CHRISTIAN WORSHIP IS NOT A KIND OF EDUCATED MAGIC

“…Which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (PHILIPPIANS 3:3)

A belief in magic and superstition was thought by the late Sir James G. Frazer to be the only truly universal faith, being accepted as it is in some form by all the peoples of the world.

 

The temptation to attribute supernatural powers, or at least moral qualities, to inanimate objects is one almost impossible to resist. It is as if the human mind wanted to have it so, and I am not sure but it does. Sin has done strange things to us!

 

Let it be said, then, that true Christian experience is direct knowledge of God. It is intimate fellowship between two personalities, God and the individual believer. The grounds of fellowship are mental, moral and spiritual, and these are precisely what material objects do not and cannot possess.

 

The union of the human soul with God in Christ establishes a personal relationship which cannot in any way be affected by material substances. The Church by pronouncing certain objects sacred, and attributing power to them, has turned from the pure freedom of the gospel to a kind of educated magic, far from New Testament truth and gravely injurious to the souls of men. Our Lord swept aside material objects as having no spiritual significance, and placed the worship of God in the spirit, where it properly belongs. Our responsibility is to God and our fellowship is with Him. The Christian can simply have nothing to do with magic or superstition!

 

  1. W. Tozer