Quotes about Idolatry

But if the "servant" is indeed the "arm of YHWH" under the guise of a suffering, bruised, and unrecognizable Israelite, then a new possibility emerges at the heart of Romans 3:21—26. The primary fault of the human race, according to Romans 1, is idolatry. The primary response, from the one God himself, is to "put forth" the Messiah as the place of meeting, the ultimate revelation of the divine righteousness and love.

This is the context within which the hilast?rion means what it means: the place where God and his people come together. That place is Jesus himself. And Jesus himself, the focus of belief, invoked in prayer, loved in answer to his own love, is the ultimate answer to the problem of idolatry. "He is the image of God, the invisible one" (Col. 1:15), the reality of which all other "images" are at best distorted parodies.

sets us free in our personal lives from the need to worship or trust idols, and in our public lives from the pressure to serve the needs of an idolatrous state.

You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.

That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.

In every field, Christians must learn critical thinking skills. Otherwise, we may simply absorb idol-based philosophies from the intellectual atmosphere.

Idolatry is thus the hidden sin driving all other sins.

We sin because we want something in the created world more than we want the Creator.

As Paul says in Romans, if you reject the biblical God, you will deify something within the created order.

God cannot be rejected without putting something else in his place.

John Calvin defines idolatry as worshipping "the gifts in place of the giver himself.

To adapt a phrase, idols have consequences.