QQ51-52. What is forbidden by and what reasons are annexed to the second commandment?

A (51). The second commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word.

A (52) . The reasons annexed to the second commandment are, God’s sovereignty over us, his propriety in us, and the zeal he hath to his own worship.

I mentioned two ways of committing idolatry with conscious religious motives: 1. wrong God as if right; 2. right God in the wrong way. 

“When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD … They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” (Ex. 32:5, 8) 

Our outline today is divided into three: 1. the scope of forbidden images, 2. the controversy over images of Christ, and 3. the reasons annexed to the command. 

The Scope of Forbidden Images

Brakel marks two divisions of three in the words of this Second Commandment—three subject matter and three activities. In other words, in order to eliminate any possible excuse or ignorance, the Lord has been thorough to exclude three subject matter of depictions: “(1) that which is in heaven above … (2) that which is in the earth … (3) that which is in the waters under the earth,” and then it outlaws any of those depictions in that “(1) We can make them … (2) We can bow before … [and] (3) We can serve such images.”1 In one sense, this is the easy part. We can see from the words of the text that these are the specifications. 

The issue of interpretation comes down to whether to take those words as disjunctives—e.g. 1. make or 2. bow or 3. serve; or else as a unified thought, so that what is being spoken of is the activity of constructing worship. Last time we saw the rationale behind the whole command in a text like Deuteronomy 4:15, “Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since wyou 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 …” But then we read on in that passage,

“… 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, ball the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven” (Deut. 4:15-19).

See the action words—the response words: ‘Raise your eyes … drawn away … bow down … and serve.’ So the Psalmist points these actions the other way: “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!” (Ps. 95:6) The same is seen elsewhere in the Law: “You shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the LORD your God” (Lev. 26:1).

That this prohibition belongs to moral law is evident, first, in the commands of the Old Testament law itself, concerning both God’s essence and the immutable character of representing something contrary; second, in several New Testament passages which show that this is known by the law of nature (e.g. Acts 14:11-18; 17:22-31; Rom. 1:18-23). 

So what about art per se? Turretin takes this on first thing in his section on the Commandment: “The question is not whether images may be made which ought to be valued by us … Rather the question is Should any religious worship (whether called adoration or veneration) be paid to images of God and the saints made by the hand of men?”2 And besides, we see in Scripture God sanction artistic depictions even in the context of the tabernacle and temple: 

“And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be … And all the craftsmen among the workmen made the tabernacle with ten curtains. They were made of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns, with cherubim skillfully worked” (Ex. 25:18-20; 36:8).

“On its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet yarns, around its hem, with bells of gold between them, a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, around the hem of the robe” (Ex. 28:33-34).

“The cedar within the house was carved in the form of gourds and open flowers … In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olivewood, each ten cubits high … Around all the walls of the house he carved engraved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, in the inner and outer rooms” (1 Kings 6:18, 23, 29; cf. 32, 35).

Likewise of depictions of things in nature: branches and flowers and almond blossoms in Exodus 25:31-34. And even of the final temple, we read in Ezekiel, “It was carved of cherubim and palm trees, a palm tree between cherub and cherub. Every cherub had two faces: a human face toward the palm tree on the one side, and the face of a young lion toward the palm tree on the other side. They were carved on the whole temple all around” (41:18-19).

What is true of art ought to follow for education, though here, a sly evasion existed for Rome. Question 98 of the Heidelberg asks: “But may not pictures be tolerated in churches as books for the laity?” The answer is, “No: for we should not be wiser than God, who will not have His people taught by dumb idols, but by the lively preaching of His Word.” Adoration attempted to smuggle itself on the train of education. Think back to Calvin’s controversy with Rome. They made that distinction between λατρεία and δουλεία, so that, “what belongs to God is kept unimpaired, because they leave him λατρεία.”3 The first is actual worship, while the second is to serve, from the Greek word for “servant” (doulos). Augustine had long ago answered this in his sermons on the Psalms, “They seem to themselves to be of a purer religion, who say, I neither worship the image, nor demons, but through the bodily appearance I behold the sign of that which I ought to worship,” and in another, “I worship not this visible thing, but the divinity dwelling there invisibly.”4

The Controversy over Images of Christ

The unity of the Person implies communication of the properties. In other words, if Christ is God, then whatever belongs to the human nature is shared with the whole Person, as in God’s “own blood” (Acts 20:28). In other words, so that argument goes, you cannot separate the human nature from the divine person of the Son, and on the Scriptural grounds:

“that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him” (Jn. 5:23).

Now of course, how one understands the object of the analogy in the “just as” in those words will be all important. And it may also be asked, “What about the burning bush to represent God? Or the dove to represent the Holy Spirit?” But Calvin replies about this vision being but “a moment,”5 and so a sure sign that the representation was meant to move beyond.

