Bright Wings

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with Ah! Bright Wings.

January 05, 2010

Resolutions and Their Contrary Idolatries

Resolutions are generally a good thing (see my favorite list of resolutions from Jonathan Edwards).  But, as I was praying through some of my goals, desires, hopes, and resolutions for 2010 I was chastened by the Word to beware of what I’ll call the contrary idolatries that accompany them.

The core of our sin is idolatry. And idolatry is the breaking of the first commandment, “you shall have no other gods before me”.  The root of sin goes deep into our great need for God and His glory as our end and source of joy. “You have formed us for Yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in You,” says Augustine in the opening of his Confessions. But we have replaced what is our great and glorious ‘chief end’ with the fleeting, temporal, and vaporous idolatry of our flesh, the world, and the temptations of the evil one.  And so, at the core of our various resolutions is a fight with sin - a fight with our idols. We fight with the sin of gluttony. We fight with the sin of sloth, laziness. We fight with the sin of pride, haughtiness.

Yesterday, as part of my resolutions, I began my reading of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome (more on resolutions to read the Bible later).  Paul whets the appetite for the wonderful power of the gospel in Romans 1:1-17. But before the full weight of God’s glorious good news graciously floods our hearts, Paul displays the justice and righteous anger of God against sin and thoroughly implicates all of humanity under His judgment from Romans 1:18-3:20. What struck me was what Paul says to his people the Jews in Romans 2:17-29. After his blistering attack upon the vanity of pagan Gentile idolatry he turns to the righteous, lawful resolve of the ‘people of God’:

“But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if your are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth – you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” …For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” (Romans 2:17-24, 28-29)

What’s my point? Or, rather, what is Paul’s point?

You can be a rank pagan idolater who is a homosexual, or you can be a rank pagan idolater who is a law lover. The righteous Jew, or the self righteous ‘Christian’, easily replaces pagan idolatries with contrary ‘law loving’ idolatries.  Or, to put a finer ‘New Year’s Resolution’ point on it: you can be a rank pagan reveler at 11:45 p.m. on December 31, or a rank pagan resolver at 11:45 a.m on January 1.  The idolatries of last year’s sins quickly become the idolatrous resolutions of next year’s hopes if we are not vigilant for the heart of the gospel. If I have resolved this year to fight the sin of laziness and selfishness and to be more productive with my time this coming year; how quickly the contrary idolatry of pride in my work rushes in?! How quickly the vanity of human praise at my productivity becomes the focus in my new resolve!

Remember that you are not a child of God because you conquered last year’s sin with this year’s resolve. Remember that the solution to your sin is not your resolve. You are a child of God (a Jew- a member of God’s family) if you are one ‘inwardly…by the Spirit’.

And how does this happen?  How is the heart ‘circumcised’? How does the Spirit inwardly transform? How are pagan idolatries and self righteous resolutions atoned for? Paul tells us plainly, after having shut every mouth, Jew and Greek, under just condemnation before God (Romans 3:19-20):

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 3:23-24)

So fight your sin with the gospel of God’s grace to us through Jesus Christ!

May your resolve in 2010 be powered by nothing less than the grace and love of God to you through Jesus Christ!

Fight all idolatry with the only thing that kills it- the grace of God through the work of Christ on the cross.

Tags: Spiritual Disciplines

posted by Erik Braun