The Second Commandment: Should We Create Images Of Jesus?

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Throughout history, theologians and laymen have either been arguing over the meaning of the second commandment and how it relates to us today as we live our lives in the New Testament or passing over this commandment entirely. Numerous monographs on the Ten Commandments lump the second commandment with either the first or third commandment, never leaving it with its own chapter. In multiple traditions, it is considered simply a commentary on the first commandment. In the references that do discuss this commandment, the question being asked is; should we create images of God? I would argue that we cannot accurately portray God in His essence. Granted, God gives us various ways to describe and portray Him, such as through speech and human language, …show more content…
Interestingly, the Bible gives us no indication of what Jesus might have looked like. Isaiah, in his clearest prophecy of Christ, says “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.” This already clearly contradicts numerous of today’s artistic representations of Christ, depicting him more as David was described, as a ruddy, handsome young man. From Isaiah’s description, we know that there was nothing special about Jesus’ face. He was not deformed, but neither was He a model, He had an ordinary human face. Tertullian describes Jesus this …show more content…
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image - any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” The word ‘image’ comes from the Hebrew word ‘pe-sel’, derived from its origin ‘pasal’, meaning to cut, hew, or shape. This law is expanded for the Israelites in Deuteronomy 12 giving a guide on how they are to worship God in the land they were heading into, where the Canaanites depended on physical representations of their gods. It was in this cultural context that God forbade the Israelites from making an image of Him. Isaiah comments on the impossibility of making an image of God; “To whom will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to Him?” He goes on to describe how workmen and goldsmiths did their best to fashion an image of God, then describes God as the One who “sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.” God then says “To whom then will you liken Me, or to whom shall I be equal?” God is so infinite, there is none to compare Him too, we are like tiny insects in His sight. Acts 17:29 then says, “Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.”
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