Diagnosing and Dismantling Our Idols

The practical significance of our freedom in Christ

God intends to restore his children into a new kind of human, transforming each one into the likeness of Christ. God promises that he will be faithful to complete this work he has begun in each of us, which means that the pressure for making this transformation happen is all on him and completely off of us.

This being true, the pesky moralist in us still treats God’s commands as a means to avoid feeling insecure, to earn recognition, and gain applause from God, others, and even ourselves (see the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14).

But when we are connected internally to the Gospel, we obey God because we want to versus obeying because we have to. Because we are in union with Christ, God approves of us without requiring us to lift a finger, before we do anything good or bad. He loves us as much in our worst moments as he does in our best ones. He loves us as much when we are acting like punks or prodigals as he does when we are living like grateful daughters and sons.

Pure Christianity is set apart from all other forms of religion because Christians obey God from the heart as a response to the radical love of God for them, as expressed in the self-donating life, death, burial, resurrection, and coming return of Jesus.

We love Jesus because Jesus first loved us, and continues to do so (1 John 4:19).

To illustrate our slowness to believe that God could actually love us in this way, imagine you are a husband, and your wife tells you she wants to date other men while also staying married to you.

The wife says, "It’s not that I don’t love you. I definitely don’t want a divorce. You are extremely important to me, the man I love most! We have been through so much. But I also think that my life would be more complete if I could also date some other men."

As absurd as this kind of proposition may sound, it is precisely what we do to God whenever we disobey Him and go our own way. Every act of disobedience flows from an inordinate desire for something or someone instead of God to be the first love of our lives. Each of us has our own unique potential "illicit partner" that we bring into our relationship with Christ our Bridegroom—whether it be money, power, control, a relationship, material things, entertainment, even a spouse or children.

Whenever any person, place, or thing becomes more essential to us than God, it becomes what the Bible calls an idol. The metaphor that God, our eternal Husband, provides to help us understand this is the metaphor of adultery (Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 3:14). An idol is any person or idea, any created thing that captures the loyalties and affections of our hearts to a greater degree, than God.

It’s not that we love the thing too much; rather, it’s that we love God too little in comparison to it.

The Sin Beneath the Sins

Idolatry is the root sin that leads to every other sin. It is the disease that entices us to live out of line with the Gospel in our beliefs and practices.

If idolatry disappeared, then all sin would disappear with it.

Sin, at its essence, is not a matter of behavior but a matter of desire—or of who, where, and what we want most. We always obey the desires that we decide are nonnegotiable. Whatever we desire more than God, we will obey it even if it means disobeying God to do so. Put starkly, our distorted over-desires escort us into the arms of lovers that give the illusion of being more attractive and life-giving than the true and eternal Lover of our souls, Jesus the Bridegroom.

To Overcome Sin, We Must Diagnose Our Idols

How do we do this? Thanks to the late David Powlison, we have several diagnostic questions to consider as we try to identify, understand, and ultimately defeat the rival lovers that lure our hearts away from God:

• Survival: What do I feel I cannot survive or function without? What do I feel I must have in order to enjoy life, be acceptable to God, to others, to myself?

• Resources: Where do I spend my time and money with the least amount of effort? The people, places, and things we give time and money to with the least amount of effort are what we believe will give our lives meaning.

• Thoughts and Conversations: What do I think and talk about the most? Where do my thoughts and words go most quickly and most instinctively?

• Biblical Commands: Which biblical commands am I reluctant to obey? What do I treasure so much that, if it is threatened, I will disobey God to keep it?

• Triggers: What angers and upsets me the most? What kinds of people, places, or things irritate me the most, and why do they have such power over me?

• Happiness Requirement: I cannot be happy unless __________.

Dismantling Our Idols

Idols are dismantled when they are exposed, named, and then replaced. Dismantling our idols requires that we labor in our study and meditation of Scripture to understand the many ways that Jesus provides what idols falsely promise to give us. We must admit that we have been looking to the idol as a Jesus-substitute, as a surrogate savior that can never help, serve, or sustain us in the way that Jesus can.

For example, if I discover that I am making an idol out of my reputation, I need to lay hold of the Gospel in that very moment. I need to develop a mini-sermon that I preach to myself whenever I am tempted to love my reputation more than I love Jesus. A mini-sermon that confronts the reputation idol might sound like this:

"People’s approval is a weak savior. When I look to other people’s approval for an identity, for my sense of self, it makes me unstable. If I have approval, I feel happy in the moment, but as soon as I say something foolish, do something regrettable, or am lied about or slandered, I feel anxious and defeated. What I need in such moments is an Approval that cannot be threatened by my failures and weaknesses. I need an Approval that cannot be lost even when I say or do something stupid. The only place where I can get Capital-A Approval is from Jesus Christ. In Christ, God—who is the only true and qualified judge of my thoughts, words, and actions—evaluates me not on the merits of my behavior, but on the merits of the perfect life, atoning death, triumphant resurrection, and certain return of Christ, all of which are given to me freely by faith. The Approval of God through Christ will never fail me. In the Gospel, I am always His beloved child with whom He is well pleased. Therefore, I do not need to seek or gain approval from other places. On Christ the Solid Rock I stand; all other sources of approval are sinking and shifting sand. God’s approval in Christ is solid, certain, and immovable. When I believe this, I become less anxious, can take myself less seriously, and can serve (or, where necessary, set boundaries with) others without worrying about what they think of me."

The Nature of True Repentance

As the mini-sermon above indicates, it is important to fight our idols head-on and with ruthless specificity, and to humbly admit how the things we love more than Jesus will actually hurt us more than they help us.

It is imperative to admit that our over-desires can never bring us the ultimate wholeness, happiness, or fulfillment we desire. Only Jesus can.

This is repentance at the deepest level. It is the act of cutting off a corrupted root and replacing it with seeds that lead to fruit and flourishing. As CS Lewis wisely wrote:

"Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in.

Aim at earth and you will get neither."

Here, Lewis pinpoints the great irony that when we love Jesus more than we love His gifts, only then can we actually enjoy His gifts in the way they are meant to be enjoyed.

If I love Jesus more than I love my wife, I will be a better husband to her than I would be if I loved Jesus less than I loved my wife.

If Jesus is more important to me than my career, I will enjoy my career more than I would if my career was more important to me than Jesus.

If I let Jesus’ gifts replace Him as my ultimate source of happiness and meaning, it will spoil my enjoyment of His gifts. I will no longer possess them; instead, they will possess me. They will have me around the neck.

God’s gifts are most richly enjoyed when they are offered back to Him with open hands and a grateful heart. God’s gifts are most richly enjoyed when they are secondary and Jesus is primary. As Brennan Manning said, "Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion."