Breaking the Bonds of Idolatrous Service - Part III

Note: Much of this post will be an explanation and reiteration of what John Owen has already stated so clearly in his book. I do not take credit for any of this - I just know that most of us will not read Owen simply because we do not have the time, so I hope I can pull out the important pieces of his writing and make them easily digestible for those of us who don't feel like taking an hour to filter through 6 or 7 pages of his writings.



How then do we move away from our idolatrous service, away from anxious, obligatory feelings into the place of rest? The first is to see(1) the Father's love and the second is to place your faith(2) in him and trust in the promises of his love to us (which we know are true and trustworthy because of the manifold ways that he has demonstrated that love to us, namely in Christ).

For many Christians, the issue of these anxious, obligatory feelings is not only one that stems from a lack of faith in the love of God (if I may so put it that way) but also distinctly from a lack of sight of the love of God. Many of us believe that God loves us (or at least affirm that we believe) but by our actions we often demonstrate that we do know or experience the depth of that love. This is where an actual sight and looking upon the demonstration of God's love for us is so desperately important. Are we filled with motivations to serve God and do the works of Christian religion because by them we find we will be accepted? Do not those of us who live this way still affirm God's love for us? I believe that though we affirm God's love, we do not know it well. God's love appears as something beyond, unattainable, or outside of our daily experience and understanding. Or maybe we have (or the devil) made reasons why God cannot love us in our current state(3).

Here is where John Owen has helped me tremendously. His explanations and demonstrations of the love of God for us have painted a picture of God that i had seen very little and very small of before. Sitting through theology classes at Biola and hearing about God's attributes of immutability, constancy, infiniteness, etc., were very fantastic to think about, but the actual experience of those attributes of God was something that was, in large part, left out of the discussion. Many believers know that God is infinite, that he has no end; there is no place where he is not. We can explain what it means (in some measure) for God to be infinite, yet to simply know he is infinite is like, what C.S. Lewis speaks about - the difference between someone telling you that honey is sweet and actually tasting honey and experiencing its sweetness.

Owen moves us into this subject by saying that,

"it is a duty wherein it is most evident that Christians are but little exercised, — namely, in holding immediate communion with the Father in love. Unacquaintedness with our mercies, our privileges, is our sin as well as our trouble. We hearken not to the voice of the Spirit which is given unto us, “that we may know the things that are freely bestowed on us of God.” This makes us go heavily, when we might rejoice; and to be weak, where we might be strong in the Lord. How few of the saints are experimentally acquainted with this privilege of holding immediate communion with the Father in love! With what anxious, doubtful thoughts do they look upon him! What fears, what questioning are there, of his good-will and kindness! At the best, many think there is no sweetness at all in him towards us, but what is purchased at the high price of the blood of Jesus. It is true, that alone is the way of communication; but the free fountain and spring of all is in the bosom of the Father. “Eternal life was with the Father, and is manifested unto us.” - ibid, pg 32

There are several things that Owen speaks about, which I would direct any to read for themselves, especially in Chapter 4 of Part I. I would like to paint those here if I can so that it will help us, because Owen does not write like we want to read - its very difficult, at best. He tells us that we must "eye the Father as love" (pg 32). Our problem is we feel that he is looking at us in a disappointed fashion (which is evident by our idolatry), but you must instead look on him "as one most kind and tender" (ibid). We cannot only see him in his "terrible majesty, severity, and greatness" - for who would want to come to a God that is only like this? - No one. If you would look on him in his long thoughts of kindness towards you, "your soul could not bear an hour's absence from him; whereas now, perhaps, your soul cannot watch with him one hour" (ibid). Your heart must be filled with "breaking through all discouragements" to see his great love to you.

See Whose love it is - God is fully satisfied in himself - he does not need any other object to give him satisfaction. He is infinitely filled with delight and quiet pleasure to eternity, namely, in his Son. He doesn't seek only his own eternal, infinite satisfaction, but he is also seeking your eternal, infinite satisfaction. (ibid)

See what kind of love it is.
1) It is eternal - the Father's love "was fixed on us before the foundation of the world", before he sent his Son, he loved us. He delights "in the thoughts of kindness and redemption for them" that he would accomplish in Christ. From eternity he has made a design for our eternal happiness. (pg 33) His love had no beginning, and it will have no end. This alone should cure us of our insecurities of his acceptance of us.

2) It is free - he loves us because he will - there was, there is nothing in us why he should love us. (ibid). He is not obligated to love you, he loves us because he himself is love.

3) It is unchangeable - "Though we change every day, yet his love does not", his love is not altered by our things we do that anger him - he is infinitely patient with us.

4) It is distinguishing - He does not love the whole world this way, but his children - we are special, and unique in his sight. The world is filled with those who hate God; he chose in eternity past not pour out his love on them in the same way.

These are just, if I may say, a foretaste of the ways that the Father loves us. These alone, and any by themselves, should cure us of our fears of acceptance with God. Why should we trust in a mere duty to bring us to God when he has done everything in his power to bring us to him? Why should we fear whether he loves us or not based upon how well we pray, how often we read our bibles, how much time or money we give to the church and ministry? Is not God just as delighted in the least of his children, like the prodigal son, as he is in the greatest of his children, who have been with him the whole time (Luke 15:11ff)? Do you think your sin has cast God's love for you away and he is now angry forever with you? "How unwilling is a child to come into the presence of an angry father!" (pg 35) He loves you so that you will come to him, so that you will trust him, not yourselves, not your ability to perform some duty. This is why David said "For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it" - what the Father delights in is when his children come to him, open handed, empty, broken and in need, like the sinner in Luke 18 - "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!". This is what David tells us "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."

God delights to have you come to him, he delights when you come before him in repentance, seeking him because of his great love to you. Better that you see and experience that God loves you deeply and intensely even though you may struggle in your Christian duties, than to excel above anyone else in all Christian duties and think that God's love to you is based on how well you perform.




(1) Of Communion with God, John Owen, pg. 22-23, 32ff
(2) ibid, pg 22-23
(3) ibid, pg 36-40

Breaking the Bonds of Idolatrous Service - Part II

But where does all this idolatry come from? I believe that, for true Christians, this idolatrous service stems from an incomplete, skewed, and/or misunderstood view of God's love and grace. Though this is a blanket statement and doesn't take a lot of insight to see, but i want this to land on you with a little more force than you normal take it to be. I have specifically in mind the LOVE and the GRACE of God. There are many other attributes of God I could consider, his limitlessness, his omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, but they do not relate directly to our idolatry as does our understanding and beliefs about and faith in the love and grace of God.

This is where John Owen has helped me tremendously, which I will discuss later. On a personal note, I have often looked at the experiences in my life and sins that I have stumbled into or things in my Christian life that I feel I should be doing but am not, I have been so weighed down by guilt and shame that at points it has rendered me nearly paralyzed, emotionally, mentally and at times, in a way physically. I look at my sins committed or duties and obedience omitted and felt an utter disgust at myself for the things I have done, but my main error is that when I look upon my sin and sinfulness, or the actions that I didn't do that I felt I should be doing is I became filled with a total despair, and a feeling that God cannot look on me in pleasure, nor can he delight in me. I often feel that the only way that God can look on me with pleasure is that if I read the right books, pray the right way when I pray, feel the right emotions during my day, read my bible every single day sometimes twice a day, then God is pleased with me. I (or sin through me) have set up this concoction in my head that my acceptance with God is relational to the performance of all the works that modern Christianity sets forth as those things which "God-Honoring" Christians do. And here is my idolatry, the idolatry of the Pharisees. And this is where too many Christians are at in their walks as well. They condemn the whole world for all their idolatries, yet take not one look into their own hearts to see what they look to to find acceptance. They are not looking to God, they are looking to prayer; they are not looking to Jesus Christ, they are looking to how much time they spend in the word. They look to instances they can measure and hold up before God, which are like dangling shining worthless trinkets in his eyes, so that they can commend themselves for their great deeds - they can assuage their guilty consciences because of their self-wrought righteousness.

So how does this idolatry relate to God's love and grace? The primary way that I see this idolatry relating is through your perception of your acceptance with God. There are a manifold of different things God has done so that he can accept you, but its not my purpose nor do I have time or space to write exhaustively all those things he has done to make you acceptable in his sight. As a list of what he has done though is mainly his Justification, Reconciliation, Propitiation, Redemption, Adoption, etc. are some of the things God has done to accept you. But note who has done these - God - in Jesus Christ - not you. But here's the key issue: if you cannot see yourself as acceptable to God by what he has done, then you will do one of two things - do everything in your power to make yourself acceptable to him, i.e. Pharisaism; or you will do everything in your power to find acceptance in things of this world, i.e. worldly idolatry.

If you are trusting that your prayers will make you acceptable in his sight, as stated before, you will not rest until you have completed them to your conscience's satisfaction. But, if you are like me, and you try and try and try, and see that it is not enough, then you conscience will never be appeased and you will further yourself deeper and deeper into your idolatry and become more and more depressed because you see yourself constantly not living to the standards you set for yourself. If you are trusting in some kind of ministry that you are doing, then you will only be satisfied and believe God accepts you when you perform well and do everything right and do it constantly.

This should be a blaring demonstration to you of your lack of faith in what God has promised to you. This is not necessarily a condemnation, but a mirror for you, to behold for yourself your incessant idolatry. What I hope this does is not discourage you, because you see how pitiful your state is, but rather is a piercing light to reveal to you the sin that you could not see, and that the Lord is now showing you that it is there, and aside from his spiritual illumination, you could not have otherwise seen it. Now you have grounds to move forward on. How we move forward is the topic of my next post, so more on that later.

But, in opposition to all this is God demonstrating his love to you and calling you to trust in who he is and what he has done for you; to see his love poured out for you and to rest in the fact that he accepts you. Its as though many of us, myself included, look on the cross, and then turn our backs and start making our own sacrifices. But God is, like Lady Wisdom of Proverbs, raising his voice, calling out and telling the children, the fools, the simple ones to look away from their foolish idolatrous sacrifices and look to what he has done.

Were you to see this and experience it in your heart, you would not find constant obligatory feelings of needing to serve God but instead a delight in the fact that he loves you and has provided every way possible for you to be accepted in his sight - and it all is based on what God has done - not one thing of it is based on a thing you can do, have done, or will do for God.

Breaking the Bonds of Idolatrous Service - Part I

Note: I am taking two concepts from an article and a book that I have read recently. The article is by Tim Keller - "Idolatry in a Postmodern Age"; the book is by John Owen - "Of Communion with God", particularly chapters 3 & 4 of Part I. I highly recommend reading the links I have put. The readings I have linked to are relatively short, and if you have time, I encourage you to read them.

A friend recently posted a comment on my blog in response to one of my posts. This is what he said, "I feel compelled to ask the question,"How do we look to Christ in those moments of utter temptation?" Is there an easy formula? Or is it a continual renewing of our spirit day in and day out where we are brought to the Lord in our lives? I find it so hard at times to just focus my heart and mind on the Kingdom. Not because I don't believe it but more so because I am just tired and mind needs rest. What I mean [by] "rest" is that it's almost like I feel like I need to be serving in order to be Kingdom minded where as sometimes I just want to rest my mind and not use it too much."

What my friend has posted here is something I currently struggle with deeply and have only been able recently to really grasp how to move away from obligatory feelings toward God in my service and worship of him, into a place of "rest" where service is a natural outflow of the Christian life, where it is not only something desired, but also something pursued, not simply because we ought to (though we should) but primarily because in our hearts we long to serve our Lord.

There are four points I want to hit in order to help confront this idea of service done out of obligation, which I will call Idolatrous Service. They will be done in three or four consecutive posts.

1. Any service, work, action, or duty done in relationship to God simply out of obligation is idolatry (See Keller Article)

2. Motivation of service rendered to God out of obligation stems from an incomplete, skewed, and or misunderstood, view of God's love towards you.

3. The primary way to confront our idolatrous service is to experience by faith the love and grace that God pours out to you.

4. And the experience of the love and grace of God is found poured out through Jesus Christ
(For points 3 and 4 see the chapters from Owen)

I would like to address this issue of obligation and how we can move to the place of "rest" in God, even when we are tired, worn out and our minds cannot muster themselves to reflect on weighty thoughts of God.



In Tim Keller's article he quotes a section from Martin Luther. Keller is trying to show that all sin (in essence) is an idolatry against God, and his quote by Luther demonstrates that all people are in essence trusting in something, whether that be God, or in something else (themselves, economic security, social acceptance, etc.) which essentially is idolatry. I'm going to re-quote the Luther section to help you see how even service rendered to God can be (and often is) idolatrous.

"All those who do not at all times trust God and do not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in His favor, grace and good-will, but seek His favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep this [First] Commandment, and practice real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other Commandments, and in addition had all the prayers, obedience, patience, and chastity of all the saints combined. For the chief work is not present, without which all the others are nothing but mere sham, show and pretense, with nothing back of them... If we doubt or do not believe that God is gracious to us and is pleased with us, or if we presumptuously expect to please Him only through and after our works, then it is all pure deception, outwardly honoring God, but inwardly setting up self as a false [savior].... (Part X. XI) Excerpts from Martin Luther, Treatise Concerning Good Works (1520)."

Keller follows by saying,

"Here Luther says that failure to believe that God accepts us fully in Christ—and to look to something else for our salvation—is a failure to keep the first commandment; namely, having no other gods before him. To try to earn your own salvation through works-righteousness is breaking the first commandment. Then he says that we cannot truly keep any of the other laws unless we keep the first law—against idolatry and works-righteousness. Thus beneath any particular sin is this sin of rejecting Christ-salvation and indulging in self-salvation."

What I think is most important that these two have established is that if you believe that by doing some act of service, such as prayer, reading the bible, engaging in fellowship, giving money and/or time to the church, for basis of acceptance with God, you are committing and act of idolatry. Now, how this is an act of idolatry is very important. If you act and feel that your acceptance with God is based on the performance of some sort of service rendered to him, then your trust is in the act of service, not in God. You are basing your acceptance with God on a duty. In essence, you are saying, "I trust in serving". You are setting your hope on praying, maybe even setting your hope on the experience of God through prayer. But this is idolatry. You are fundamentally looking away from what God has promised to do for you, namely, remove your sins from you, forgive you, and pour out his love and grace on you, and instead are looking to what you will do for God. It is a backwards relationship. Oftentimes we neglect coming to God because we see that we haven't "performed the duties" or "served" as we ought, and are ashamed and filled with guilt (thanks Phil De Martimprey for the insight) and then, ironically retreat from God. We commit idolatry because we are trusting in the act of service, for example, prayer, and not in the God who made promises to us in our sinful condition that we are in right now, even to those who are believers.

Scripture confirms this frequently. David says in Psalm 51:16, "For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering." This is written by David after his sin with Bathsheba. He is looking for cleansing from his sin, but the way he deals with cleansing from sin in this Psalm is not by going and offering sacrifices, because in themselves, sacrifices do nothing. David, at the beginning (v. 1-2) looks to God himself to do for him what he cannot do on his own, namely, rid himself of his guilt from his sin. He even says that he would give sacrifices if the Lord would delight in it. But David knows that simply offering a sacrifice will not bring God to a person. That person must inherently be trusting in the work that God does: obtaining mercy, blotting out transgressions, washing iniquity, and cleansing from sin; not in their own work of making offerings for sin that they have committed.

If we would like to get closer to the heart of God, we can look at Isaiah 1:11-15:

(11) What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats.

(12) “When you come to appear before me,
who has required of you
this trampling of my courts?
(13) Bring no more vain offerings;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—
I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
(14) Your new moons and your appointed feasts
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
(15) When you spread out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.

Here we have a vivid picture of God's view towards those who have altogether forgotten God's love towards them and have begun to trust completely in the Hebraic religious system. God is filled with anger at their hearts towards him in how they approach him. Now i don't think all Christians who come to God seeking approval based on their performance of service are viewed in this way. Some do inherently trust in Jesus Christ and the work he has done in their behalf, but have, like myself, ignorantly included, in the worship of God, the need to add works and service for their acceptance with him. But none the less, far to much of Christianity is filled with people described like in these verses - all they do is bring their offerings to God and do not rend the sacrifices that God truly desires: "Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart." and "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."(Psalm 51:6, 17)

God is not desiring from his people service done because we feel obligated. Even though we are obligated, it is better if we never did service if only done because we wanted to appease our conscience of guilt. They do not make God more or less pleased with you. 2 Corinthians 9:7 says, "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." If you are troubled by the fact that you do not serve as you ought, do not give simply because you feel you ought to and are "under compulsion."

But this is the main point: all service rendered to God out of obligation is at heart idolatry. We are not better off praying simply because we feel that it will please God.