There are four little words from the Apostle Paul in Colossians 3:5 that make for a good reminder a week out from Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n
They come at the end of a list of vices which he calls on believers to “put to death”:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“Greed – which is idolatry”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Greed is the only vice listed to get a parenthetical definition from Paul. The others on the list are sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Is greed really in the same league as cheating on your spouse? It certainly is if we understand, as Paul points out, that greed is, in effect, idolatry.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Greed is desiring and worshipping some thing in a way which should be reserved for God Himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And we know how God feels about idolatry!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Now, if you’re like me, it’s been a long time since you got as excited about some present under the tree like you did when you were 10.<\/p>\n\n\n
But that doesn’t mean we don’t experience greed – it may only mean the things we desire just don’t fit under a tree anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are four little words from the Apostle Paul in Colossians 3:5 that make for a good reminder a week out from Christmas. They come at the end of a list of vices which he calls on believers to “put to death”:\u00a0 “Greed – which is idolatry”.\u00a0 Greed is the only vice listed to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6037,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036\/revisions\/6037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}