God has set out in His Word how He is to be worshipped. The Word of God forbids images or any ways not permitted in Scripture. The Scriptures call this idolatry. When Paul went to Athens in Acts 17 he saw the idol worship of the people and pointed them to the One true God. Paul saw an inscription, “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.” He made it his aim to make the One true God known to the people. Worship ought to be God-centred. If our worship is centred on anything but God then we fall short of true worship of God.

The Scriptures tell us that God is a jealous God. In the sense we are talking about here, jealousy is a good thing because only God has the right to be worshipped as God. For example, if a husband displays the feelings, emotions and support that only his wife should have, for another woman then his wife rightly would feel jealous. So if the Church, the bride of Christ expresses worship to an idol then God justly feels jealous because the Church would be given something to an idol that only belongs to God. The absence of jealousy in this example would be wrong. It is right for us to feel jealous if something that solely belongs to us is given to another, like the love and relationship between a husband and wife.

God is zealous for worship. Which means He is fervent, devout and committed to worship. It deeply offends God when something that belongs to Him is given to something or someone that does not have the right to have it. To love something we must hate the opposite of it and all that will attack it. God ought to be the object and the purpose of our worship. We are guilty of idolatry when we worship foreign and false gods through images such as Buddha. We are also guilty when we worship the true God by any image or representation of Him and when we fashion an idea or image of God in our minds that is not found in Scripture.

The reasons for this are clear. Firstly, they are forbidden by God in Scripture. Secondly, they are not real help or aids in our worship. Thirdly, they are in fact a stumbling block to our worship of God. Nothing may be added to our worship. God has told us how to worship Him in Scripture and to add anything that is not permitted by Scripture is vain and sinful. There are many examples found in the Church of Rome of idol worship. Their superstition in kneeling at the altar believing that the bread and wine are the real and true essence of Christ, and their idolatrous worship of Christ by images and statues such as the crucifix. There are of course other examples to point to in Roman Catholicism where they are guilty of false and sinful worship of the true God.

God alone has the right to control the way in which we worship Him. When people fall short of true and correct worship God interprets that as hatred towards him. So, let us worship and love God in the ways He has set out in Holy Scripture. Let us not add or take away anything from our worship that God has forbidden.