From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

In two thousand years of church history, one entity stands out as the principal purveyor of un-Biblical worship.

¹⁸ Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, ¹⁹ and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.

In our last article, we saw that Satan wages a constant warfare against the Biblical worship of the one true and living God. We have seen how this warfare manifested itself in the early church.

We now turn our attention to this question: How has the same evil that plagued the early church manifested itself in subsequent church history? What kinds of counterfeit worship do we find, and how does the timeless message of Colossians chapter two apply to those later un-Biblical developments?

Rome: The Historic Champion of Counterfeit Worship

During the past two thousand years, the greatest and longest-standing champion of counterfeit worship has been the Roman Catholic church. Roman Catholicism's false worship has been one of the greatest spiritual plagues of church history. It is rooted in the same false teaching that plagued the Colossian church in the first century, the false teaching that man, not Scripture, determines how to worship and whom (or what) to worship.

The Roman Catholic church teaches that people must worship four things that God has never commanded His true church to worship. Rome says that people must worship saints, relics, Mary, and popes.

"Veneration" Is Not Only Worship, But Also Idolatry

Now, you will not hear the representatives of Rome say it in quite this way. Rome claims that what it is promoting is not worship, but "veneration." Vatican teaching alleges a distinction between what it calls dulia (venerating saints and bowing before statues and human remains) and latria (worship directed toward God). Veneration is not the same as worship, they say. We are only venerating saints, relics, Mary, and popes past and present. However, they are making a distinction between veneration and worship that does not stand up under the light of Scripture.

When man gives the adoration to other persons and objects that is to be reserved for the one true and living God alone, that is nothing less than counterfeit worship. When man gives the love, reverence, devotion, adulation - and yes, the veneration - to other persons and to other things when that love, reverence, devotion, adulation, and veneration rightfully belongs to God alone - Rome may call it by whatever Latin name it likes, but it is still counterfeit worship. Moreover, when man makes images and prays to them it is idolatry, and therefore spiritual slavery.

You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image - any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20:3-6)

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. (2 Peter 2:19)

Genuine Worship: Freedom From the Bondage of Idolatry

Scripture declares that God in Christ has freed His people from such bondage.

Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. (Romans 6:16-22)

The Apostle Paul commended the Thessalonian believers, who having been brought to new life in Christ, "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come" (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10). In all the centuries of church history, God's true people have been worthy of the same commendation.

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