New Testament Christians are still prohibited from making any image of the deity—even in a movie or in art. The reason is that it is impossible for any artist to depict the godhead or spiritual matters, but more importantly, no matter how necessary or essential we might believe a movie to be, God has said “No.” That ought to be more than sufficient for us.

Renewed Reflection on the Second Commandment

On February 25, 2004, Mel Gibson’s controversial movie, The Passion hit the theaters. It is next to impossible to believe that a decade has passed, but it is undeniably true. There was a veritable firestorm of discussion—pro and con—about the nature of the film. Many Christians were in complete agreement that this was going to be a blockbuster movie that would change the spiritual life of Americans. It did not and that result was quite predictable. Some Christians saw it and lauded it; Rick Warren had a private showing for select pastors at his church by invitation only. Warren stated that the film was “brilliant, biblical, a masterpiece.” It was not, but Pastor Warren did not feel the need to recant. (Warren is also a signatory on the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even after the East Anglia University debacle regarding deleting emails about falsification of global warming assertions, his signature remains on the document.) The reasons why it did not produce massive conversions are clear. Jewish Rabbis opined that the film was anti-Semitic. Some Roman Catholics argued that such a film is long overdue and the world needs to get a glimpse at the physical suffering of Jesus prior to his crucifixion.

In that sense, the Roman Catholics were correct. The movie portrayed a man being crucified. David Wells has made an interesting distinction that goes like this: “There is a distinction between the crucifixion and the cross.”[1] Lest you think that Wells is merely playing semantic games allow me to explain—or allow him to explain—what he means. First century crucifixion was commonplace. “It was a death that many others had also suffered. In fact, it was an event so common in the first-century Roman world that Jesus’s crucifixion almost passed unnoticed. For the soldiers who carried it out, it was an unexceptional part of their routine.”[2] What The Passion depicted was the physical crucifixion. I imagine that the 2014 movie Son of God will attempt the same thing and, no doubt, there will be name-brand and celebrity pastors who will jump on the bandwagon and evangelicals will flock to the box office again for the same wrong reasons.

What, therefore, is the distinction that Wells draws between crucifixion and the cross and why is it important? Crucifixion, he explains, “was a particularly barbaric way of carrying out an execution, and it was the method of execution that Jesus endured.”[3] Therefore, those who believe that Jesus of Nazareth actually lived—many in our time do not—will nod with approval that crucifixion was indeed his manner of death. Was it brutal? Yes. Was it excruciatingly painful? Yes. Did many others die the same way? Yes. Since we cannot yet portray the deity of Jesus, the audience will be left to acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth suffered and died horribly painfully at the hands of the Jews and Romans. He died—at least by all human observation—at the hands of man.

The cross of the Lord Jesus, on the other hand, involved crucifixion, but went far beyond physical death by crucifixion. The cross, however, “has to do with the mysterious exchange that took place in Christ’s death, an exchange of our sin for his righteousness. It was there that our judgment fell on the One who is also our Judge.”[4] The Passion, Son of God, or any film that attempts to depict or portray Christ faces the impossible task of manifesting Christ’s divine nature. Wells states it succinctly when he writes, “That is why dramatic presentations of Christ’s death, such as on TV and in movies, so often miss the point. They give us the crucifixion not the cross. They show the horrifying circumstances of his death.”[5] That being the case, what we are left with in such a presentation is “only a biographical Christ, who may be interesting, but not with the eternal Christ who we need for our salvation.”[6]

And that is the crux of the matter. It makes no difference if the movie is Mel Gibson’s The Passion, the upcoming Son of God, or any other effort to show the world what happened to Jesus, the audience only receives a bit of biography. Of course, Hollywood is smart enough to throw in a smattering of biblical references, which are tantamount to throwing a bone to the evangelical community. They know intuitively and experientially that it really does not take much to please the Christian crowd. Any snippet, any reference however small or insignificant will suffice. The modern Christian crowd will be appeased and will rush out and recommend the movie to all their friends. The Christian “celebs” will gladly accommodate Hollywood too. To be satisfied with the crucifixion of Jesus without the cross it to be satisfied with only one part of the story of redemption.

The cinematography might well be exquisite, the actors might play their roles flawlessly, and the biography might be more or less accurate, but at the very best the audience receives only part of the story. In fact, the most important part of the story cannot be told because “What is omitted is the meaning of the event.”[7] The meaning of the cross must be effectually communicated by the Holy Spirit. Many, since the time of the resurrection until now, have heard about the cross and know that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. Some believe it; others do not. But that is hardly the point. Even if a person acknowledges the event of the crucifixion they are still lacking the meaning of the cross. With all of the hoopla in the evangelical world and the rising incidences of P.C.A. candidates for ordination taking exception to the second commandment we are observing a disturbing trend in modern Christianity. Somehow, we seem to have a type of spiritual amnesia forgetting that we do not carry the meaning of the cross “within ourselves, nor can we find it in this world. What eludes us is something we have to be given by God himself.”[8] This is the essence of the debate surrounding “pictures of Jesus,” isn’t it? Why shouldn’t we allow children to look at pictures of Jesus in Sunday School material? Is it wrong to have any pictures of Jesus? What if we have no intention of bowing down and worshiping those pictures? Are we still violating the second commandment? These are questions that I will address in the course of this short article.

Before we move forward and I present my objections to violations of the second commandment that I primarily wrote against Gibson’s 2004 movie, let me speak to the evangelical world first and then to my Presbyterian/Reformed fellow-Christians. I want to start out with a general plea for twenty-first century Christians to make a lifelong study of the Ten Commandments. This is an important exercise for us to undertake since fewer and fewer today understand or can explain the wide variety of meaning we find in all of the Ten Commandments. Since, therefore, there is so much misunderstanding and confusion regarding the Law of God in general it will benefit us to take a few moments and give a general outline of how Christians ought to think about the Law.

For some this will be a difficult exercise because they have been told that the Old Testament is not for the Christian Church. In reality, nothing could be more absurd that the older liberal and now modern evangelical insistence that the God of the Old Testament was the God of law and judgment while that of the New Testament is the God of love and grace. Yet, that is far too often the way modern Christians seem to conceive of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. One of the biggest lies is that Christ redeemed us from the Law. That is not the case at all. The proper interpretation is that “it is not the Law but ‘the curse of the Law’ from which Christ redeems the believer.”[9] Many modern Christians fail to keep in mind that “The law is given by the covenant-keeping, faithful God who has already delivered and redeemed his people.”[10] In other words,

The text of the law in Exodus 20 is a foundational covenant document, a document that sets out the love of God for his people and the obligations required of those people whom God loves, and whom God has called to love and serve him in return. At the heart of this covenant document is the reminder that the covenant-giving God is the Creator of heaven and earth. This reminder underlines for us how important it is not to separate what we call the covenant of grace from the doctrine of creation.[11]

What is indispensable in the above quotation is the notion of the Ten Commandments being a foundational covenant document (cf. Ex. 34:28: “So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments”).[12] If this sounds odd to you, what I am about to say might very well sound odder yet. The reason why the Ten Commandments are beautiful is because they reveal to us the character of God “as the holy, pure, and righteous one.”[13] There are a number of terms in the scriptures that point us to God’s holiness. David Wells considers “holiness” “as the umbrella term that covers an array of God’s moral perfections.”[14] What might surprise us is how God is repeatedly referred to with reference to his holiness (cf. Ps. 71:22; 78:41; 89:18; 103: 1; 106:47; 145:21; 1 Chr. 16:29-31, 35; Ezek. 39:7; Hab. 1:12).

Barrs puts matters in perspective for us when he states that “We should feel obligated to obey God’s law because he is holy. Yet our deepest reason for obedience is love for him from hearts that are filled with thankfulness because he has redeemed us.”[15] In our modern ecclesiastical world, many have lost sight of the truth that moral perfection is simply part of God’s character and nature. His character is not merely that he is a God of love, but the entire Bible teaches us that “the law is the expression of God’s righteous, just, kind, and loving nature.”[16] Not to know this; not to see this is to miss a great deal of the truth of the Word of God.

Rather than viewing the Law of God as something negative, therefore, we ought to see it as a beautiful reflection of the gracious and loving God we are privileged to serve. What we discover in the Ten Commandments is God’s original purpose for the life of man. We observe there what God wants us to do and how he wants us to be. The Ten Words are our creational calling. In other words, “These words are an echo of the bounty of the garden of Eden before the fall of Adam and Eve…. Israel in Canaan following God’s law is to be God’s new beginning for the human race; they are to be the firstfruits of a new creation. This, of course, is the calling of every Christian today.”[17] Have you ever read and understood the Ten Commandments in this light? If not, allow me to urge you to do so, for it will give you a new perspective on the Christian walk of faith. The “of course” of Barrs is not a given, however. I understand fully what he intends, but given the lack of scriptural understanding in twenty-first century Christianity, few biblical truths are self-evident.

Now a word especially to my PCA colleagues: An investigation of the Reformation and Puritan literature will not produce pastors who would consider taking an exception to the second commandment. There might be one or two isolated cases with which I am unfamiliar, but it is patently true that the overwhelming majority would never have taken an exception to the second commandment any more than they would have to the fourth commandment, or any of the Ten Commandments for that matter. David Wells suggests that in our modern society God is rapidly disappearing within us. In other words, we are turning more and more within ourselves to find our modern gods of “preference” and “tolerance.” We are more the product of our culture than our culture is a product of Christianity. Along with our evangelical counterparts, some Presbyterian/Reformed folks are opposed to doctrines they are supposed to believe, rules they are supposed to follow, and churches they are expected to attend.[18] Of course, there is nothing new under the sun and our time is no exception to that biblical truth. What we are experiencing in contemporary society are impulses that have been growing and festering since the 1960s. Those impulses grew to gargantuan proportions and became dominant by the 1990s.

We thought we could help ourselves understand the tectonic shifts in Western culture and within the modern Western Church by putting labels on people. Sociologists began talking to us about Boomers, Busters, Gen Xers, Millennials, and who knows what. While it seemed like a trendy thing to do at the time, what was eventually concluded was that the behaviors and outlooks of these seemingly diverse groups were virtually exactly the same. Wells contends, then, that whatever your particular label the dirty little secret is that what we are experiencing in twenty-first century Christianity “is not a generational matter. It was, and is, a cultural matter.”[19] That being the case, one really does have to wonder why it is in Presbyterian/Reformed circles we are beginning to encounter more and more pastors and candidates for the pastoral ministry taking exception to the second commandment. This begs the question: Is this phenomenon purely biblical or it is more cultural? I have yet to hear a solid biblical argument that images of the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit are biblically acceptance. What I have heard, rather, is that some P.C.A. pastors do it so it must be okay. That does not constitute a convincing biblical argument for an exception.

Therefore, as I rework this earlier article I will strive to convince you, the reader, that we should allow the second commandment to stand and that our desire should not be to add to or detract from the Word of God. In addition, I am going to argue that the confessions and catechisms should aid us in our understanding, giving us the majesty of history on our side. Keep in mind, the original article was written in 2004—a decade ago. On balance, however, ecclesiastical matters have not improved since then.

A Brief History

A controversy raged when The Passion was released concerning whether the Pope had made a pronouncement about the film. The then-Pope’s personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, insisted that he had not.[20] Unfortunately even for the Christian Church, the greatest fear concerning the film was that it would arouse feelings of anti-Semitism.[21] Apart from the Jewish and Roman Catholic communities, Evangelicals also felt compelled to weigh in on The Passion. Greg Laurie of the Harvest Crusades fame said regarding the movie, “I believe The Passion of the Christ may well be one of the most powerful evangelistic tools of the last 100 years, because you have never seen the story of Jesus portrayed this vividly before.” Coming from a man of Laurie’s stature, that was quite an endorsement. He really went out on a limb to make such an assertion, but he knew that Americans and American Christians have very short memories. Even if his prediction fell flat—which it did—no one would remember in two weeks.

But he wasn’t the only Evangelical “heavyweight” to comment on Gibson’s movie. James Dobson called it “a film that must be seen.” I never heard a retraction, so we must assume that Dr. Dobson still stands by his recommendation. Former atheist and author, Lee Strobel said, “The Passion will stun audiences and create an incredible appetite for people to know more about Jesus. I urge Christians to invite their spiritually seeking friends to see this movie with them…” (Unlike Lee Strobel, I don’t know any true “seekers” since Romans 3:10-11 is clear that, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God.” It is texts like this that keep me from adopting Lee Strobel’s language.) Was Strobel correct? Not exactly. In fact, not only did the film not stun audiences and create an incredible appetite for people to know Jesus, but it produced hardly a ripple. I know of one congregation in Canada that purchased $60,000 worth of tickets to the film and handed them out free as an evangelism tool, along with the address and service times at their church. Not one person came as a result of that effort. Might it have been possible to have spent that $60,000 in a manner that reflected more mature financial stewardship? Rick Warren from Saddleback Community Church stated that the film was “brilliant, biblical, a masterpiece.” No one less than Billy Graham is on record as saying, “Every time I preach or speak about the Cross, the things I saw on the screen will be on my heart and mind.” Even Mr. Graham confuses the crucifixion and the cross it seems.

A Greater Danger than Anti-Semitism

I contend, however, that there is a much greater fear than anti-Semitism that needs to be addressed but which few are willing to entertain: The fear of dishonoring the Lord God Almighty and disobeying a direct commandment that he has given to us with regard to the making of images of the Triune God. That subject will be the focus of this article.

For many, even one endorsement by any one of these “name brand” theologians would be sufficient for them to rush out and watch this movie or any movie that seems to favor Christianity. In fact, I’m willing to wager—which is just a polite way of saying “bet”—that many in the Evangelical community did rush out to their local theaters on February 25, 2004 to see it.

The Orange County Register carried an article prior to the release of the film declaring that Rick Warren had invited 4,500 pastors and teachers to Saddleback Community Church for an exclusive screening of Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie. The article cited some of the pastor’s/theologian’s comments about the profound impact the movie had on them. Most of the comments reflected—to a greater or lesser extent—the ones cited above. What struck me about that article was that as it recounted the various reactions of many of the (privileged) audience—I’m not bitter or anything—absolutely nothing was said by any one of the pastors or theologians in attendance that were interviewed about how the film relates to the second commandment of the Ten Commandments. It’s odd, isn’t it, that when a group of modern pastors/theologians gathered to preview a film like this one, nothing was mentioned about the relevance of the second commandment for us today? The same can and must be said about the comments of James Dobson, Billy Graham, Greg Laurie, Lee Strobel, and Rick Warren.

A recent statistic recorded in a poll reminded us that approximately eighty percent of modern Christians cannot tell you what the Ten Commandments actually are. So, in order that I don’t assume everyone knows what the commandment is, allow me to cite it here at the outset of this article. The English Standard Version renders it this way: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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 or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Ex. 20:4-6; Deut. 5:8-10).

What I intend to do in this article, then, is to recount the word and applications of the second commandment to and for our lives. I will then tie the Old Testament commandment in with the New Testament Jesus, with a view to the film in question, the upcoming 2014 film Son of God, or anything that parallels them. I realize that venturing such an exposition will surely raise the ire of those who believe they will be “helped” by viewing the movie. That is a very interesting notion that few wish to argue with, isn’t it? Who wants to argue with someone who has been “helped” by something? Certainly, few in the modern evangelical community want to be accused of something like that. Why not? The clear answer is that we are such a psychological ecclesiastical community that we want the self-esteem of all Christians to be stroked. David Wells cites Christian Smith who coined the phrase “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” to describe many modern teenagers. Here is what Wells has to say about Smith’s phrase:

The dominant view, even among evangelical teenagers, is that God made everything and established a moral order, but he does not intervene. Actually, for most he is not even Trinitarian, and the incarnation and resurrection of Christ play little part in church teenage thinking—even in evangelical teenage thinking. They see God as not demanding much from them because he is chiefly engaged in solving their problems and making them feel good. Religion is about experiencing happiness, contentedness, having God solve one’s problems and provide stuff like homes, the Internet, iPods, iPads, and iPhones.[22]

 This type of thinking constitutes an enormous problem for the modern Church, because lacking biblical knowledge, many fall back on feelings, preference, or experience and that is supposed to be the “end of story.” Everyone should fall silent and respect the assertion that, in this case, the movie “helped” them—whatever that means—and nod approvingly.

Our concern in this article is neither “stark realism” as far as the movie is concerned nor some sort of psychological boost, but, ultimately, it is the glory of the Lord and obedience to his Word. In order to accomplish our goals, we will look at various texts in addition to the second commandment.

Some Old Testament Biblical Texts

Jacques Ellul wrote a book that has as its translated title, The Humiliation of the Word.[23] The book is filled with philosophical and sociological discussions, but Ellul succeeds in grasping the heart of the matter regarding the second commandment, which is that the God of Scripture forbade any making of images that were supposed to represent him. He rightly states,

Not enough thinking has been done about the breaking of the tables of the Law. The story is well known: on descending from Sinai, in the presence of the incredible pretension of the Israelites to make themselves a god (which they could control since they had made it) to replace the mysterious Liberator, out of anger and despair, Moses breaks and destroys the miraculous talisman he was bringing: the stone tables on which God himself had written. He acted in anger, we say. It was an act of judgment against a people who were not worthy to receive such an extraordinary gift.[24]

 This snippet, from Ellul’s provocative book, sets the table and pinpoints the true controversy about the Mel Gibson film and reopens the essential and crucial issue of the second commandment from the Law of God. Between man and man, words are powerful things. Between God and man, words take on an even more significant meaning. “The Bible story of the dealings of God with His people, shows us that God has always used words, in communicating Himself, His mind, and His will, to men.”[25]

Rarely have modern Christians paused and reflected upon the meaning and application of the second commandment for life and, as the sub-title of Wallace’s book states, “ethical freedom.” For a large number of evangelicals, the Ten Commandments have no relevance or application for the New Testament Christian. Jerram Barrs reminds us that in a large majority of evangelical circles today “law is necessarily played down because of a strong discontinuity between the old and new covenants…”[26] This theological notion occurs most frequently in dispensational theology that teaches that the Old Testament is for Israel and the New Testament is for the Church. Thus, according to that teaching, the Old Testament is Law and the New Testament is grace. That type of thinking used to characterize ecclesiastical liberalism, but now it is the overriding and overarching theology of a large segment of evangelicalism.

Knowing God and the Second Commandment

J.I. Packer devoted the fourth chapter of his classic book, Knowing God, to the matter of the second commandment and the Christian (“The Only True God”).[27] His is one of the books that takes the second commandment very seriously. Before we move on and examine some of the biblical texts that are germane to the topic at hand, I want to pause for a moment and have us consider some of Packer’s lucid and helpful statements. He starts out by reminding us that the second commandment is not necessarily referring to the types of crass idolatry spoken of in Isaiah 44:9-20 and 46:6-7 or in Romans 1:23, 25.[28]

Packer then sets the stage by explaining to us what the intent of the second commandment is. Quoting Charles Hodge, he states, “‘idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images.’ In its Christian application, this means that we are not to make use of visual or pictorial representations of the triune God, or of any person of the Trinity, for the purposes of Christian worship. The commandment thus deals, not with the object of our worship, but with the manner of it; what it tells us is that statues and pictures of the One whom we worship are not to be used as an aid to worshiping him.”[29]

Of course, some will argue that they do not ever intend to worship the image. Nothing, they assert, could be farther from their imagination. They typically go on to say that for them and especially for children, pictures can serve a very positive purpose. Packer explains, “What harm is there, we ask, in the worshiper’s surrounding himself with statues and pictures, if they help him to lift his heart?”[30] Many in our time would quickly answer: No harm; no foul! God would not require such an unreasonable thing from them, especially if they are convinced that some sort of image does, in fact, “help” them in their Christian walk. David Wells’ comments echo Packer’s sentiments: Modern Christians “see God as not demanding much from them because he is chiefly engaged in solving their problems and making them feel good. Religion is about experiencing happiness, contentedness, having God solves one’s problems and provide stuff like homes, the Internet, iPods, iPads, and iPhones.”[31] Such a loving, benevolent, morally toothless god would never think to object to a image making a person feel better, worship better, or be able to feel good about being a Christian if an image would help.

Packer presents us with two reasons why we should not use images. He completely understands that there have been differences of opinions down through the ages of say, “the use of pictures of Jesus for purposes of teaching and instruction (in Sunday-school classes, for instance).”[32] His first reason for no images is that “Images dishonor God, for they obscure his glory.”[33] To bolster his assertion, Packer cites the Reformer, John Calvin, who wrote, “A true image of God is not to be found in all the world; and hence…His glory is defiled, and His truth corrupted by the lie, whenever He is set before our eyes in a visible form…. Therefore, to devise any image of God is itself impious; because by this corruption His majesty is adulterated, and He is figured to be other than He is.”[34] The heart of the objection is quite simply that pictures and images “inevitably conceal most, if not all, of the truth about the personal nature and character of the divine Being whom they represent.”[35] All manmade images “obscure the fact of God’s deity, his victory on the cross, and his present kingdom.”[36] Further, such images display our Lord’s human weakness, but conceal his divine strength. “[I]t depicts the reality of his pain, but keeps out of our sight the reality of his joy and power.”[37] Finally, “his glory is precisely what such pictures can never show us.”[38] (Cf. Isa. 40:18.)

Packer’s second reason against the use of various images is that “Images mislead us, for they convey false ideas about God.”[39] This ought to give us pause. Images cannot deliver what they promise precisely due to their inherent inadequacy. While many today applaud such images in reality all those images do is to pervert our thoughts of God and plant “in our minds errors of all sorts about his character and will.”[40] To support his claim, Packer cites the example of Aaron whose bull-calf worship, which was supposed to be a “festival to the Lord,” turned out to be a frenzied debauchery and shameful orgy.[41]

What occurred then and what Packer believes still occurs is the falsification of the truth of God in the minds of men.[42] He believes that images have a psychological impact on those who use them. He states, “Psychologically, it is certain that if you habitually focus your thoughts on an image or picture of the One to whom you are going to pray, you will come to think of him, and pray to him, as the image represent him. Thus you will in this sense ‘bow down’ and ‘worship’ your image; and to the extent to which the image fails to tell the truth about God, to that extent you will fail to worship God in truth.”[43]

What escapes many in our time is quite simply the worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit according to Scripture. “Worship” has been turned on its head in many Christian churches since at least the mid-1970s in America. We experienced a huge “paradigm shift” then that has come to dominate a large portion of the modern Church. Many who attend worship services have no idea what the Word of God has to say about worship in spirit and in truth. They are concerned, rather, with getting their messy lives straightened out and getting their needs, real or perceived, met. Of course, all of us have messy lives in the sense that we are still sinners, but we ought not to attend a place of worship thinking that it is all about us. It is not. God’s holiness “is the central, most important element in worship.”[44] Moreover, “It is coming face-to-face with God, standing in his presence, bringing forth our praise to him for who he is…. If the greatest commandment is to love God with our whole being, then to come to him in worship is a duty central to living out that love…. But worship is primarily an expression of the worth of God. It is a God-centered thing. It is primarily for God and about God.”[45] Wells’ comments solidify Packer’s arguments. Both men warrant a listening ear.

In our time, it is not uncommon to hear some who call themselves Christians saying things like, “Well, my God isn’t like that” or “My God is only a God of love.” Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Packer warns us, however, that “It needs to be said with the greatest possible emphasis that those who hold themselves free to think of God as they like are breaking the second commandment.”[46] While we might initially think of Sunday School material that contains images of the Lord Jesus as innocuous or harmless, in reality “To follow the imagination of one’s heart in the realm of theology is the way to remain ignorant of God, and to become an idol-worshipper.”[47]

With all these negative comments, is there any positive take away from Packer’s comments—and there most definitely is, for those willing to listen!—it is a “summons to us to recognized that God the Creator is transcendent, mysterious and inscrutable, beyond the range of any imagining or philosophical guesswork of he we are capable—and hence a summons to us to humble ourselves, to listen and learn of him, and to let him teach us what he is like and how we should think of him.”[48] Packer hastens to add these germane thoughts: “all manmade images of God, whether molten or mental, are really borrowings from the stock-in-trade of a sinful and ungodly world, and are bound therefore to be out of accord with God’s own holy Word. To make an image of God is to take one’s thoughts of him from a human source, rather than from God himself; and this is precisely what is wrong with image-making.”[49]

The last quotation rings true concerning The Passion of the Christ and it will also be true of the upcoming film Son of God. It is true of all movies attempting somehow to depict the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit. It is true of all Sunday School material that tries to capture what Jesus looked like, even though they are just trying to be helpful and make the children feel good. It begs the question, however: what about Christian aesthetic expression? With the current emphasis on the arts in our time, we need to be very careful. I recall a conversation I had with a person who had attended a workshop for Christians in the arts led by David and Diane Arkenstone. The person raved on and on about their “giftedness.” Today the Arkenstones are forerunners in the New Age movement. In Packer’s opinion, “Symbolic art can serve worship in many ways, but the second commandment still forbids anything that will be thought of as a representational image of God.”[50]

Packer continues and briefly describes our modern ecclesiastical culture, which he deems “unsophisticated.” We all know that this is true. A recent survey disclosed that only about 9% of those who call themselves Christians have even a minimal acquaintance with the truths of the Christian faith. Our covenant children have not been effectually and effectively catechized for ages. The net result is that neither our children nor we are very well informed about the faith we profess. Seeing a movie made in Hollywood is not likely to increase our knowledge or sophistication when it comes to understanding and applying Christianity. In fact, those types of things will only serve to add to the confusion. Packer sagaciously states, “Since it is hard for us humans to avoid this pitfall, wisdom counsels once more that the better, safer way is to learn to do without them. Some risks are not worth taking.”[51]

In the case of the movie The Passion of the Christ, it is argued that people merely want to watch it, not worship through it. The same might be said of a picture of Jesus in Sunday School curriculum for young children. I contend, however, that people will, indeed, attach some kind of worship to it, as Packer argued. In fact, we need to remember that all of life is worship and it is very difficult for a Christian to separate his or her entertainment from his daily worship. I also understand that what I just said will sound very strange to many—if not most—modern Christians.

It is trendy to ask today: Are not all those Old Testament commands dealing with the making of stone and metal idols for the purpose of bowing down and worshipping them? We have no such thing in mind simply by going to see a movie, they continue. Packer responds, “But the very wording of the commandment rules out such a limiting exposition. God says quite categorically, ‘you shall not make an idol in the form of anything’ for use in worship. This categorical statement rules out, not simply the use of pictures and statues which depict God as an animal, but also the use of pictures and statues which depict him as the highest created thing we know—a human.”[52]

Some argue this way: “But wasn’t Jesus truly man? Why can’t we depict his humanity?” Packer’s rejoinder is that the second commandment, “also rules out the use of pictures and statues of Jesus Christ as a man, although Jesus himself was and remains man…”[53] His statement makes some ask why? Why does the second commandment extend to making drawings, paintings, or art artifacts of the man Jesus of Nazareth? He answers, “…for all pictures and statues are necessarily made after the ‘likeness’ of ideal manhood as we conceive it, and therefore come under the ban which the commandment imposes.”[54]

Conclusions

I completely agree with Packer’s conclusion. We shall argue along similar lines in the remainder of this paper. Therefore, whether it is Mel Gibson, Cecil B. de Mille, or any one of the modern producers and directors makes absolutely no difference. Returning to the notions of private and public worship Packer writes, “…there is no room for doubting that the commandment obliges us to dissociate our worship, both in public and in private, from all pictures and statues of Christ, no less than from pictures and statues of his Father.”[55]

In a day and age in which we have all but lost the notion of “ordinary means of grace” worship,[56] many will simply shrug their shoulders and ask, “So what’s the big deal?” Such is the nature of the many modern Christians. Packer explains that such a cavalier approach to the Word of God goes counter to the Bible, for “The Bible shows us that the glory of God and the spiritual well-being of humans are both directly bound up with it.”[57]

In short, any kind of image will falsify the truth of God in the minds of men according to the spiritual meaning of the second commandment. At the end of his chapter, Packer insists on asking us some poignant questions, the leading of which is: “how far are we keeping the second commandment?”[58] This is a pertinent question in light of the rather deplorable lack of biblical knowledge in our day. We need to answer this question biblically rather than in light of the question: how badly do I want to see this movie. Packer suggests that the way to answer this question—indeed, any question—is to ask what the Bible has to say about it.

Finally, far too many have simply never given the matter of the honoring of God through the second commandment and the viewing of this movie much, if any, thought. It’s time to reflect and ask ourselves what God wants us to be and to do—even or especially when it comes to movies depicting God.

With that in mind, let’s turn our attention to the content of the second commandment.

The Meaning of the Second Commandment Itself

A progression exists between the first and second commandments. In the first commandment, all other gods are rejected (“You shall have no other gods before me” [Ex. 20:2]). This commandment describes Yahweh as the only true, legitimate God. The second commandment proceeds and describes for the Church the wrong, illegitimate, and incorrect ways that man might attempt to worship the only true, legitimate God. (“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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 or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”) To put it another way, “After the first commandment rejects all other gods, so that only Yahweh remains, the second commandment rejects every wrong form whereby people desire to worship Yahweh. The first commandment opposes foreign gods, the second opposes self-willed worship of Yahweh.”[59]

Allow me to make a theological point before we go any farther. It is exactly at the transition from the first to the second commandment that “we do not agree with the Roman Catholic and Lutheran opinion, which views this as part of the first commandment.”[60] The sum of the matter, then, is this: “You may serve no other gods; but the Lord in turn wants to be served in no other way than He has commanded. In sum: the first commandment points to the true God, the second to true religion.”[61]

There are a number of biblical texts that are descriptions of or commentaries on the second commandment. They elucidate what the Law of God instructs us regarding how the Church is to worship the Lord God Almighty. We shall now take a few moments and examine a few of those key texts through the eyes of conservative Dutch ethicist, Jochem Douma.

Deuteronomy 4:15ff.

The verses 15-31 of Deuteronomy 4, Douma argues, give us a more extended discourse on the second commandment. Let’s flesh Douma’s thoughts out a little more. In the first place, Deuteronomy 4:15-18 state that “the Israelites were not allowed to make any carved or cast images in the form of animals, birds, or fish…because then the law was proclaimed on Horeb they saw no form of Yahweh.”[62] Moses begins, therefore, by referring to the giving of the Law by God to Moses and the Israelites with these words: “Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord you God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven” (15-19).

The prominent reason given why God’s people were not to make images of people, animals, or the celestial lights is precisely that they saw “no form” on the day the Lord spoke to them. No matter how well-intentioned God’s people might be, they are not to make any image of the Lord. The classic case in point, of course, is the making of the golden calf by Aaron. The nations around Israel had images to worship and look at, why couldn’t the Israelites have them as well? The weak-willed Aaron succumbed to the pressure and fashioned a bull-calf. “The idea of taking a calf—or better, a yearling bull—arose from pagan idolatry.

Baal was worshiped in the form of a bull, a symbol of power.”[63] He knew better than to give it the name of a pagan deity, so in his “good” intentions he named the calf the god that brought Israel “out of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 32:4) and then declared the next day to be “a feast to the Lord” (32:6). Of course, “Ba’al” also means “lord,” so the association was somewhat easy. It is true that by making the bull-calf “The Israelites were not intending to reject the Lord and go serve other gods; but they merely wanted to have Yahweh among them in a particular manner, a manner forbidden by the second commandment.”[64]

What they aimed at, however, and what they actually achieved were two very different things. Man decided that it was okay to make a golden calf, even though God had and has expressly forbidden it. Aiming at worshipping God—through the imaginations of man—the Israelites totally jettisoned true worship and disobeyed the Lord.

