When we hear the word idol, what automatically comes into our mind is a wooden or metal statue that people offer sacrifices to. However, idols have not ever been about external and physical forms but about the contents of people's hearts. Idols are not primarily made by the hands of man, but formed within the core of our desire -- our hearts.
Idols are anything that mess up our priorities and take the place that only God can occupy. It is anything that we rely on for security, satisfaction and identity. While in the Old Testament days idols were more obvious as they were in the form of forged figures, today idols have become more discreet and can take any form.
Yet all idolatry will stem from one idol that so many of us fail to recognize -- and that idol is the self. Humans have the strongest and biggest tendency to idolize themselves, and everyone has fallen into the trap of placing the self as the idol.
2 Timothy 3:2 says, "For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."
Notice how the verse starts with being a lover of the "self" because the love of the self above other things is the root of the love of money, pride, arrogance abuse and every desire that goes against God.
We idolize money because of the perceived security it brings to us. We idolize alcohol and drinking because of the perceived satisfaction it brings to us. We idolize work and success (which are good things, but too much of anything is bad) because of the perceived identity it brings to us. We can idolize anything that brings a certain benefit to the self, and at the end is the greatest root which is the idol of the self.
One of the foundational plots of the Bible is the story of people who denied themselves to follow God. Abraham denied himself the dependence upon Isaac for happiness and giving it to God. Daniel denied his own desire to live to continue to walk in God. The disciples denied their own professions to follow Jesus. The widow who denied her trust in finances by giving all she had to God.
That's why Jesus said in Luke 9:23, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." The denying of the self means to deny the idol that is the self.
No, the implication is not to forget ourselves and our needs completely, but to surrender them to Christ and see Him as the ultimate goal and the ultimate prize over our satisfaction, security and identity and watch Him be the one to bring us all three by His will and power.
