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“Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).
What John says by the Spirit of God in this verse might seem rather strange to us. He was writing to believers in the Lord Jesus. Was he really concerned that they would leave Christianity and go back to worshiping idols? No, John was not concerned about that. But John wrote quite some time after the other apostles had gone to be with the Lord, and already serious worldliness was coming into the church. True believers were deciding that the Christian pathway was too difficult and were paying less attention to their Christian life, and more to the world around.
John was telling them not to have idols in this world, for anything down here can become an idol to us. An idol is something that people worship, and on which they place a high value. We can make an idol of anything in this world, and that is why John says earlier in this epistle, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world” (1 John 2:15). The things in this world may not be idols that we worship as gods, but they can take the place of Christ in our hearts. We need to be on guard against these idols.
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