1 Kings 12:28

The narrative concerning the outset of the wandering in the desert continued to play a role in the life of the children of God. After the death of Solomon, his son, Rehoboam, who was a real “bonehead,” was the successor to the throne. He found some opposition, however, from the exiled Jeroboam. Rehoboam made a stupid decision regarding the well-being and care of God’s people (1 Kgs. 12:1-15) and the kingdom was divided. Ralph David is correct that “Pig-headedness split a kingdom.”[65] Jeroboam built Shechem and lived there (12:25). He was a shrewd politician and understood the powerful influence of “religion” in the lives of God’s people. There was no separation between Church and State in those days. So he said, “Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah” (12:26-27). What to do? This would be worse than losing the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses!

Jeroboam calls his cabinet together and they hammer out a plan, which includes making two golden calves. The purpose is theological expediency. Just put the idols closer, and then God’s people can sleep in a little longer on the Sabbath before they have to head off to worship. Moreover, give them something they can see and touch! The negative genius of idolatry. When in doubt, establish a bootleg religion, which is precisely what Jeroboam did.[66] No doubt, there were some progressives in the covenant community in those days who praised Jeroboam for being on the cutting edge of things and being able to identify with the surrounding nations and their cultures. The man knew how to contextualize God’s message! Besides, it could be easily argued that he was not advocating a “bastard religion,” but rather a sort of liturgical renewal to get Yahweh worship out of the doldrums. The conservatives had no creativity or foresight, but Jeroboam was on the cutting edge of societal revolution.

Here’s what the word says, “So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, ‘You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt’” (12:28). It is more than uncanny how his words echo those of Aaron. They are, for all intents and purposes, identical—and the sin is identical. In order truly to “easify” worship, he made two calves and placed one in Dan and the other in Bethel. Subtlety of subtlety, Bethel means, in Hebrew, “house of God.” The spiritual psychological ploy worked. Again, the wording of this twelfth chapter of 1 Kings is eerily similar to what the children of Israel did at Mount Horeb.

What appeared to be a “good thing,” really wasn’t—once again—and this episode is precisely why the negative refrain concerning Jeroboam is found in Scripture.[67] Every Israelite knew that Yahweh was invisible. If they had paused and thought about it for a moment they would have had to have concluded that if Yahweh is invisible, what happens when you look at the Dan and Bethel bulls? How do you know that an invisible Yahweh is meant to be there “or whether you’re simply looking at a lot of bull?”[68] In German: How do you know for a fact that Jeroboams bulls were not Bull-Geschichte? Davis argues correctly, I think, that Jeroboam’s biggest fear was orthodoxy (cf. vv. 26-27). “His problem was not that orthodoxy was dull or boring, but that it was unnerving.”[69] In other words, Yahweh’s word was insufficient. Jeroboam needed “more;” something tangible; something to look at. Davis concludes, “If you cannot trust God, you will use religion.”[70]

The book of Kings also provides us with a negative progression. We will discuss that phenomenon in the next section.

1 Kings 16:31

Later in Israel’s history, we are able to observe the progressively deleterious effects of what Jeroboam did. Idolatry tends to move into ever-increasing, progressive sin. Call it the “domino-effect” or the “slippery slope,” the effects are the same and very predictable. The Northern Kingdom of Jeroboam passes on to Ahab who inherits the calf worship at Dan and Bethel and takes it a step farther. Ahab marries Jezebel, who was a real spiritual giant, and together they instituted Baal worship to the ten tribes in the Northern Kingdom. We are also told that in addition to Baal worship, Ahab also built an Asherah pole (16:31-33). Idolatry’s pernicious nature is that more and more deviation seems feasible, plausible, and politically prudent. Douma comments, “We could say that Ahab sank from sinning against the second commandment to sinning against the first.”[71] Ahab continued Jeroboam’s will-worship and even worsened it. Jezebel was a very ambitious and progressive woman and actually wore the robes in the kingdom. [72]Ahab was a pouting despot, but Jezebel knew how to get things accomplished. She gave new meaning to the term “executive order.” The net result is that Ahab’s Baalism is “more deplorable than Jeroboam’s bull worship.”[73] What began as a political maneuver that seemed plausible and feasible with Jeroboam, eventually morphed into something even more sinister and ungodly under Ahab, namely that his regime was typified by open defiance of Yahweh’s word.[74]

In this instance, it is crystal clear how not only the second commandment but also the first was summarily ignored and blatantly disobeyed. I’ve used these two texts from 1 Kings in conjunction with Exodus 32 to point out how “good intentions” end up when the Word of God is ignored and disobeyed. Aaron performed an action that to many was an innocent, insignificant action in fashioning a tangible, visible image that was supposed to represent Yahweh. We are once again reminded that actions do, in fact, have consequences; often consequences that we never dreamed possible. Can you say unintended consequences? This is all the more reason why the Church of Jesus Christ must be very circumspect and cautious when it comes to what we find to be a “good experience” or something that “builds us up.” If it is opposed to the Word of God, that can never be good, no matter what (perceived) experiential or emotion high/benefit we think we derive from it.

Judges 17 &18

The book of Judges also contains some very instructive teaching on the second commandment, according to Douma. In Judges 17 we are told of a man named Micah (not the minor prophet), whose name means, “Who is like Yahweh?” He made a shrine, an ephod, some images (household gods), and ordained one of his sons to become his priest (Judg. 17:5). It’s not for nothing that verse 6 reads, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Moreover, what is noteworthy is that “What Micah began here obtained a central place later in the life of the tribe of Dan.”[75] In other words, what began small eventually grew large; what began as something seemingly insignificant later took on negative significant proportions.

There was even a semblance of orthodoxy or holding on to the old traditions. Douma explains, “This cultic worship of Yahweh obtained a still more prominent character, since priests from among descendants of Moses were hired (Judg. 18:30).”[76] But none of that could stem the tide of heterodoxy. It was approximately one hundred years later that Jeroboam found an open acceptance of his bull-calf worship among the members of the tribe of Dan! Yet, today, few will acknowledge that their views on the second commandment could have the same effects and results. For them, “It is done elsewhere in the P.C.A.” is more than an adequate reason to close the discussion. It seems that all one has to do is to find one or two colleagues who hold to a similar view, especially if the colleague is a “name brand” pastor, and it is end of discussion. That assertion, however, is as ludicrous as a secularist stating that the debate about global warming or climate change is over because there is a consensus. In point of fact, there is not a consensus among scientists about climate change.

Let’s take a moment to unpack the whole sordid episode so we can see more clearly exactly what is going on. Ralph Davis entitles Judges 17-21 “The Confusion of a Depraved People.”[77] In addition, he further describes Judges 17-18 as “Divine Sarcasm.”[78] Davis is convinced that by the time we arrived at chapter 17 that the author has given up on introducing new themes of depravity to us. Now his task is somewhat easier, for “There is no refrain of Israel’s apostasy, no announcing of a new oppression, no central judge-figure. The writer changes his style in order to portray the confusion of a depraved people. He will do this by displaying both Israel’s confusion and her depravity.”[79] In other words, Israel has hit rock bottom spiritually and her fall has been painful and the landing very hard.

The chapters are tough slugging because the author is exclusively descriptive in what he writes. We keep waiting for him to drop the hammer and make a negative pronouncement, but he does not. These chapters are a bit like the ethical issue of suicide. There are suicides recorded in Scripture, but there is never a negative assessment made about them. We know suicide is wrong and we want the Holy Spirit to say so. That would save us a lot of time and effort, but the Holy Spirit is not interested in saving us a lot of time and effort. In fact, many times he desires that we spend more time in the Word and exert ourselves to find biblical answers to difficult situations. Nevertheless, we cannot help but want to read a sentence somewhere in these two chapters that says, “Now what Micah and the Danites did displeased the Lord greatly!” It does not happen.

There are, however, some spiritual nuggets to be mined from this narrative if we have the patience and take the time. First, for those who do not rush through this historical narrative, wanting to get to the gospels, there is a contrast to be found “between Micah’s ‘house of gods’ (17:5, literal trans.) and ‘the house of God’ at Shiloh (18:31).”[80] This is a contrast between manmade will-worship of the Lord and legitimate, God-ordained worship. That is a very important point. As Davis explains it, “There is the true house of God at Shiloh and then there is Micah’s collection of cultic Tinkertoys.”[81]

I mentioned earlier that Micah’s name means “Who is like Yahweh?” Micah is not true to his name, however, because he has managed “to reduce Yahweh’s incomparability to a few mundane pieces of hardware (17:4-5).”[82] The Levite is a real piece of work too. He signs on with Micah, but then when more money is on the table, he abandons his post and prostitutes himself to the highest bidder. Davis’ words sound like a number of modern pastors. He writes, “Evidently, the Danites offered a greater potential for ministry, a field of labor where his gifts could be maximized.”[83] The Danites made him an offer he could not refuse. Besides, it sounded like a good gig. In the entire narrative it is difficult to decide who is worse: Micah or the Danites. Micah stole from his mother and Dan stole from Micah. Just as a sidebar, Micah’s mother was a real princess as well. As soon as she gets her portfolio back from her thieving son, she cashes in part of it and has idols made.

Davis is fully convinced that the theological broadside builds up into quite a mess in 18:27, but Micah’s comment in 18:24 demonstrates just how bad things really are. (“You take my gods that I made and the priest, and go away, and what have I left? How then do you ask me, ‘What is the matter with you?’”) That is a laughable statement. “Any faithful Yahweh-worshiper would find Micah’s cry both tragic and ludicrous. A god who can be made is surely a contradiction in terms; and a god who cannot avoid being pilfered must be a non-god indeed (cf. 6:31)! Thus the narrator artlessly permits Micah himself to emphasize the insanity of the whole affair.”[84]

By now you might be getting antsy wondering what the “take away” is from this narrative. It is safe to say that the general theme should be apparent: false religion. I would hasten to add that since Shiloh is also mentioned in these two chapters that we can justifiably state that the general theme is false religion contrasted with true religion. There is an interesting and fascinating point made in 17:3-4. In both verses we find a combination of words: פֶּ֣סֶל; pesel; and מַסֵּכָה; massēkah. If we search for these two words together in other parts of Scripture, we are reminded of Deuteronomy 27:15 (“Cursed be the man who makes a carved or cast metal image, an abomination to the Lord, a thing made by the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in secret.”) Davis cites Paulus Cassel’s commentary on Judges approvingly when he declares, “These words [pesel, massekah] at the same time pronounce judgment against the sin that had been committed, for they are the technical expressions under which the law forbids the making of every kind of image-work for idolatrous purposes. The narrator has his eyes doubtless on Deut. xxvii.15.”[85] The context of Deuteronomy 27:15 is this: It “stands first in a series of twelve curses and pronounces ‘cursed the man who makes a pesel or massēkah—an abomination to Yahweh.”[86] The magnitude of Micah’s sin is that he is “living proof that it is possible to be set on a course of religious faith and/or ministry which exudes success in every respect and yet to rest under the curse of God’s judgment.”[87]

Of course, as we hear often in our time, people can say that they have no intention of making a pesel or to bow down and worship a Sunday School picture of the Lord Jesus. Clearly, they argue, this whole sordid narrative about Micah and the Danites has no relevance for them whatsoever. They have no intention of engaging in false religion. In fact, none of us do, do we? Our motives are good, pure; we simply want to be helpful, especially to the little covenant children who have all kinds of questions about Jesus. But are we absolutely certain that our motives are as pure as the wild-driven snow? David reminds that what is condemned in Judges 17-18 “is not idolatry in the raw but syncretism in particular, not the worship of other gods but the worship of Yahweh in a wrong way.”[88] Scripture is clear: no images, but we argue back, “What if they are for good and noble purposes?” “What if they are helpful?” When we ask that, we sound like Roman Catholics. If God says No, why is that not sufficient?

