New Morning Mercies #291

Idolatry occurs when anything created to point you to God replaces God in the thoughts and desires of your heart.

This struggle goes all the way back to the beginning in the garden of Eden and has marked humanity ever since. What was designed to point us to God replaces God in our hearts. It is the sad tragedy of sin. Sin is fundamentally idolatrous. Because of it, we love something more than God. We look to what God made to do what only God can do. We surrender control to what was made rather than surrendering it to the One who made all. We celebrate the physical while forgetting the One who created every physical thing. We worship the gift and neglect the Giver.

Consider how the disobedience of Adam and Eve is described: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Gen. 3:6). Eve knew the boundaries that God had set. Yes, the garden was a gorgeous place. It was a place of beautiful sounds, smells, sights, and tastes. It’s hard to imagine what created perfection looks like in the world of nature; Adam and Eve were blessed to live in that perfection. But every wondrous physical thing that God created was intended to point to him. Every tree, flower, bird, stream, piece of fruit, and animal was meant to remind Adam and Eve of God’s existence, presence, love, and authority. God had embedded reminders in everything he had made so that Adam and Eve would remember who he was, who they were, and what life was all about.

When Eve ate the fruit and Adam after her, they weren’t experiencing boundary confusion. It wasn’t that they were uncertain about what God had commanded them to do and not to do in the garden. They knew that the tree was off limits, but at the moment of eating, they didn’t care. By the time they had sunk their teeth into the succulent fruit, they had already given away the love and allegiance of their hearts. Love for God should have given them the motivation and ability to say no to temptation and run away from the tree. But what ruled their hearts in that moment was love for something else. Their hearts, created for love of the Creator, had been kidnapped by love for the creation. It was the beginning of sin’s disastrous exchange—worship and service of the Creator exchanged for worship and service of the created thing (Rom. 1:25). Sadly, that exchange has taken place millions and millions of times since the garden. It is humanity’s great spiritual dysfunction; we allow the creation to replace the Creator in our hearts. No wonder Jesus had to come. No wonder his grace is so essential. No wonder God knew that he could not leave us to ourselves, that he had to send a rescuing Redeemer.

For further study and encouragement: 1 Corinthians 10:14–31