One thing that Paul is acknowledging there is that an idol is not merely something that we make with our hands—although the ancient people did that—it is anything that occupies the place of sovereignty and salvation that God alone should occupy in our lives. Whatever we trust and serve in the place of God is your idol. If you say,
I must have this to be happy, to have significance and hope,you have named your god. There is nothing wrong with many of the things we pervert into idols. Nothing wrong with desiring to be successful—until success is that which must provide our identity, our significance, our security. Then success has become our idol. There is nothing wrong with fitness and beauty, but when the focus of our lives is given to glorifying our physique and form, we are worshiping an idol in the place of God. Now, probably the most common form of idolatry in any age is the worship of money and all that it can buy.Keller recounts how the media really did not publicize how many suicides there were in 2008 in New York City in the financial community when the stock market crashed. And in his book Counterfeit Gods, he details—not in graphic detail, but he shows—how many people took their lives because they could no longer bear to live if they could not have great wealth. Their spirits had been broken. They could see no purpose to life apart from their money. And that is how it goes. People despair. Or maybe it is the loss of money. Or maybe they despair over lost relationships. Maybe they despair because they will never be able to lose weight. Maybe they despair because things have just not worked out to give them the career success they crave. You see, it is the making of things that, in themselves, are probably good things—but as ultimate things, they are idols that kill and take.1
Richard D. Phillips
9 For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,