False religion has a close relative: subjectivism. It works for me or it works for others. Keep in mind that the sanctuary of the Danites stood as a stark contrast to the legitimate house of God at Shiloh. Why did it not cross the minds of the priests at Shiloh to copy the Danites? The short answer is that in Shiloh the word on the street was that the Danites had a little “convenience-store shrine nearby—where they can control it. “They can worship as they please.”[89] Davis hastens to add this relevant insight: “Does this not parallel the contemporary mood…that worship is actually a very individual affair, a matter of sheer personal preference and—like your toothbrush—a very personal thing?”[90] The Danites were content to stress that God was not nearly as picky as the covenant folks who worshiped in Shiloh. Davis adds, “Such folks [the Danites—RG] really believe that the most appropriate symbol for what we believe and how we worship should be a big blob of fat—which every one can flop, squeeze, and shape the way he or she wants it. And that too is stupid.”[91]

Conclusions about Micah

Regarding the spiritually infectious character sin, the verses 30-31 of Judges 18 read as follows: “And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. So they set up Micah’s carved image that he made, as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.” Apparently, some believe that all you need is the imprimatur of a relative of a famous person and you have free rein to do whatever you want. You can even claim that the famous person either did it—which Moses did not—or approves of it now and you are good to go.

My point here is that disobedience is often not merely an individual matter, but reaches its tentacles out to others and in the case of idols causes others to be deceived by its seeming plausibility and feasibility. People will do weird things in the face of idolatry, and swear up and down to you that what they’re doing is actually helping them.

They will travel to worship the idol (1 Kgs. 12:30). When there is no faithfulness, love, or knowledge of God in the land (Hos. 4:1, 6) the notion of God’s people perishing also involves joining themselves to idols (Hos. 4:17). They will even go so far at times as to kiss the graven image (Hos. 13:2). Next, let’s take a look at what the Heidelberg Catechism and Westminster Standards have to say about this subject.

A Look at Confessional Statements

For many in the modern Church what I’m about to do will seem superfluous. Some pastors have taught from their pulpits that doctrine is straight from the pit of hell and Christians are to avoid it like the plague. I contend, however, that one of the reasons the modern Christian is so blatantly and patently ignorant of the fundamentals of the Christian faith is due, first, because of his lack of reading and studying of the Bible, and, second, because he doesn’t have a clue when it comes to having an overview and summary of Christian doctrine.

I contend that doctrine is good—very good—and must be learned and applied practically (cf. 1 Tim. 1:10; 6:3; 2 Tim. 1:13; 4:3; Titus 1:9; 2:1; Phil. 4:9). What modern Christians need—desperately!—is more biblical doctrine and not less. The modern Christian is already, by and large, dismally ignorant of the essentials of the faith and for pastors to tell their congregations not to give themselves to the learning and studying of doctrinal truth found in Scripture is, to my way of thinking, unconscionable.

In order to keep this section short, I’m going to choose just two confessional statements, which act as nothing more than an accurate summary of what the Bible teaches. I in no way intend to elevate them to the status of being on an equal par with Scripture, but they can be very reliable guides. Having issued that caveat, we’ll examine the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Larger Catechism in order.

The Heidelberg Catechism (Lord’s Day 35, Q/A 96-98) reads as follows:

Q. What does God require in the Second Commandment? A. We are not to make an image of God in any way, nor to worship him in any other manner than he has commanded in his Word (Deut. 4:15-19; Isa. 40:18-25; Acts 17:29; Rom. 1:23; Lev. 10:1-7; Deut. 12:30; 1 Sam. 15:22-23; Matt. 15:9; John 4:23-24).

Q. May we then not make any image at all? A. God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Creatures may be portrayed, but God forbids us to make or have any images of them in order to worship them or to serve God through them (Ex. 34:13-14, 17; Num. 33:52; 2 Kgs. 18:4-5; Isa. 40:25).

Q. But may images not be tolerated in the churches as “books for the laity?” A. No, for we should not be wiser than God. He wants his people to be taught not by means of dumb images but by the living preaching of his Word (Jer. 10:8; Hab. 2:18-20; Rom. 10:14-15, 17; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Pet. 1:19).

The Westminster Larger Catechism has this to say in Q/A 108-110:

Q. What are the duties required in the Second Commandment? A. The duties required in the Second Commandment are, the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God has instituted in his Word; particularly prayer and thanksgiving in the name of Christ; the reading, preaching, and hearing of the Word; the administration and receiving of the sacraments; church government and discipline; the ministry and maintenance thereof; religious fasting; swearing by the name of God, and vowing unto him; as also the disapproving, detesting, opposing, all false worship; and, according to each one’s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry (Deut. 32:46;-47; Matt. 28:20; Acts 2:42; 1 Tim. 6:13-14; Phil. 4:6; Eph. 5:20; Deut. 17:18-19; 2 Tim. 4:2).

Q. What are the sins forbidden in the Second Commandment? A. The sins forbidden in the Second Commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and in any way approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God has appointed (Num. 15:39; Deut. 13:6-8; Hos. 5:11; Micah 6:16; 1 Kgs. 11:33; Deut. 12:30-32; Dan. 3:18; Gal. 4:8).

Q. What are the reasons annexed to the Second Commandment? A. The reasons annexed to the Second Commandment, the more to enforce it, contained in these words, For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Besides God’s sovereignty over us, and propriety in us, his fervent zeal for his own worship, and his revengeful indignation against all false worship, as being a spiritual whoredom; accounting the breakers of this commandment such as hate him, and threatening to punish them unto diverse generations; and esteeming the observers of it such as love him and keep his commandments, and promising mercy to them unto many generations (Ps. 45:11; Rev. 15:3-4; Ex. 34:13-14; 1 Cor. 10:20-22; Jer. 7:18-20; Ezek. 16:26-27; Deut. 32:16-20; 5:29; Hos. 2:2-4).

These two confessional statements give us a “handle” on what the Ten Commandments teach, not merely with regard to the letter of the Law, but also what its spiritual interpretation entails. It is noteworthy that when the modern Church convenes to discuss a major film about the life of Jesus, no one mentions the relevance or applicability of the Ten Commandments, especially of the second commandment.

Even a cursory glance at the confessional statements above, however, lends credence to the fact that irrespective of what side of the fence you come down on, there must be a thorough discussion of this commandment before the rush out to the box office and purchase our tickets and then tell everyone how much the film meant to them or what a moving experience it was to view the passion of Christ—at least the passion according to Mel Gibson. I have no doubts that the upcoming movie Son of God will be no different.

But Does All This Apply to the New Testament Church?

It is a legitimate question to ask whether the second commandment still applies to us today. This question is all the more pressing in light of the fact that there are those today who preach and teach that the Old Testament is “out of gear” as far as the New Testament Church is concerned. Mainline evangelicals and hardcore dispensationalists preach and teach the discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. They argue—incorrectly, I believe—that the Old Testament was a time of Law and the New Testament is a time of grace. I will go a step farther and say that it is not only incorrect, but also ludicrous. The disparagement of the Old Testament in general and the Ten Commandments in particular in our time is one of the primary reasons modern Christians are so ethically inept.

David Wells has appropriately pointed out that the views on the relationship between the Older and Newer Covenant that used to be termed the “older liberal Protestantism” are now echoed in much of modern evangelicalism. He explains, “And nothing could be more absurd than the older liberal Protestant insistence that the God of the Old Testament was the God of law and judgment while that of the New Testament is the God of love and grace.”[92] Jerram Barrs makes the same point, albeit more elaborately when he declares,

In dispensational circles law is necessarily played down because of a strong discontinuity between the old and new covenants in dispensational teaching. Traditionally, dispensationalists have seen the law of Moses as having been given to Israel as the means by which the people were to establish and maintain a relationship with God. It is only with the death and resurrection of Christ that salvation by grace through faith in Christ is revealed. Dispensationalists also see God dealing with the church and the people of Israel in two radically different ways, for Israel and the church are understood to be two separate peoples of God. Many Christians in the United States have been exposed to dispensationalist teaching through the very popular writings on the end times by people like Hal Lindsay, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, or the Left Behind series, produced by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Christians often do not realize that the prophetic views of such men are bound up with other teachings about Scripture, about the law, and about Israel—teachings that contain serious errors.[93]

Without realizing it perhaps, modern evangelicalism is overwhelmingly dispensational in its theology. On the other hand, there are some pastors in P.C.A. circles, who, by their theology and theological exceptions to the Westminster Standards end up being quasi-dispensationalists. Still others are antinomians with regard to the Westminster Standards as well as to the Directory for Public Worship. Mark Jones rightly calls antinomianism “Reformed Theology’s Unwelcome Guest.”

Therefore, rather than viewing the Old Testament as a time of promise and the New Testament the time of fulfillment, these outright or covert dispensationalists opt for a rather thorough discontinuity between the testaments rather than continuity. God prohibited the Old Testament people from making images, but are we not more enlightened today as New Testament Christians? That was then; this is now. After all, so the argument runs, Jesus took on a true humanity and people in his day saw him and touched him. They knew what he looked like. If we had had cameras, people could have taken pictures. Yes, if we had had them we could have, but we did not, did we? Few pause to reflect adequately on why the Lord God Almighty in his infinite wisdom chose not to have cameras during the Lord Jesus’ earthly ministry. Now no one knows and we are left not to know. It is that simple. Live with it.

Moreover, even though God spoke through the “humiliation of the Word” in the Old Testament, we also know that there were times when he appeared to Old Testament saints. For instance, he appeared to Moses in the burning bush (Ex. 3:2-4). He also appeared as the “Messenger of the Covenant” (Mal. 3:1), and as the “Angel of the Lord” in numerous texts (Gen. 16:7, 9, 10-11; 18:1-21; 22:11; Judg. 2:1; 13:3, 13, 15-18). What are we to make of those events? Do we, like the Israelites, have to contend with no images of God whatsoever or does the New Testament Church have some spiritual “wiggle room?” It is patently true that our Lord “knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14). That being the case, it does not mean, however, that God puts his sovereignty on the shelf so that I can have a “good experience.” It will be beneficial for us to take a look at some of these instances and ask what God was doing in them.

