We like making life all about us (at least until things start going wrong). That’s as true of believers as of anyone else, which means there is a constant pull to shrink our faith—to scale it to the size of our problems, our goals, and our perception of our own sin. The only countermeasure to this pull is to keep refocusing ourselves on the bigness of God and the great sweep of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Mark Brouwer put it, “The Gospel is about reconciling people together, setting captives free, overcoming injustice, bringing healing to hurts . . . it’s not just getting our sins forgiven so that we can go to heaven when we die.”
Anything less than the true gospel can become an idol, because anything which is not the gospel can be made to be all about us, one way or another. Even our salvation can become an idol; rather than being “the salvation which God gave me even though I don’t deserve it,” it can become “the salvation which belongs to me because I earned it.” Instead of a reason for humility, it becomes a cause for pride. Sadly, the world can see this clearly in the many professed Christians who carry themselves with a sense of moral and spiritual superiority.
The only countermeasure is for the church to continually refocus and recenter itself on the full gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s only by making our churches all about the gospel that we can keep them free of the idolatries that will otherwise, inevitably, seep in. Any other focus makes idolatry inevitable, because if we have the opportunity to make our faith all about us, we’ll take it. Every time.
Gustave Doré, The Brazen Serpent, engraved by Alphonse François, 1883.