Christchurch Parish News, March 2020.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been looking at the first commandment (here and here): the one which tells us not to have any other gods before God (Ex 20:3). As we’ve explored this topic, we’ve seen that we have a deep-seated tendency to root our identity, security, well-being and worth in anything or anyone other than God. The example we focussed on was when we make an idol out of our careers. Of course, the list of things that we can turn into our substitute gods is all but endless.
We’ve also seen how this dynamic operates at the group level, looking at the example of churches and the idols they can worship instead of God; for example, the church building itself or the excellence of its style of worship.
With both individuals and groups, this inadvertent practice of taking a good thing and elevating it to the the number one position in our lives happens with alarming ease.
Last month’s article concluded with the suggestion that there is one further tendency we should be on our guard against: the temptation to turn God into an idol.
At first, this might sound counterintuitive. After all, how can we possibly turn God into an idol? But it all hinges on what we mean when we say God.
Remember that rather than look to substitute gods, we are to look to God for our identity, security, well-being and worth. But the danger is that as we look to God, we start unconsciously to mould our understanding of who God is and what God is like in order to meet what we believe to be our deepest needs.
Which is why the first commandment begins by making it clear who God is: ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery’ (Ex 20:2).
In other words, we’re not speaking of a god whom we get to choose. No, the God before whom we are to have no other gods, is the one who has already chosen us, raising us out of slavery and bringing us to freedom.
When we’re tempted to look to other gods for our identity, security, well-being and worth, especially as we travel, as it were, through the wilderness of freedom on the other side of the Red Sea, the first commandment reminds us of the proven character of the God in whom we are to trust.
As Christians, we understand the raising of Israel from Egypt to be a foreshadowing of the raising of Jesus from the dead. In the gospel according to Luke, Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about the exodus that he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). When that time came to pass, Jesus was crucified by the Roman authorities at the behest of the religious elite running the temple.
Thus at the centre of our understanding of the character of the God, whom we are called to love, is the cross. Whenever we are tempted to turn our God into an idol, it is the cross of Christ which stands in our way.
For example, we might expect that as worshippers of God, we should get to feel good about ourselves, having a strong sense of self-worth. After all, we say, ‘For God so loved the world’, and as the world includes us, that means God loves us, too; so we should feel good about ourselves.
Whilst it is true that God does indeed love us, the ‘so’ in ‘For God so loved the world’ can mislead us. We might think ‘so’ means ‘really’ as in ‘God really loved the world—not just a little, but so much’. But in fact the word in Greek that we translate as ‘so’ means ‘thus’, as in ‘God thus loved the world’ (an observation of the theologian, John Behr).
Knowing this helps us to focus on the way in which God loved the world that follows directly after in the same verse: ‘he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16).
Earlier in the gospel according to John, the evangelist has made it clear who this Jesus is, with John the Baptiser declaring Jesus to be ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29). Then, shortly after this, when Jesus overturns the tables of the money-changers in the temple, Jesus says, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up ’ (John 2:19) After his resurrection, the disciples came to understand that Jesus was talking about himself and not the temple in Jerusalem.
With both of these allusions (and there are many more), the evangelist is telling us that Jesus is both the lamb that brings us to freedom from slavery (of which the passover lamb was a foreshadowing) and that Jesus is also the true temple, the meeting place of God and humanity.
It is this Jesus—the Lamb, the Temple, the Son of God—who was to be crucified. This is how God loved the world: by dying on a cross.
We then can’t avoid asking, why was this necessary? Why did the Son of God have to die? In accordance with the Scriptures, it was to save us, to free us from our slavery to sin. We were in Egypt, as it were. We were in slavery to this world, and we didn’t even know it.
But now we do. Now we know ourselves to be redeemed. Accordingly, our sense of worth is rightly rooted when it is rooted in the love of God revealed in the cross of Christ. Thus God loves the world. Thus God loves you and me.
It is the cross of Christ which reveals that we are sinners who have been redeemed in love. This is how we know God loves us and, hence, where our sense of worth is rightly rooted.
But the world does not encourage us to think of ourselves as such. Which is why we’re always tempted to turn the God we worship into an idol, preferring a god who makes us feel good about ourselves just as we are. In other words, a god without the cross and humanity without sin.
Likewise, we are encouraged to look to a god who will give us good health—physically and emotionally—as well as security. But when ill health besets us or disaster befalls us and our lives are turned upside down, we ask, where is god or how could god let this happen? But the god of whom we are asking these questions is the idol we have created, not the God revealed in the suffering and death of Jesus.
The cross of Christ turns our understanding of the God we worship upside down. Everything in our culture would have it the other way, so that God is the one who affirms us in who we already are, giving us a comfortable life with good health and a confident sense of our self-worth.
But our identity is rooted in the God who suffers and dies on the cross and who by doing so raises us from being dead into life in Him. Thereby, everything that constitutes our identity is transformed: the way down is revealed to be the way up; and in Him, our weakness is revealed to be our strength (2 Cor 12:10).
When we worship Jesus Christ, we discover the dynamic of our lives to be cruciform.
It is because this is all utterly counter-intuitive, and contrary to everything the world would have us believe, that we have to be always on our guard against the constant temptation to turn the God we worship into an idol shaped by the desires of the world.
Heeding the first commandment remains ever vital.