What about the Old Testament Theophanies & the Advent of Christ?

We raised an interesting point in the previous section that we need to address here. The “theophanies” (appearances of God in human or angelic form in the Old Testament) as well as the various dreams and visions were part of God’s sovereignty as he dealt with his people in the unfolding of the history of redemption. This translates into the fact that “God reserves for Himself alone the right to express and produce the images of Himself before which men must worship, through which men must conceive Him, to which men must respond in obedience to His own initiative in seeking fellowship with them.”[94] It is crucial and essential that we take due note of the fact that it is God who decides when and how he will appear in a particular theophany. We also need to note that such theophanies were not commonplace, but occurred only at very special times.

Our problem in the twenty-first century is that even as Christians we tend to make God in our own image. I encounter that often in modern Christianity when people say something like this to me: “My God is only a God of love.” The short answer to such a statement is, “Then your God is an idol, for he is not the God of Scripture.” God is the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. In giving us his Word—apart from any images—he has graciously given us something real and genuine to replace the unreality of all our own religious images, fabrications, and creations. The Word—apart from any images—is God’s real presence in the midst of his people.[95] That was—and remains until today—the greatest dilemma of God’s covenant people. It is something that some struggle with even today. Again, modern evangelicals view what transpires in the Lord’s Supper as a mere memorial event. As Presbyterian and Reformed, however, we believe the real presence of Christ in the Holy Meal through the agency of the Holy Spirit, who takes everything from the risen and ascended Lord and imparts that unto our hungry and thirsty souls unto eternal life. There is nothing visible of the real presence of Christ; there is only the agency of the Holy Spirit. We want something visible, something tangible but the Lord tells us that his Word is sufficient.

A large part of our discussion here concerns the movies, The Passion and the upcoming Son of God, so we need to proceed farther and ask about images of Christ. Is it lawful to depict Jesus in cinematography? After all, that’s what Mel Gibson and the endorsers of the film did, much the same way the producers of The Jesus Film did.[96] Is it legitimate to portray Jesus’ Advent in a movie?

Does the New Testament not tell us that Jesus Christ is the “image of the invisible God” (cf. Col. 1:15)? In addition, Hebrews 1:3 reminds us that Christ is the exact imprint of God’s nature. When we combine this with the well-known verse in John’s gospel that states that the Word became flesh (John 1:14) and Jesus’ own words declaring that he who has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9), do we not have some kind of license to portray Jesus since he was a man? By way of reminder, David Wells makes a solid and cogent case against such things in his distinction between the crucifixion and the cross.[97] Recall that Wells argued against dramatic presentations of Christ’s life and death, such as on TV and in movies, because, he asserted they “so often miss the point. They give us the crucifixion, not the cross…. It leaves us with only a biographical Christ, who may be interesting, but not with the eternal Christ whom we need for our salvation.”[98]

The age-old problem of a painting of Christ is that we really don’t know what he looked like. Even if we did, how would the artist capture the godhead of Jesus in a painting? What would a portrait of grace, covenant, and forgiveness look like? With all due respect, a painted halo just does not hack it. It is insufficient, especially in light of the fact that halos are often painted over the heads of, say, Paul and Peter. When the time had fully come (Gal. 4:4) Scripture teaches us, God sent forth his Son. In that time, there were no cameras—digital or otherwise—and no portrait of Jesus has survived—I believe for very good reasons. I truly believe if such a painting were in our possession we would become even worse idolaters than we already are—if that’s possible.

Do you remember the narrative of the bronze serpent in Numbers 21? The people complained against Moses and the Lord sent fiery serpents among his people that bit them and many died. God commanded him to make a fiery serpent—bronze—and set it on a pole. Everyone who was bitten and saw the bronze serpent would live (Num. 21:4-9). This text shows us a couple of things. First, images, per se, were not forbidden in Israel, only images of God. We know, for example, that all kinds of images were used in the Tent of Meeting and in The Temple. In fact, it can be reasonably argued that the images were ornate and skillfully done—the work of artisans and craftsmen.

Second, when God commanded something to be done, it could be done with full assurance. Whatever image was employed aesthetically or ceremonially was certainly never to be worshiped and no image of Yahweh was ever allowed. The worship of God is not to be totally bereft of any image whatsoever, only images of the Lord God Almighty. That bronze serpent from Numbers 21 was kept by the Israelites as a reminder of God’s gracious dealings with his people. In fact, it was still around during the time of Hezekiah, who was one of the few good kings. In 2 Kings 18:4, we are told this: “He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).” Something good devolved into an idol and as “sacred” as that bronze serpent was and given the role it had played in God’s redemptive history with his people, Hezekiah—rightly—had no compunction about destroying it.

Secretly, we probably wish a crew—a Christian one, of course—had been in Palestine during the time of Jesus and had taken pictures and made a good film of his life. “But God has made ample provision for the image which He has given of Himself in Jesus Christ to be preserved and represented to men of every age.”[99] What Ronald Wallace is saying in the previous quotation makes my point that what was said in the Old Testament regarding making images of Yahweh, also applies to the New Testament and Christ. The statement above (“God reserves for Himself alone the right to express and produce the images of Himself before which men must worship, through which men must conceive Him, to which men must respond in obedience to His own initiative in seeking fellowship with them.”)[100] and the one just made (“But God has made ample provision for the image which He has given of Himself in Jesus Christ to be preserved and represented to men of every age.”) are of a piece.

God tells us what is acceptable worship of him and in his love for his people he has made ample provision for the image he has given us in Christ. This obviously begs the question: Which image has he given to us? The answer is: An analogous image to what we find in the Old Testament. There, Yahweh gave his Word, Circumcision, and Passover. In the New Testament, he gives his Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. The continuity between the Old and New Testaments, which has been the mainstay of Presbyterian and Reformed theologians down through the centuries, retains the prohibition to making images and representations of the Lord. The Ten Commandments are still in effect for the believer.

In the Westminster Confession of Faith (19.2—Of the Law of God), we read the following concerning the Decalogue: “This, law, after his (Adam—RG) fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness; and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in Ten Commandments, and written in two tables: the four first commandments containing our duty towards God; and the other six, our duty to man.” Thereafter (19.6) the Westminster divines append a section that is too long to quote in its entirety, but is worthy of an excerpt. It reads this way: “Although true believers are not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned; yet it is of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly…” Nevertheless—and here is the difficult concept for modern Christians to grasp—God gives his reality to us in his sovereignty and we can do no better than to consult the Ten Commandments daily.

Remember the point I made previously: In Presbyterian and Reformed circles we speak of the real presence of Christ in the Word and sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We do this, in part, over against the evangelical community that is satisfied to speak only of a memorial meal. What we mean is even though Christ is not physically present in the Word and sacraments, he is really present. His real presence is a spiritual reality, with the emphasis on reality. Our dilemma, then, becomes one of what we perceive that we want or feel that is good or right for us and what God, in his sovereignty, chooses to give us. Would we be wiser than God? Are we so foolish that we acknowledge God’s infinite wisdom in all things and yet still seek after what he has denied his people throughout redemptive history? Do we not realize that if God gives us such a command not to make any images of him that he does that for a very good, divine reason; for our spiritual good?

Here, precisely here, is where we need to readjust our spiritual thinking. We are, as modern Christians, so accustomed to the visual that we rarely, if ever, stop to think about how or if our almost insatiable desire for visual stimulation violates God’s second commandment. Moreover, we fail at the point of being thoroughly satisfied with the images God has given us that qualify as bona fide worship. We constantly, obsessively, check our cell phones, watch clips on YouTube, spend hours watching TV, and attend movies so much so that it is next to impossible to get images out of our daily routine of life. To parody Neil Postman’s words, we entertain ourselves to death and much of that entertainment involves images.

That being true, consider Ronald Wallace’s claim that we do already possess “the image of God in the Church today, not in pictures or carvings or photographic reproductions, but in the Bible account of historical witnesses, in the preaching that repeats and sets forth their witness, and in the Sacraments.”[101] I am willing to wager that this sounds totally foreign to a number of modern Christians, raised on a steady diet of “drama,” “slice of life” Christian entertainment, “liturgical dance,” and the “visual package” that often passes for worship in the modern Church. In worship, we are not trying either to please or entertain man. Again, to cite David Wells, “Worship is not primarily a time for our enjoyment, though being in worship is enjoyable. But worship is primarily an expression of the worth of God. It is a God-centered thing. It is primarily for God and about God.”[102] We worship to bring glory to God and for sinners to have a meeting with the living, loving, and true Lord of all of life. What ultimately—ultimately—matters in our corporate worship is not the numbers of people we can attract through our use of whatever form of imagery, drama, or slick packaging, but simply the presence of God in the midst of the worship service as God and his covenant people meet and they rejoice to love and worship him. That was what mattered in the Old Testament; that was what mattered in the New Testament; that was what mattered in the Early Church; and that remains what matters in the modern Church.

Acts 17:29

Another instructive text for our purposes is found in the New Testament book of Acts. As the Apostle Paul wandered through Athens, the number of images and idols both struck and impressed him. The Athenians were trying to hedge their bets I suppose. Acts 17:29 reads as follows: “Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” In essence, Paul was telling the Athenians and continues to speak to us about the validity and applicability of the second commandment in this text. Behind his argumentation is the realization that God did not and does not want people to make representations of him.[103]

So why was Paul so exercised about the images and idols he saw? In addition, how does that apply to us, since we know that images and idols are “bad” things? In order to answer those questions, we need to ask the important question about the very nature of an image. In reality, we no longer deal with images in public, unless we observe a Buddha in a restaurant or in particular parts of larger cities. Even that is an exception and not the rule. Obviously, images of gold, silver, wood, or whatever other element are not really gods. In people’s minds, however, according to the history of idolatry, the specific deity is, indeed, present in the image. “The image represents the deity.” [104] Even pagans are somewhat aware of a “heaven” where their gods abide (Acts 14:11).[105] The image is, then, man’s attempt to bring the transcendent God closer to man. So here’s the caveat: the making of an image did not have so much to do with making a portrait, but with having power over the deity’s sovereignty.[106]

In the final analysis, in antiquity an image regulated the communion between the gods and mankind. In that sense, for the pagans having such images and possessing that kind of power over against the gods was—to the pagan mind—indispensable for the worship and comprehension of the deity. Thus “images were never intended to portray a photographic likeness, but only to control Yahweh’s power.”[107] That begs the question: Why did Yahweh prohibit images of his being? The foregoing points us to many of the obvious reasons, but Douma adds a few more that are worthy of our consideration. In a day and age when many modern Christians are bereft of the knowledge of the revealed nature of God we need to reflect on Douma’s well-reasoned arguments. He provides us with three. Let’s look at them in turn.

