Conformed to the Worship of a Lesser God

Worship is a word that has been hijacked and associated with Christian corporate meetings. While this definition may be true at times, the word Worship has a far more broad definition.

Worship is defined as a verb in this way, “to feel an adoring reverence or regard for (any person or thing). “

If this is true, the idea that God is the only one who is capable of receiving worship falls incredibly short of reality. ‘Any person or thing’ indicates that what we may have hoped to reserve for the Almighty, may indeed be divulged to any object, regardless of its deity.

What would cause us to worship something, or someone other than the One True God?

There are some of us, if not all of us, who have been taught from the nursery that there are objects, people, days, and programs that are worthy of our adoration. Things like church buildings, pastors, Sunday school, denominations, etc. have each been exalted as places and elements of Christianity that are worthy of our adoration and worship. The problem is that we have robbed God of worship and offered it to these cheap replacements.

We have been molded and conformed into people who love religion over relationship, and our own building over the building up of the saints. We have been taught to love the statues and graven images of our religion instead of becoming a bond-servant to the one who saved us. We must, as the scriptures say, be transformed by the renewing of our mind, to replace worship offered to idols with authentic worship of the one who deserves our praise!

Conformed to the pattern of this world may not be the vile and disgusting activities that we see around us by those who do not believe, it may simply be the belief that something we have created is more worthy of worship than the one who created us.

May the spirit wash over you and may you see with new eyes, that which only He is able to show you!

Conformed vs. Transformed

While teaching at a youth camp recently, I was asked the question, “When do we experience the transformation that the Bible talks about?” Of course this is in reference to the passage found in Romans 12:2

² Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Though this passage is short it is full of theology and doctrine relevant to our ministry as Followers of the Way.

We are asked to do two distinct things in this passage. The first is to stop actively conforming ourselves to the pattern of this world, while the second is that we must be transformed.

Stop Actively Conforming to the Pattern of this world:

I have hear a lot of sermons about what this might mean and it seems to always center around the way the world is selfish and seeks to hoard everything for themselves. “Look out for number one” is a saying that personifies this attitude that infects the world around us. As we begin to adopt this mantra for ourselves, we force our bodies into the mold that the world has established. When we do this, we are unrecognizable as Christians. The Lord said that we would be recognized as disciples of Jesus Christ when we love one another. Such an act of selflessness can only come from above, and will immediately distinguish us as different that the pattern that the world has set for us.

Be Transformed:

This is a different statement because it asks us to do something that we are unable to do. This is the result of the understanding that Paul had in the transformational power of the Holy Spirit over the natural world. He experienced this in a more pronounced way than most. His life was changed in a way that was impossible for him to accomplish. Only through the power of the Spirit was he able to ‘Be Transformed’ from Saul to Paul. The statement Be Transformed is something that requires us to relinquish control and allow the Spirit to take authority.

Both of these commands take time; time to recognize our fault, time to know our weakness, time to wait on the Lord, time to see the transformation that He has brought forth in us.

May the Lord be the element of change in your life, and may the desires of your heart be for transformation and eternity.

Slaves to Our Master

Romans 6:17-23

¹⁷But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, ¹⁸and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

²⁰ For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. ²¹ But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. ²²But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is relevant to our discussion of the Checklist, to understand the basic form of service to our master. The text above indicates that there is a unique distinction between those who have been bought by the blood of the Son and those who have not yet chosen to receive that gift. The scriptures indicate that those who are not yet believers are ‘slaves to sin’ while those who have been transformed are ‘slaves to righteousness.’ Make no mistake, the complexities of this passage are enormous and for me to attempt to export all possible relevance from this scripture would be an expression of foolishness. However, the basic foundation of desire is laid before us through this text.

The primary indication is that the Natural Man (the way we were before we accept Jesus as Lord) is spiritually chained to sin and the expression of rebellion from God, while the Redeemed Man (subsequent to the inheritance of eternal life) is compelled to conduct himself in accordance with the will of the Father. Slaves being the operative word, the text leads one to conclude that a master imbeds the decisions made by those of either party. For the one, there is the uncontrollable desire to sin, while the other there is an engrained desire to bless the Master with all that is done by the Slave.

Slaves to a master obey that master, while free men and women are able to choose their activity. However, this passage also indicates that we are now slaves to Righteousness…How are free and slaves at the same time? Also, is it possible that we have made Righteousness our new god, instead of the one who freed us?

Immediately I begin asking a question, “Being that those who are without the Way, the Truth, and the Life, are slaves to sin, why is it that we attempt to force them in to righteous living?”

If we are to be honest, we (modern Christianity) have attempted to confront the unbeliever’s lifestyle with this moral Checklist of normative behavior. Moral Deism is a term that I first heard from Matt Chandler, Pastor of The Village Church in the Dallas area. This term is used by Chandler to describe the very situation that I am discussing now; that the church has used the Checklist as their new Master and have traded relationship with Jesus Christ with a devotion to a moral checklist. I borrow this term to help to reveal the nature of what we are doing through this checklist.

Moral Deism is, in its root form, the worship of a code of moral rules. We understand from the text above that the worship of our master is the activity to which we are enslaved. If we are actively involved in the mastery, as well as proclamation of this code of morals, we are engaging in the worship of that code. This checklist, whether used to reform sinners or guide church members, robs God of the worship that only He is worthy to receive and prevents individuals from knowing the freedom of the gospel.

Not only is the formation of our checklist worthless to give us life, it is idolatry.