"Slaying Isaac" by Marc Chagall
I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s excellent work on idolatry, Counterfeit Gods. He uses the story of Abraham and Isaac to demonstrate one aspect of idolatry — how we can come to love good things so much that we depend on them for life and meaning. Today I post a few “clips” from his discussion of this famous story.
“Previously, Abraham’s meaning in life had been dependent on God’s word. Now it was becoming dependent on Isaac’s love and well-being. The center of Abraham’s life was shifting. God was not saying you cannot love your son, but that you must not turn a loved one into a counterfeit god. If anyone puts a child in the place of the true God, it creates an idolatrous love that will smother the child and strangle the relationship.”
“What Abraham was able to see was that this test was about loving God supremely. In the end the Lord said to him, “Now I know you fear God.” In the Bible, this does not refer so much to being “afraid” of God as to being wholeheartedly committed to him. In Psalm 130:4, for example, we see that “the fear of God” is increased by an experience of God’s grace and forgiveness. What it describes is a loving, joyful awe and wonder before the greatness of God. The Lord is saying, “Now I know that you love me more than anything in the world.” That’s what “the fear of God” means.”
“The All-seeing God knows the state of every heart. Rather, God was putting Abraham through the furnace, so his love for God could finally “come forth as pure gold.” It is not hard to see why God was using Isaac as the means for this. If God had not intervened, Abraham would have certainly come to love his son more than anything in the world, if he did not already do so. That would have been idolatry, and all idolatry is destructive.”
“As long as Abraham never had to choose between his son and obedience to God, he could not see that his love was becoming idolatrous.”
One caution: Keller goes on to explain that Abraham did not have to kill Isaac, that God offered a substitute. Sadly, I have heard too many tales of people in ministry y using this story to justify putting ministry before their children. Let us be very careful. The story is not saying we sacrifice children. And putting needs of ministry before needs of children is only trading one idol for another. The story is calling us to take anything that we are dependent on for life and meaning and put it on the altar and see how Jesus died so that we might no longer be enslaved to that idolatrous god.
For reflection:
1. Is there anything in your life that you might have come to love more than anything in the world?
2. Is there something you are looking to for security and significance more than God?
3. What might it mean to bring this idol to the altar?
![When’s the last time you highlighted your weakness?
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Cor. 12:10
All-Powerful God,
We confess,
we in Western culture
crave power, control, and independence.
The last thing we want
is to seem weak.
And yet, weakness is the way of Christ,
so it must be our way as well.
The apostle Paul understood that,
so in the face of accusations
that he wasn’t an apostle,
he countered the boasting of the “super-apostles”
with some boasting of his own:
“If I must boast,
I will boast of the things
that show my weakness” (2 Cor. 11:30).
And then he mentions how he was lowered in a basket through the window of a wall in Damascus, of all places,
a place he went to persecute Jews only to be knocked down on the road,
struck blind, by his Lord and Savior himself.
Paul shares many other weaknesses in 2 Corinthians,
a book that’s all about weakness as the way
of followers of Christ.
He asked that you would relieve him from a “thorn in the flesh,”
but you did not.
Instead, you said,
“My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in your weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
Lord, we know we really are weak —
[for each of these areas, name any weaknesses you have]
weak in our bodies,
weak in our work,
weak in our wills,
weak in our faith,
weak in our hope,
weak in our love.
We believe
that you your power is made perfect
in and through our weakness.
Help our unbelief.
In Jesus’s name. Amen.
Read 2 Corinthians 11:30-12:10.
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