1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian Heart - Three Ways to Live | Page 3

Introduction
Last week we concluded that there are three ways to relate to God: Irreligion Religion
Irreligion, Religion,
and The Gospel
Gospel.
The irreligious don’t repent at all. The religious only repent of sins. But Christians
repent of both their sins and of their righteousness.
We also saw that religion is the default mode of the human heart and that behavioural
compliance to rules, without heart-change, will be superficial and fleeting. It is only an
ever deepening Faith in the Gospel that restructures our motivations, our selfunderstanding and identity, and our view of the world. Only the gospel changes our
hearts.
This week we continue the theme of Gospel and the Heart by looking at
How and Why our hearts construct idols.
idols.
“A careful reading of the Old and New Testaments shows that idolatry is nothing like
the crude, simplistic picture that springs to mind of an idol sculpture in some distant
country. As the main category to describe unbelief, the idea is highly sophisticated,
drawing together the complexities of motivation in individual psychology, the social
environment, and also the unseen world. Idols are not just on pagan altars, but in welleducated human hearts and minds (Ezekiel 14). The apostle Paul associates the
dynamics of human greed, lust, craving, and coveting with idolatry (Ephesians 5 v 5;

Colossians 3 v 5). The Bible does not allow us to marginalize idolatry to the fringes of
life…it is found on centre stage.” – Richard Keyes.