This is our most basic sin: an exchange is made. God reveals Himself, but we trade in the truth and walk out with the lie. We exchange the glory of God for the glory of the creature. That can be done in a crass way of worshiping a tree, a totem pole, or some kind of statue or icon that we craft with our hands. Yet there’s another more sophisticated form of idolatry in which we set up idols intellectually. When we reconstruct our doctrine of God in such a way that we strip Him of those attributes with which we are uncomfortable, we reconstruct a god who is not holy, a god who is not wrathful, a god who is not just, a god who is not sovereign. 

It’s been said that the overarching passion of Martin Luther that provoked the Reformation was sola fide, the doctrine of justification; that’s what provoked the firestorm initially. As the Reformation developed and moved beyond Germany into England, Scotland, and the Netherlands, the great Swiss Reformer John Calvin began to exert tremendous influence. Calvin is credited with formulating the doctrines that define historic Reformed theology, yet he was indebted for many of his contributions to Luther.

Calvin was Luther’s junior, and he had enormous admiration for Luther. Usually Calvin is linked with the doctrine of predestination, but there was nothing about that doctrine in Calvin that wasn’t first in Luther and nothing in Luther that wasn’t first in Augustine.

Yet predestination was not Calvin’s defining passion. His role in the Reformation was centrally concerned with worship, and he was concerned with applying the principle of soli Deo gloria to worship. Calvin sought to reform the church’s worship and to purify corruptions that had crept in by the time of the sixteenth century, particularly patterns that developed during the Middle Ages.

In the medieval Roman Catholic Church, the use of icons and statuary became very important. Church authorities said that it is not proper to give worship to an icon or to a statue but that it is proper to give service to these items. They distinguished between latreia, or “worship,” and* doulia*, or “devotion.” On the topic of Mary, Roman Catholic authorities said that she was to receive not latreia but hyperdoulia, extreme service to honor her as Theotokos, the mother of God. Calvin stated that this distinction between latreia and doulia of idols was a distinction with-out a difference. He wanted to get rid of idols in any form and said that we ought not to serve them because to serve them is in fact to worship them.

Calvin noted that the fundamental sin of fallen humanity is idolatry, pointing out that the human heart is an idol factory. Paul teaches in Romans 1 that this is the case. In this chapter, Paul is introducing his explanation of the gospel, and he talks about God’s revelation of His wrath against the whole world. God’s wrath is revealed because the whole world is guilty of unrighteousness and ungodliness. The Apostle identifies the particular type of unrighteousness and ungodliness in view as mankind’s stifling the knowledge that God reveals to all of us. God has made Himself known in nature and conscience, and yet sinful humanity suppresses or represses that knowledge and refuses to acknowledge God or to honor Him as God.

People sometimes object that it’s not fair for God to condemn people who have never heard of Christ. Yet the truth is that God will not punish people for not believing in someone they’ve never heard of; He will punish them for rejecting the God who has revealed Himself clearly. All people know God; they simply suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness. That is the sin that they will be punished for.

Paul declares in Romans 1:20, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world.” That sounds like a contradiction. How can you see that which is invisible? If it’s able to be seen, then it’s visible, not invisible. But Paul is telling us that the attributes of the invisible God are made manifest through and in the creation, which is visible. By observing the creation, we see and confront the revelation of the invisible attributes of God. Paul goes on to say that “they are without excuse.” People sometimes think that if they were born in a non-Christian culture or if they’ve never heard of Christ, somehow they have an excuse. That won’t work. There is no excuse for rejecting the Father—you can’t plead ignorance, since the Father has manifested Himself clearly. Paul says next, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21).

The last sola to be embraced by fallen creatures is soli Deo gloria because our corruption means that we refuse to honor or glorify God in an appropriate and proper way.

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