The Second Commandment (3)
Exodus 20.4-6
4 “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; 5 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, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”
Deuteronomy 5.8-10
8 “‘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; 9 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, 10 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.’”
In the Scriptures we find various descriptions and depictions of God in created forms – fire, smoke, mountains, heavens, thrones, weaponry, and so forth. The Lord uses these to enhance our understanding of His greatness and purposes, and to draw out our adoration and worship of His splendor, power, majesty, sovereignty, steadfast love and faithfulness, righteousness, wisdom, grace, and more.
These abstract ideas defy encoding in finite forms, although finite forms can help us in understanding such ideas and the God Who embodies them. Hence, as the Scriptures use such forms to teach us about God, we may use them – and others – for our instruction and edification, as aids to worship and not objects thereof.
God is so great, so vast and holy and utterly incomprehensible, that to bind Him to some material form is to deny His infinite character and to impose limitations on Him and on the worship which we owe Him.
We must be very careful in the use we make of art forms relating to God. They should be such as encourage an expansive, rather than a limiting view of God. This is perhaps why, in the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple, so much of the beauty and majesty of those edifices is represented in abstract forms – colors, shapes, textures, overlays, and so forth.
Even in writing or conversing about the Lord we must be careful lest our language tend to reduce the greatness of God rather than to exalt Him. And when, in our worship, we employ only the forms of popular culture to express our understanding of and love for God, we are again in danger of reducing Him rather than of exalting Him as we ought.
T. M. Moore
The Law of God is the soil which, fertilized by the rest of God’s Word and watered by His Spirit, brings forth the fruit of Christian life. If you’d like to understand this process better, and how to make best use of the Law in your walk with and work for the Lord, order the book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, from our online store.
Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
