Grace & Idolatry

One of the most important theological words for us as Christians is grace (Greek: Xaris). We are very familiar with one important connotation of grace, and that is unmerited divine favor (e.g., Luke 1.30). What we must not lost sight of is the additional meaning of the word grace, which is the spiritual power that flows from divine favor (see Acts 4.33; 6.8; 2Cor 9.8; 12.9; Eph. 3.7; 2Tim 2.1; Heb. 13.9; 1Pet 5.10).

Putting these ideas together, we may define grace as: Unmerited divine favor and the spiritual power that flows from it.

Another important word for us as we study the OT is idolatry. We tend to think of idolatry as the worship of a thing rather than of the Creator of all things, and this accurately describes the external event (Rom 1.25). Considering the internal event, however, helps us get to the true essence of idolatry. Here’s a practical definition of idolatry gleaned from the practices of the Old Testament era:

Idolatry: The worship of a god who makes no moral demands upon me, leaves me in control and allows me to manipulate him for my benefit.

When we think of idolatry in these terms, we realize that even as professing Christians we fall into idolatrous attitudes when we resist God’s call to moral transformation and perform our religious rituals in the hope of manipulating God into giving us what we want. A person who refuses to yield to Christ’s lordship, but engages in Christian rituals in the hope of escaping hell, is no Christian at all, but in fact an idolater, worshipping a Christ of his own imagination!