First, he argues, whoever attempts to make an image or likeness of God denies his freedom.[108] This approach is tantamount to man’s effort to eradicate the Creator/creature distinction. In Douma’s words, “An image attempts to make the Incomprehensible comprehensible.”[109] It is also an attempt to make the Incomprehensible God comprehensible to man—on man’s terms. Man makes God in man’s image and suddenly God takes on man’s attributes, likes, dislikes, and propensities. The Creator ends up acting, thinking, and speaking very much like the one who fashioned the image—whether the image is actually in physical form or in man’s imagination. Whether it is done consciously or unconsciously, making an image or even putting a “picture of Jesus” into Sunday School material for young children is not only doing what God has forbidden, but it can also be an improper assessment of God’s sovereignty. Douma reminds us that “Yahweh controls man and will not allow Himself to be controlled.”[110]

I have had a number of conversations with modern Christians who essentially deny God’s sovereignty. When I ask them to tell me what they think God is like, nine times out of ten, their description is pretty much of themselves. They have fabricated God in their image. Rather than allowing Scripture to form and inform what they believe concerning the nature of God, they have imagined a god like themselves, which, ultimately, since he is not the God of Scripture, is no god; he’s an idol—for the spiritual destruction of the idol maker. The scriptures are clear that it is God—in his divine freedom—that has sovereignly chosen his people (Deut. 7:7-10; Amos 9:7). The very serious nature of disobeying God at this point is vividly driven home to us in texts such as Deuteronomy 9:12-14  and Exodus 32:8-10, where the Lord threatens to disown (or destroy) his people precisely because of their disobedience of this commandment.

It certainly would do the modern, twenty-first century Church no harm to reflect very seriously upon this admonition. What is at risk when we choose to be wiser than God or to be wise in our own eyes? I understand the doctrine of the perseverance of God with his saints, but we are told in both of the above texts that it was only the intercessory prayer of Moses that spared the people from destruction. In the New Testament, the Lord and Savior of the Church not only gathers, defends, and protects his Church, but he also lives to intercede for her (Heb. 7:25). Douma correctly affirms that nothing is comparable to God—not even a contrived artist sketch of the Lord Jesus in youth Sunday School material.[111]

The second reason Douma offers next to God’s freedom is his majesty.[112] Another way of saying this is God’s sovereignty or transcendence. When the Lord thundered from Sinai, the Israelites saw no form but heard the terrifying voice (Deut. 4:11). In that same fourth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy Moses gives a summary of what happens to people who abandon following God’s plan and strike out on their own to fashion/imagine gods after man’s image, which is simply disobedience. In the verses 27-28 we read, “And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.” Can you say “worthless?”

In Psalm 115:4-8 gives us an excellent summary of Moses’ words in Deuteronomy: “Their (the nations) idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.” Our idols—physical or imagined—can easily cause us to become “worthless.”

What we often lose track of in our time is that “God is so majestic that He cannot be brought within man’s reach.”[113] We justify making “innocent” images that are supposed to be helpful to and for our covenant children. Would it not be far more fruitful and productive to spend time catechizing our youth rather than providing images for them when they are young? Do we not realize that a time will come when our children become more conversant with Scripture that they, too, will question the propriety of images? Will they not then ask us why we provided them when the Bible forbids images to adults as well as children? Ethically, our position is untenable. What I mean is this: If God prohibits images for adults, does he ever, anywhere give a special dispensation for children? Is there a text anywhere in Scripture that says words to this effect, “Images are taboo for adults, but for the covenant children Christians should give them a pass”?

Lastly, Douma cites the truth that whoever makes an image of God denies his covenant.[114] We may not make an image of Christ because of his freedom; we cannot make an image of God because of his exalted nature; we need not make an image of him because of his covenant.[115] While the notion of God’s covenant with man might totally escape the lion’s share of modern evangelicals, his argument ought not to be wasted on Presbyterian and Reformed Christians. The covenant is the key to understanding God’s redemptive-historical dealings with his people. Therefore, those in the Reformed camp should pay special attention to his third reason.

Just to get the ball rolling, let’s begin with a question: What does Douma mean when he states that whoever makes an image of God denies his covenant of grace? His answer goes like this: We need not make images on account of God’s covenant with his people. Or, “The bond between Yahweh and His people does not need to be established (via images), for it has already been established.”[116] God’s covenant with his people was not a mere tit-for-tat arrangement, but breathes the essence of intimate fellowship. God’s freedom and exalted nature do not present us with a Lord who lives behind the “blue curtain” that we call the sky or who is so transcendent that we may never have any fellowship/relationship with him. In his freedom and exalted nature, he comes to us in the faithful and trustworthy arrangement of the covenant. God has entered into a covenant relationship with his people, which means that he is faithful and trustworthy in all that he says and does.[117]

In other words, the Lord’s covenant people do “not have to look far to know what He is doing.” (cf. Deut. 30:12-14; Rom. 10:6-9.)[118] Douma’s wording can be translated into: the Word of God is all-sufficient because God is all-sufficient. How then are God’s people to know him? The simple, straightforward answer is as follows: “Yahweh is not tangible to Israel, as the idols of the pagans are to their devotees; but on the other hand, there is no god as close to his people as Yahweh is to Israel. They did not see a form, but they did hear His voice. He made His covenant known, and people could know that His commandments—obediently received—would bring prosperity to Israel (Deut. 4:12-14; 5:29; 6:24).”[119] The essence of our response to the covenant of grace is not to fashion portraits and pictures of what we might think the Incomprehensible God looks like, but rather to love him in return by keeping his commandments. To the twenty-first century modern Christian this might sound bland and mundane, but this is precisely what God wants from us. Therefore, it is “not only His majesty, but also his intimacy with Israel that makes the manufacture of images such a reproach.”[120]

Before we proceed, I want us to take one more look at the second commandment. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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 or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” We often stumble over the wording about God being a jealous God. As often as not, we put this attribute into human categories. In truth, divine jealousy should be viewed against the backdrop of his holiness.

David Wells reminds us that “holiness” is “the umbrella term that covers an array of God’s moral perfections.”[121] Interestingly, Scripture does not make reference to God “as the Merciful One of Israel, the Just One of Israel, or the Patient One of Israel, true as all of these are.”[122] Wells’ thesis is that every other perfection/attribute of God is included in his holiness. In other words, holiness “is a fundamental statement of who God is and what he is like. Holiness in God is everything that sets him apart from the sinful creation, and it is everything that elevates him above it in moral splendor.”[123] God’s people, therefore, “who have been called by God’s grace have been separated…and they must be separated to him.”[124] What Isaiah witnessed in his calling (Isa. 6) “bespoke an authority unmatched and a sovereignty unchallenged.”[125] I am convinced that once God’s people begin to grasp something of God’s holiness that we will be enabled to comprehend God’s moral perfections better. It is God’s holiness, therefore, that guides and further defines his jealousy.

Almost all of the reliable translations retain the word “jealous” (קַנָּ֔א; qanna’). How is this further defined? The definition reverts to what we have already observed: obedience. In Douma’s words, “Yahweh is…el qanna’ for those who keep his commandments. He is zealous toward both sides, when He punishes as well as when He shows favor. In both cases He vindicates Himself as God of the covenant.”[126] Whereas we tend to conceive of jealousy almost exclusively negatively, the second commandment does not. God is jealous “when people are faithful to Him. In their case He will vindicate Himself by showing His favor to the most extended generation imaginable.”[127] Conversely, “Self-willed religion arouses the spirit of jealousy in Yahweh, much as jealousy is aroused in the husband who sees that his wife loves another man (Num. 5:14).”[128] Making images—any image—is a slap in the face to God. Why? Simply because, “The love that Yahweh bestows is despised. Instead of receiving life as a covenantal gift, people seek by means of serving images to secure life for themselves.”[129]

We misunderstand Douma if we fail to apply this intriguing statement to the film, The Passion or the upcoming movie Son of God. In fact, his statements apply to both of those films along with any other film, TV documentary, or piece of Sunday School material where images of God the Father, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit are present. Christians would never say that watching such a movie would be a desire to become master of their own life, but if we violate what God has explicitly prohibited and seek our benefit through experience or what we believe builds us up, then we are seeking to be masters of our own life. Have we not, can we not understand the extent of the passion of our Savior via the “humiliation of the Word?” If not, what is so insufficient in the Word of God that we must desire visual images? One final comment: In this life, we remain, in Luther’s words, both justified and sinners (simul iustus et peccator). This means, among other things, that we can deceive ourselves and be deceived by our sinful nature. I certainly do not have a firm grasp on my motives. Self-deception is a force to be reckoned with, especially when it comes to God’s commands. I will deal with this notion more fully in the next section.

John Calvin, the “Institutes,” & Galatians

John Calvin begins his Institutes of the Christian Religion with these words: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”[130] In Book II, Calvin explains the fall of man into sin, the Ten Commandments, and the similarity and differences between the Old and New Testaments. One of his statements that discloses his principles of biblical interpretation is, “whatever has been declared in Scripture is fitting to take as perpetual, even as necessary.”[131] Moreover, God’s law “shows God’s righteousness, that is, the righteousness alone acceptable to God…”[132]

When Calvin describes how the Law of God works in the lives of believers he says, “The third and principal use, which pertains more closely to the proper purpose of the law, finds its place among believers in whose hearts the Spirit of God already lives and reigns.”[133] Calvin proceeds to posit a twofold advantage for Christians in God’s Law. First, “Here is the best instrument for them to learn more thoroughly each day the nature of the Lord’s will to which they aspire, and to confirm them in the understanding of it.”[134] Second, “because we need not only teaching but also exhortation, the servant of God will also avail himself of this benefit of the law: by frequent meditation upon it to be aroused to obedience, be strengthened in it, and be drawn back from the slippery path of transgression.”[135]

Again, Calvin’s words might very well sound odd to the ears of the modern Christian who has been told that the Law of God no longer applies to Christians. Calvin objects, “But if no one can deny that a perfect pattern of righteousness stands forth in the law, either we need no rule to live rightly and justly, or it is forbidden to depart from the law. There are not many rules, but one everlasting and unchangeable rule to live by. For this reason we are not to refer solely to one age; David’s statement that the life of a righteous man is a continual meditation upon the law [Ps. 1:2], for it is just as applicable to every age, even to the end of the world.”[136]

Is there no difference in the working of the Law for New Testament Christians? Calvin says that there is and here is the difference: “…the law has power to exhort believers. This is not a power to bind their consciences with a curse, but one to shake off their sluggishness, by repeatedly urging them, and to pinch them awake to their imperfection.”[137] This is where a number of modern Christians “derail.” They fail to understand that precisely because of being “in Christ,” the Christian is no longer under a curse. Christ became a curse for us, in our place (Gal. 3:13). Christ’s atonement for us on the cross does not mean, however, that the Law of God has no place in our lives.

