nehushtan [a brazen trifle].

James 4:5 (Jer) Surely you don't think the Scripture is wrong when it says: the spirit which He sent to live in us wants us for himself alone?


The Lust For Idols--A Matter of The Heart
James 4:3-4 (Phi) You don't get what you want because you don't ask God for it. And when you do ask he doesn't give it to you, for you ask in quite the wrong spirit--you only want to satisfy your own desires. You are like unfaithful wives, never realizing that to be the world's lover means becoming the enemy of God! Anyone who chooses to be the world's friend is thereby making himself God's enemy.

Col 3:5-6 (Jer) That is why you must kill everything in you that belongs only to earthly life: fornication, impurity, guilty passion, evil desires and especially greed, which is the same thing as worshipping a false god. All this sort of behavior makes God angry. (Eph 5:5)

Eze 6:8-9 (NIV) "...How I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices."

Deut 29:18 (NIV) Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison. (See also through verse 29.)


But Everyone Else Is Doing It...
2 Ki 17:15 (NIV) They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their fathers and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. They imitated the nations around them although the Lord had ordered them, "Do not do as they do," and they did the things the Lord had forbidden them to do.

2 Ki 17:40-41 (NIV) They would not listen, however, but persisted in their former practices. Even while these people were worshipping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.

1 Cor 10:7 (NIV) Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: "The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry."


Public Image--Making Idols Of Men
1 Sam 15:23 (NIV) For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.

Acts 8:9 (NIV) Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great...


A.W. Tozer: "Christ calls men to carry a cross; we call them to have fun in His name. He calls them to forsake the world; we assure them that if they but accept Jesus the world is their oyster. He calls them to suffer; we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comforts modern civilization affords. He calls them to self-abnegation and death; we call them to spread out like green bay trees or perchance even to become stars in a pitiful fifth-rate religious zodiac."
Eze 8:12 (NIV) He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol?"

2 Pet 2:18 (NIV) For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error.

1 Cor 12:1-2 (NIV) ...I do not wish you to be ignorant... somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to dumb idols.

Isa 41:29 (NIV) "See, they are all false! Their deeds amount to nothing; their images are but wind and confusion."

Jer 2:5 (NIV) This is what the Lord says: "What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves."

Ps 97:7 (NIV) All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols...

1 Sam 12:21 (NIV) Do not turn away after useless idols. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are useless.

Isa 57:12-13 (NIV) "I will expose your righteousness and your works, and they will not benefit you. When you cry out for help, let your collection [of idols] save you! The wind will carry all of them off, a mere breath will blow them away. But the man who makes me his refuge will inherit the land and possess my holy mountain."

Isa 42:8 (NIV) "I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols."


Do We Take Idolatry As Seriously As God?
Eze 6:4-6 (NIV) "... I will slay your people in front of your idols. I will lay the dead bodies of the Israelites in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars... your idols smashed and ruined, your incense altars broken down, and what you have made wiped out."

1 Cor 6:9-10 (NIV) Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy... (Rom 1:23-25)

Eph 5:5 (NIV) For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person--such a man is an idolater--has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.


Spiritual Adultery
Isa 57:5-8 (NIV) "You burn with lust among the oaks and under every spreading tree... The idols... are your portion; they, they are your lot... You have made your bed on a high and lofty hill... Behind your doors and your doorposts you have put your pagan symbols. Forsaking me, you uncovered your bed, you climbed into it and opened it wide..."

Eze 23:7,29-30 (NIV) She gave herself as a prostitute... and defiled herself with all the idols of everyone she lusted after... They will deal with you in hatred and take away everything you have worked for. They will leave you naked and bare, and the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your lewdness and promiscuity have brought this upon you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols.

Isa 57:10-11 (NIV) "You were wearied by all your ways, but you would not say, 'It is hopeless.' You found renewal of your strength, and so you did not faint. Whom have you so dreaded and feared that you have been false to me, and have neither remembered me nor pondered this in your hearts? Is it not because I have long been silent that you do not fear me?"


Ezekiel is Grabbed By The Hair and Shown "Inside" The Temple Of God
Eze 8:5-6 (NIV) ..."Son of man, look toward the north." So I looked, and in the entrance north of the gate of the altar I saw this idol of jealousy. And he said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they are doing--the utterly detestable things the house of Israel is doing here, things that will drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see things that are even more detestable."

Eze 8:5:7-10 (NIV) Then he brought me to the entrance to the court. I looked, and I saw a hole in the wall. He said to me, "Son of man, now dig into the wall." So I dug into the wall and saw a doorway there. And he said to me, "Go in and see the wicked and detestable things they are doing here." So I went in and looked, and I saw portrayed all over the walls all kinds of crawling things and detestable animals and all the idols of the house of Israel.

Eze 8:12,15 (NIV) He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? They say, 'The Lord does not see us...'" He said to me, "Do you see this, son of man? You will see things that are even more detestable than this."

Eze 8:16-18 (NIV) He then brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east. He said to me, "Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a trivial matter for the house of Judah to do the detestable things they are doing here?... Look at them putting the branch to their nose! [witchcraft] Therefore I will deal with them in anger; I will not look on them with pity or spare them. Although they shout in my ears, I will not listen to them."

Eze 9:1-2 (NIV) Then I heard him call out in a loud voice, "Bring the guards of the city here, each with a weapon in his hand." And I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with a deadly weapon in his hand. With them was a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side. They came in and stood beside the bronze altar.

Eze 9:3-4 (NIV) Now the glory of the God of Israel went up from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. Then the Lord called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side and said to him, "Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it."


Would You Qualify For This "Mark" In God's "Temple" Today?
Eze 9:5-7 (NIV) As I listened, he said to the others, "Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple. Then he said to them, "Defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain. Go!" So they went out and began killing throughout the city.

Eze 9:8-11 (NIV) While they were killing and I was left alone, I fell facedown, crying out, "Ah, Sovereign Lord! Are you going to destroy the entire remnant... in this outpouring of your wrath...?" He answered me, "The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great... So I will not look on them with pity or spare them, but I will bring down on their own heads what they have done." Then the man in linen with the writing kit at his side brought back word, saying, "I have done as you commanded."

2 Cor 6:16 (NIV) What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."

James 4:5 (NIV) ...the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely...


Repent Or Perish--A Greater judgment Is Coming

A.W. Tozer: "Grace will save a man... but it will not save him and his idol."
Jonah 2:8 (NIV) "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs."

Eze 14:3-6 (NIV) "Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all? Therefore speak to them and tell them, 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: When any Israelite sets up idols in his heart and puts a wicked stumbling block before his face and then goes to a prophet, I the Lord will answer him myself in keeping with his great idolatry. I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for their idols... Repent! Turn from your idols and renounce all your detestable practices!'" (Joshua 24:14-27, Deut 30:11-19)

1 Pet 4:3 (NIV) For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do--living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.

James 4:7-10 (Phi) Be humble then before God... You are sinners: get your hands clean again. Your loyalty is divided: get your hearts made true once more. You should be deeply sorry, you should be grieved, you should even be in tears. Your laughter will have to become mourning, your high spirits will have to become dejection. You must humble yourself in the sight of the Lord before he will lift you up.

Eze 36:25 (NIV) "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols."

Eze 37:23 (NIV) "They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people, and I will be their God."

1 Jn 5:21 (NIV) Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

1 Cor 10:14 (NIV) Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.