I've been thinking about the relationship between the image of God and idolatry for a while now, and my thoughts were confirmed upon reading Act 17 in Paul's speech at the Areopagus.
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'29"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. 30In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent."
I think that it is often assumed that idols were God's themselves set up by human hands, but the idols were merely intended to be representations of their gods or images as it were. Scriptures beef with this is that the god's could not make their own representations but relied on human hands to do so. The true God makes his own images - humanity and he has set them upon the whole earth and placed them where he liked. Idolatry let people off the hook - one could fashion a God in which ever way you want to represent the way you want to live. But if you are the image then we should repent and live as true images of God. To commit idolatry is to neglect your own responsibility to live as God's image, as his children.
No comments:
Post a Comment