Two Christological errors form our extreme guardrails. In fact both sides will accuse the other of having one or the other of these extreme tendencies. Those who hold that the human nature of Christ may be depicted will accuse the other of Monophysite thinking. Now this error was so named because it confused the two natures into one (mono) nature (physis). Thus a Monophysite tendency is suspected in those who deny that one can refer to the human nature without meaning, at the same time and in the same relationship, the divine. On the other hand, those who would hold a place for that human nature in pictorial form will be accused, by the other, of Nestorian thinking. This error was named after one Nestorius, who may not have even held to the heresy that bears his name. But it is such a staunch separation of the two natures such that the unity is lost, and it really amounts to two persons: a divine Son being one person and the human Christ being the other.

But may not the human nature be seen without adoration of the Person thereby? Dabney seems to reason that since “there is no portrait or description of Christ which is authentic … [therefore] an image could only represent His humanity … abstracted.”6 See the simple logic? Without the authentic, you’re left with an abstraction. But you don’t have the authentic, therefore you will abstract. Now that may be true, but does that make the representation worship?

We must consider the weakness and tendency of real people. In considering the fine distinctions made by Thomas Aquinas and by Cardinal Bellarmine, Turretin gives his reader a strong dose of common sense. When they speak of the exemplar, versus the prototype, being not the ultimate referent of worship, he says that, 

“such worship is falsely prescribed to the people, calculated to bring them into the most immanent and constant danger of idolatry. For who is there either among the people (nay, even among the learned) who either understands such distinctions or can rightly apply them when understood; so as by an abstraction of mind, while bowing before an image, not to give it any proper, but only a relative and analogical worship?”7

Wherever we land on this, Paul gives us the summary principle when he was raising the pagans theology from what they knew in being offspring of God to getting beyond their feigned ignorance: “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” (Acts 17:29). Observe that this is one more way to see that this Second Commandment belongs to moral law. How so? Paul is making an appeal to these pagans on the basis of common notions that they know, deep down, that the true God cannot be contained, and therefore cannot be represented by any human artifact, nor even a set of finite thoughts in the mind.

The Reasons Annexed to the Command

What does the answer say here? Three things—GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY OVER US, HIS PROPRIETY IN US, AND THE ZEAL HE HATH TO HIS OWN WORSHIP. This covers both the positives and the negatives. Let’s just take the last of those: Zeal. This is a disposition associated to the divine jealousy, as in:

“You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God)” (Ex. 34:13-14).

This is communicated to us in an anthropopathism, a man-like passion, so that we can come close to understanding. We mentioned Josiah’s reformation last time. He was actually under obligation to do that from the law. But in the command to smash idols, what is the reason given? So even in the solving the problem that the prohibition was not heeded, jealousy in essence manifests in zeal in the execution of it.

It was zeal on display in Jesus here,

“And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me” (Jn 2:15-17; cf. Mat. 21:15).

That it is an appropriate human passion is proved by Jesus, but already testified to in the Old Covenant history, as, for example, when, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy” (Num. 25:11). The crime was mentioned earlier—“the people ate and bowed down to their gods” (v. 2). 

This is the first commandment with consequences. As Paul says, the Fifth Commandment is the first with a promise, but the Second is the first with a threat. Now there is a good side shown, but not in the form of a specific promise. But let us make a serious study of this threat: visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me (5b). Let us start here: To the degree that you do not care about how God would be worshiped, to that same degree you show contempt for your children. That such a person has contempt for God is given. The contempt for one’s children follows. How so? Human experience shows that what parents do shapes their children and, by extension, their childrens’ children. No one really doubts that. But why should we be surprised that the worst consequences fall out because of crimes of the highest order!

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children” (Hos. 4:6).

The last words give us a contrast: but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments (v. 6). This single word often rendered STEADFAST LOVE (חסד) is always one of the beginner Hebrew students favorite new words. And rightly so! It can also be translated as “mercy” or “lovingkindness” or even “covenant faithfulness.” But steadfast love is a very helpful way to say it in our English because it gives one the picture of a love that will not let you go because of the divine promise. But notice the hint of the superiority of the blessing over the curse. Where the threat is to three and fourth generations, the blessing is to THOUSANDS. Now if you say, “Yes, but ‘three and four’ is that same kind of idiomatic expression in the prophet, “For three transgressions ... and for four” (Amos 1:3). The idea is fullness adding up to the number seven. That is true, but both expressions in the commandment here are symbolic uses of numbers, and so the inspired author was not random in choosing to make the far higher number represent the blessing! 

Objection 1. This does not apply to us who are in Christ.

Reply to Obj. 1. That is too ambiguous. What is meant by “apply” to us? Indeed the curse of the law does not fall down on us, since it fell upon Christ in our place. “The LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). But shall we deny any application to our ears? 

