Exodus
20:4 “You shall make for yourself no idol in the likeness of anything in
the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth.”
• Visual representations of the Godhead prevent us from worshiping the true God according to His own revelation of Himself, but instead, offer a god of human devising.
The Lord has pointedly
forbidden His people to make physical representations of Himself. Why do you
think this might be?
Quite obviously, our Creator is so unimaginably greater than His creation that any attempt to project a
representation of Him will fall woefully short. He is just too fierce,
too immense, too magnificent, too powerful, and so infinitely beyond every
superlative conceivable, to be truthfully conveyed through images wrought by human hands. In short,
God does not desire images to represent Him because, by the very limitations of their nature, they will
convey misleading information, i.e., a lie, about Him.
• In a maneuver parallel
to the actions of Adam and Eve, the image-user is making a subtle attempt to
level the differences between himself and his Creator.
Another solid reason behind the
Second Commandment is the Lord’s penetrating understanding of the flesh's subtle intent to usurp lurking behind the use of images. His Word has revealed
that the human heart is “deceptive above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9), and
certainly the person to whom it lies most avidly is itself. This is surely the
reason that many Christians are so blind to the sinful nature of their impulse
to produce such images. Nevertheless, the intent is very similar in form and
quality to humankind’s first rebellion against God.
By accepting the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve
sought to acquire an enhanced knowledge that would enable them become on par with God (Gen. 3:5
“. . . you will become like God.”).
They were willing to disobey Him in their attempt to elevate themselves to a
standing commensurate with His. In the same way, the creation of a tangible
representation of God can be viewed as humanity making another vain effort to level
the differences between itself and God. Also, one can’t fail to notice the
inappropriate role reversal, wherein man, made in God’s image, attempts to make
God in his own image.
We excuse this practice as it appears in
books, statues, paintings, and so forth, because it is more comfortable for us to have something of a tangible nature, something more common to our earthly experience, that we can identify
as God. These representations feel justified to us because they seem to make
Him more easily fathomed. Yet such representations are not only false, they
are a subtle effort seeking to redress the power gap between creature and
Creator. When viewed this way, it becomes easy to see why the Lord would call
it sin and forbid the practice.
• What about depictions of Jesus and the
Holy Spirit?
Let’s continue to expand
our thinking about the Second Commandment by considering a few more questions.
“Do you think the prohibition was meant apply to all the members of the
Godhead?” and “Did God intend this ban to include images of His messianic
incarnation?” Perhaps we should also follow these questions with, “Why would, or wouldn’t, it?”
As part of the Triune God, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit are also far above all created beings. Their artistic representation as any created being would massively fail to display
Their true reality. Yet despite the dishonor implicit in these images, we wink
at the overt disobedience of the second commandment when it comes to creating,
harboring, and often displaying supposed representations of Jesus, Who is God.
Concerning His incarnation,
the Lord selected a time in which no image would be produced for posterity.
Palestine was too impoverished for paintings and sculptures except among the
very wealthy, and the man, Jesus, was a humble carpenter. Photography was non-existent. The little we
know about Messiah’s appearance can be found in Isaiah 53:2b (“He had
no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we
should desire Him.”), which tells us that Jesus had an ordinary appearance with nothing particularly attractive about Him physically. He was a man to be appreciated by the soul, not the eye.
Perhaps also contributing
to His general purpose of physical anonymity of the Messiah, God chose to make
His appearing at the navel of the earth, the land of Judea. Judea was
historically an international crossroad, where all races and cultures seemed to
transit, and where the full color-spectrum of human flesh could, and was, seen
daily. God did this in wisdom so that all peoples could envision their Savior,
Jesus, as someone with whom they could physically identify. It was His
intention that there be no off-putting “Jesus” in a blond pageboy looking like
“the white man’s god,” nor any “Samurai Jesus,” or “Black Jesus” to confound
the sons of Japheth (the Europeans).
• Knowing man’s
nature, God wanted to remove any barriers to the acceptance of His Son.
Representations of Christ
have been the devil’s work from the beginning because it is his nature to deal
in lies. It has always been his evil intention to alienate the hearts of people from
the Savior, and what better way than to produce a substitute image that is both
remote and two-dimensional? Even the use of an actor, a sinful human like all
others, to portray the Christ is not appropriate. Through illustration alone,
the evil one has enjoyed a season of particular success in the area of
children’s Bibles and Bible stories because of the many opportunities they
offer to trivialize Christ.
Within Christian children’s
books, Jesus is depicted as a slightly feminine-looking man in strange
clothing. At best, He is merely a storybook figure. At worst, as in The
Comic Book Bible (“Updated
and repackaged with a great new cover, The Comic Book Bible is filled with
clever, comic-style illustrations” per Amazon), He’s competing for awe and attention among a
pantheon of other available comic superheroes, many with noticeably cooler
get-ups. These publications for children aren’t respectful, honoring, or holy
in the way they diminish His glory, and they cause Him to appear as a subject
of fiction, instead of the true God working in real history.
• Our children don’t
receive the message that Jesus is Immanuel, “God With Us.”
Upon reaching young adulthood, children put away belief in
Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, witches, and trolls. Should it surprise
us how often our young people also put away, as fantasy, their belief in the
Son of God? The diminished version of Him in popular print makes it easier to
put Him aside and, ultimately, becomes a stumbling
block to faith. Whenever there is a stone to stumble, one either falls, or turns away to
avoid it.
I say these things not to
condemn, but to point out that we need to think carefully; constantly
questioning all that the common culture presses upon us. It is my desire to
provoke deeper thinking and a more intentional application of the Word to real
life. You may not come to the same conclusions I have drawn, but we will always
have fellowship together in Him and respect each other’s relationship with the
Holy Spirit.
I know, too, that the Hound
of Heaven will find any He determines to seek, images or no. I only pose that
through obedience to the Lord’s second commandment, we can render Him worship and
prevent our lives from hindering those He would call.
Blessings to all of my dear
readers throughout the world ~
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