The Apostle John’s final words are, “Keep yourselves from idols.” (1 John. 5:25)
People, more than things, tend to become our idols. We are desirous or jealous or envious of them. We need them in various ways, principally to make us feel good: to be loved, needed, valued, worthy, to be…. served.
All of these expressions reflect our deep need for intimacy. We crave it! When unrequited, the pain causes us to hide behind pride, cynicism, aloofness, drugs, sex, alcohol, and the list goes on for miles. Or perhaps we become broken, destitute, lonely, homeless, or suicidal. All of these responses to the lack or loss of intimacy simply underscores its supreme importance. Sometimes this need remains dormant until, by some event, we are suddenly surprised, and perhaps caught completely off guard by its urgency and power.
We were made for intimacy, but our primary need has always been for intimacy with God. Sin has changed us, however, and now our need is an utterly selfish one, one from which God is entirely excluded. Originally, our need for intimacy on the horizontal plane was also good…part of what it meant to be made “like God”.
More than any other temptation for Christians, is the one which our enemy employs to his greatest advantage, namely, to get us to forget that the very soul of our redemption is knowing the Lord. When He is no longer our chief treasure and pleasure, something ELSE must soon rush in to fill the vacuum, and whatever it is, it will always, always, ultimately gravitate toward intimacy with something or someone else. This is why God invariably characterized Israel’s repeated periods of “cooling off’ toward Him as adultery. God was a husband to his bride, Israel, and each time Israel turned whole-heartedly to other gods, God was as jealous as any husband would be. What else could their idol-worship be, but adultery?
Only God in Christ can be our chief Lover; only His intimacy can fully satisfy and delight us. He only is our exceedingly great Reward; our Treasure and Pleasure; Husband of His bride, the Church; and Friend…indeed, our Heaven, both in the world today and in the world to come.
In a very real sense, the whole of the Christian life is no more, nor less, than believing and cultivating and living with Christ as having the top priority in our lives. To have this is to be totally and utterly free, as He intended us to be in the Garden. When this is right, all other things are right as well…including all other intimacies. When this is in decay, the stage is set for captivity.
Like the Apostle John said, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”
By Greg Gordon July 2016