Wherever images are introduced in the church of a region or a people, that strand of the church begins to regress in its mind and will and begins the decline into the spiritual grave. First the East, and then Rome, then the Anglican and Lutheran, and so on with modern Evangelical. Wherever we see the triumph of the image over the word, there the magic of matter in motion casts its spell, and shrinks the theological mind, reducing all else. 

Objection 2. This is not consistent with divine justice. As the prophet says, “The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (Ezk. 18:20). Therefore, the visitation of the father’s sins upon his progeny here is unjust.

Reply to Obj. 2. Brakel answers the objection that would pit Ezekiel 18 against this threat of the Second Commandment. He gives three answers:

“Answer (1) Scripture does not contradict itself. God states plainly that this is the manner in which He acts, and whatever He wills not to do, He refrains from doing. In this case [namely, in the specific case and context of Ezekiel 18] God promised that He would not do this. 

(2) Even if the son were to punished for the unrighteousness of his father, he is nevertheless not held accountable as if he himself had committed the sin of his father. Everyone’s commission of sin is personal, but judgment may come upon the children—not eternal judgment, but temporal judgment.

(3) Children are also sinful and are thus worthy of all punishment. However, God is and can be very longsuffering. Yet if the fathers aggravate matters greatly, this will create a situation where God’s wrath may also be poured out upon the sinful children.”8

APPLICATION 

Use 1. EVANGELICAL USE. In a sense, this is an extention of the evangelical use from last week. We spoke of smashing any and all idols in our own lives. Rather than viewing the extent we should go, let’s apply this in the opposite direction. All the way down to the heart. We mentioned zeal as being at the heart of this. 

Remember that the foundation in God for the command and its consequences is the divine jealousy: “I the LORD your God am a jealous God” (Ex. 20:5). This word does not signify that petty insecurity or private offense when we speak of the jealousies of men. Rather this is that holy all-consuming fire that protects all that is good and that rightly avenges the least threat to it. It is that zeal in the Lord Jesus Christ, who turned over the tables of the money changers in his Father’s temple (Mat. 21:12). And yet doesn’t he call us, the church, the temple of his Spirit? What tables, then, have we filled with our idols and images?

And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple (Mal. 3:1).

For zeal for your house has consumed me (Ps. 69:9).

Anywhere that we set up visual representations to God, in order to bring Him near, ultimately so as to bring the consumer near—there, we have turned God’s house into a den of robers. 

Use 2. CIVIL USE. We have seen that the State has its civil religion and that this requires some visible manifestation so that the worship of the state is intelligible. Symbols and insignias can only take that worship so far. Ultimately personal beings have need of a person or persons behind the forces that govern. It is not merely the malevalence of propaganda that makes those stereotypical pictures of tyrants: whether Stalin or Hitler or Mao or whoever. They do it because it works. And it works because the human, as a political animal, is wired to worship a Person behind the common good. So, out of the devil’s coin minting shop came a new suggestion about the image of God. D. A. Carson comments on Matthew 22, that, 

“When Jesus asks the question, ‘Whose image is this? And whose inscription?’ biblically informed people will remember that all human beings have been made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26) … If we give back to God what has his image on it, we must all give ourselves to him. Far from privatizing God’s claim, that is, the claim of religion, Jesus’ famous utterance means that God always trumps Caesar.”9

The coin is really a pie chart, and the “percentages” breakdown goes like this. 100% of our allegiance is owed to God in every area of life. Some of that 100% is subordinated through the proper authorities in the civil sphere. Just as some of that 100% is subordinated through other proper authorities in the home, at one’s place of labor, or school, or finally the church. But all obedience flows from Christ, and some of that 100% (not another) is filtered through God’s design of Caesar. We will come to that design when we get to the Second Table. 

Use 3. DIRECTIVE USE. Now let us assume that Romans 14:1-15:7 applies to this implication of the Second Commandment. What then? Only that the same liberty of conscience that we extend to individual Christians ought to also be extended to individual churches. And that being the case, it is right for churches so convicted to remove such images. Not only is it right. But when a church is so convicted, its opposite would be sin: “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23). When it comes to images of Christ, surely the counsel of J. I. Packer on this matter is very wise, where,

“the problem is that as soon as the images are treated as representational rather than symbolic, they begin to corrupt the devotion they trigger. 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.”10

I would appeal to non-Reformed church planters and pastors to at least consider ridding any graphic design, any powerpoint (or whatever hip new replacements there are for any of that)—ridding all of one’s advertisements or series slides or anything like it of any pictures of Jesus. 

____________________

1. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:105, 106.

2. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.9.2.

3. Calvin, Institutes, I.12.2

4. Augustine, In Psalmo, cited in Turretin, Institutes, II.11.9.10.

5. Calvin, Institutes, I.11.3

6. Dabney, Systematic Theology, 362.

7. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.9.18.

8. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:107.

9. D. A. Carson, Christ & Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 57.

10. Packer, Knowing God, 51.