Christian Worship Is Not a Kind of Educated Magic

 

     By A. W. Tozer

 

 

    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! 

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    Yours in Christ,

     Paul N. F.