When it comes to an exposition of the Ten Commandments, Calvin asserts, “that the public worship that God once prescribed is still in force.”[138] Speaking of the indispensable character of the Law of God Calvin makes two very insightful comments. First, he reminds us, “that we have no right to follow the mind’s caprice wherever it impels us, but, dependent upon his will, ought to stand firm in that alone which is pleasing to him…”[139]

Second, Calvin points us back to the Creator/creature distinction when he says, “For if only when we prefer his will to our own do we render to him the reverence that is his due, it follows that the only lawful worship of him is the observance of righteousness, holiness, and purity.”[140] Calvin obviously has in mind what we would call today “the public worship of God,” but it would be completely fallacious to assume that he is not including our individual daily worship of him as well. Moreover, “the Lord, in giving the rule of perfect righteousness, has referred all its parts to his will, thereby showing that nothing is more acceptable to him than obedience.”[141]

In light of the Mel Gibson film as well as the upcoming film ostensibly about Christ—I don’t think Calvin saw many Mel Gibson movies—here is a pertinent, prudent comment: “The more inclined the playfulness of the human mind is to dream up various rites with which to deserve well of him, the more diligently ought we to mark this fact. In all ages this irreligious affectation of religion, because it is rooted in man’s nature, has manifested itself and still manifests itself…”[142] This being true, how do some of the endorsements from “name-brand” theologians stand up under scrutiny? A man of the stature of Billy Graham said concerning Gibson’s movie, “Every time I preach or speak about the Cross, the things I saw on the screen will be on my heart and mind.” Greg Laurie weighed in with these words, “I believe The Passion of The Christ may well be one of the most powerful evangelistic tools of the last 100 years, because you have never seen the story of Jesus portrayed this vividly before.”

I submit to you that such statements—as well-intentioned as they are, and I have no doubts that they are truly well-intentioned—are slams and slurs against the Word of God and the Holy Spirit who inspired it. If the Holy Spirit is so inept that he has not been able to burn the truth of the passion of Christ in dying for our sins from Scripture, how in the world do we ever think a movie by someone who is not in the Trinity will be able to accomplish that?

Could not Dr. Graham have just as easily said, “Every time I preach or speak about the Cross, the things the Word of God and his Spirit have taught me will be on my heart and on my mind”? Is it not more likely that Greg Laurie should have said, “I believe that the Word of God is, most definitely, the most powerful evangelistic tool in all the world, for in it I hear the very voice of God. In it, the total Christ, with all of his treasures, benefits, and riches is vividly portrayed to my soul”? The bottom line is that modern man—like his forebears—is not satisfied with God’s all-sufficient Word. We continue to long, yearn, and hanker for something else. In the case of the modern Church, being ignorant of the Word, she yearns for an image to help her. In so doing, we fail to remember or realize that, “the worship of God (is) the beginning and foundation of righteousness.”[143]

Calvin locates the essence of the second commandment in this, that it, “restrains our license from daring to subject God, who is incomprehensible, to our sense perceptions, or to represent him by any form.”[144] Already in 1.11.2, Calvin had explained himself in this fashion. “He (Isaiah—RG) teaches that God’s majesty is sullied by an unfitting and absurd fiction, when the incorporeal is made to resemble corporeal matter, the invisible a visible likeness, the spirit an inanimate object, the immeasurable a puny bit of wood, stone, or gold [Isa. 40:18-20 and 41:7, 29 45:9; 46:5-7].”[145]

In 1.11.7, the editors inserted a heading that is entirely appropriate. It reads, “There would be no ‘uneducated’ at all if the church had done its duty.”[146] Calvin says the following in this section. “But then we shall also answer that this (images—RG) is not the method of teaching within the sacred precincts believing folk, whom God wills to be instructed there with a far different doctrine than this trash. In the preaching of his Word and sacred mysteries he has bidden that a common doctrine be there set forth for all.”[147] Yep. My point precisely. Obviously, Calvin was railing against the Roman Catholic Church of his day, nevertheless, with the necessary changes having been made, the same accusation can legitimately be made and the same question asked of the modern Church. He asks, “But whence, I pray you, this stupidity if not because they are defrauded of that doctrine which alone was fit to instruct them?”[148] So I ask: If the modern Church had been properly taught and not defrauded of spiritually hygienic doctrine, would the thought of the need for a movie like The Passion even arise?

In 1.11.8, Calvin reminds us that the origin of images is man’s desire for a tangible deity. From that driving, insatiable desire, Calvin deduces that, “From this we may gather that man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”[149] Throughout the centuries, those who have espoused and endorsed the use of images—for whatever reasons—have not thought that what they were doing was wronging God. During the Middle Ages ignorance and superstition was rampant. Illiteracy was very high. The Roman Catholic Church offered “images” as “books for the laity” in order to “help” them worship God better through the images.

I cannot help but read the same response into the endorsements for Mel Gibson’s film and the Son of God movie. Have we really come that far again? Unfortunately, it appears that we have and some “worth knowing” theologians are leading the charge to the box office. Did Calvin have no eye for art? Was he so concerned with spoiling everyone’s fun and writing biting treatises on predestination that he never gave any thought to Christianity and art? Let’s listen to what he says. Calvin begins 1.11.12 with these words, “And yet I am not gripped by the superstition of thinking absolutely no images permissible. But because sculpture and painting are gifts of God, I seek a pure and legitimate use of each, lest those things which the Lord has conferred upon us for his glory and our good be not only polluted by perverse misuse but also turned to our destruction.”[150]

His view is that, “We believe it wrong that God should be represented by a visible appearance, because he himself has forbidden it [Ex. 20:4] and it cannot be done without some defacing of his glory. And lest they think us alone in this opinion, those who concern themselves with their writing will find that all well-balanced writers have always disapproved of it.”[151]

This leads Calvin to conclude, “If it is not right to represent God by a physical likeness, much less will we be allowed to worship it as God, or God in it. Therefore it remains that only those things are to be sculptured or painted which the eyes are capable of seeing: let not God’s majesty, which is far above the perception of the eyes, be debased through unseemly representations…. I only say that even if the use of images contained nothing evil, it still has no value in teaching.”[152]

Calvin’s covenant theology causes him to have a pastor’s heart as he explains the words of the second commandment. He describes God as a “husband.” He writes, “Indeed, the union by which he binds us to himself when he receives us into the bosom of the church is like sacred wedlock, which must rest upon mutual faithfulness [Eph. 5:29-32]. As he performs all the duties of a true and faithful husband, of us in return he demands love and conjugal chastity.”[153]

In closing, I want to add one more aspect of Calvin that might take us by surprise, especially when we are dealing with the second commandment. I am speaking specifically about a comment he makes in his commentary on the book of Galatians. In Galatians 3:1, Paul states, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” In couching his admonition this way, Paul is not only calling the Galatians churches to account, but he is also reminding pastors of a very essential point. When the Church—then and now—is reminded that Christ was “publicly portrayed as crucified,” what does that mean? The answer provides an indispensable clue to understand this passage properly. Here is what he says:

Let those who want to discharge the ministry of the gospel aright learn not only to speak and declaim but also to penetrate into consciences, so that men may see Christ crucified and that His blood may flow. When the Church has such painters as these she no longer requires any pictures. And certainly images and pictures were first admitted to Christian temples when, partly, the pastors had become dumb and were mere shadows (idola), partly, when they uttered a few words from the pulpit so coldly and superficially that the power and efficacy of the ministry were utterly extinguished.[154]

In other words, Calvin argues that when ministers of the gospel are actually proclaiming the Word of God clearly and with unction, there is no need for images. This is truly something that the Christian Church in general and pastors in particular should take to heart. What Calvin writes is quite simple and straightforward. It is clear. The problem is that modern Christians would rather get a “quick fix” at the movie theater or from a CD instead of being fed from the solid preaching of the Word. There is then a downward spiritual spiral in spite of the fact that modern Christians continue to long for what they call “practical Christian living” and “relevance.” We are looking in all the wrong places. We do not read the Word, we do not attend the solid preaching of the Word, we do not pray, and we do not make use of the ordinary means of grace that God has already supplied. When this is complicated by pastors who fail to preach the Word, we are confronted with a recipe for spiritual disaster. To my mind, the acclaim that The Passion of the Christ received was the result of spiritually starved Christians who were suffering from self-imposed malnutrition.

Conclusions

I’m sure you won’t believe this, but when I started out to write this article, I never intended to go on this long. Once I began, however, one thing led to another. The second commandment is a sort of “labyrinth,” which, once entered, can lead you in various directions. As I conclude, I realize that I have barely scratched the surface of the spiritual and literal meaning of the second commandment. It is true, however, that all things must come to a (tentative) end. One of my concerns is that a number of church leaders in the modern Church seem to have no problem with images of Jesus in movies, paintings, and Sunday School literature. It is my hope and prayer that this paper has aided in clarifying some confusion.

It appears to be “trendy” in our time for those pastors who are on the cutting edge to be thoroughly enamored of whatever smacks of being culturally aware and hip. All too often it seems that these pastors are taking part of their marching orders from society more than they are from the Word of God. We must never forget that the world is hostile to God and cannot please him while it remains in its unbelief. God is also the author of art and music. It is absurd to attempt to make “worship” more accessible to the pagan by giving the pagan what he or she is immersed in six days a week.

Once again, I have been reminded of the consummate joy that comes with being the pastor of a church of Jesus Christ that loves God’s Word. It was the congregation at Grace Presbyterian Church that was the catalyst that moved me to take another look at the Law of God. It is patently true, that if you’re a student of the Word, you must never stop learning from it. Therefore, I read and re-read. What has been reinforced to me in this article are the following truths:

First, the Law of God is still relevant and applicable for the New Testament Church. What Yahweh commanded in the Old Testament still applies for the New Testament saints.

Second, New Testament Christians are still prohibited from making any image of the deity—even in a movie or in art. The reason is that it is impossible for any artist to depict the godhead or spiritual matters, but more importantly, no matter how necessary or essential we might believe a movie to be, God has said “No.” That ought to be more than sufficient for us.

Third, just as the Word, Circumcision, and Passover were sufficient in the Old Testament, so also are the Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper sufficient for the New Testament Church.

Will I go see the movie? No. Will I recommend it for others? No. Do I think it’s necessary? Well, if you’ve followed what I’ve said in this article, the answer is obvious. Again, the answer is No. Why not? Simply because the older I get the more the Lord God Almighty impresses upon me his all-sufficient nature. All I really need is found in him, his covenant, his Word, and his Son. There may be times when, in my old nature, I might desire for an image—physical or in my imagination—but I pray that by the grace of God I will put myself and my desires aside and worship him in spirit and truth and in thankful obedience.

Ron Gleason, Ph.D., is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Yorba Linda, Calif.

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