Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 636

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT: NO IDOLS

First, instead of worshipping God ‘in truth’ (praising him for who
he has revealed himself to be), idolaters have a false idea of him, for
they make a foolish attempt to represent the Creator in the form of one
of his own creatures (cf. Acts 17:24-31; Romans 1:21-25). Idolatrous
images are mental before they are metal, and every untrue, unworthy
concept of God is an idol.

Instead of worshipping God ‘in spirit’ (recognizing that he is
spirit himself and asks for spiritual worship), idolaters become
preoccupied with external, visible and tangible objects. Even the
worship of the people of Israel had a constant tendency to degenerate
into formalism and even blatant hypocrisy.

The seventh and eighth century prophets were scathing in their
denunciation of Israel’s empty religion, and Jesus applied their
criticism to the Pharisees of his own day: ‘Isaiah was right when he
prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: "These people honour
me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me"’ (Isaiah 29:13;
Mark 7:6).

So whatever outward forms we may use in Christian worship
(liturgies, processions, drama, ritual, kneeling or raising our arms),
we need to ensure that they escape the charge of idolatry by passing the
double test of being ‘in spirit and in truth’.

In the second commandment God goes on to describe himself as ‘a
jealous God’. There is no need to be disturbed by this. Jealousy is a
resentment of rivals, and whether it is good or evil depends on whether
the rival has any right to be there. Since God is unique, and there is
no other, he has the right to ask that we worship him alone.

A comment is also needed on the portrayal of God as ‘punishing the
children for the sin of the fathers’ for several generations. It is made
clear later in the Bible that God holds each of us responsible for our
own sins (e.g. Ezekiel 18:1-4). Nevertheless, there is abiding and
solemn truth in what the commandment says. Because of the social nature
of evil, God’s judgment of it cannot be confined to those who commit it.

Children often suffer the consequences of their parents’ sins. These
may be transmitted physically (by inherited disease), socially (in the
poverty caused by drunkenness or gambling), psychologically (by the
tensions and conflicts of an unhappy home) and morally (in habits
learned from a bad example).

– John R W Stott

in _Christian Basics_ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969).

(As compiled and presented in _TODAY’S THOUGHT_ by John Stott
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