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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman Humanizing
The Divine Image One confusing Biblical
issue is how a New Testament Christian is to relate to the Old Testament
Law of Moses, which includes the Ten Commandments.
I will address the command not to murder and not to commit
adultery, hoping that it sheds light on the command not to make any graven
images, as the KJV puts it.
In Matthew 5:20 through
30 Jesus recalled the "do not murder" law that He broadened to
include getting angry in your heart without due cause.
He also recalled the "do not commit adultery" law that He
broadened to include lusting in your heart.
I believe Jesus was getting to the heart of the matter by
broadening these laws to include sins of the heart, where all sins
originate. He, thus, was
implying the need for some serious heart surgery.
With this in mind, read Exodus 20:4. "You shall not make
for yourself an image [graven image KJV] in the form of anything in heaven
above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below."
If Jesus broadened the
law of murder and adultery to include sins of the heart, could we as New
Testament Christians do the same with the law that forbids graven images?
I think so. To understand any
Biblical issue found in any given passage we must consider the cultural
context in which the passage was constructed.
The cultural context of the no image law was polytheistic, whose
gods looked and acted more human than divine.
Gods were a creation of the cultural mind, and thus, constructing a
material image of a immaterial God seemed reasonable.
Such humanizing of the divine was not permitted for Jews, and why?
I believe the word "image" in the no image command
supplies the answer, leading me to the Genesis creation account.
Genesis 1:26 and 27
state that God created mankind in His likeness and image.
Generic man was created to be a mirror image of God, reflecting His
nature in his life. When man
makes a material image of the immaterial God, he humanizes the divine.
His material image is a product of his mind, replacing himself as
God's image with
his created, lifeless image. Since the events
recorded in Genesis 3, God's reflective image in man has been distorted,
but what we failed to be, Jesus is. Read
Hebrews 1:3.
"The Son is the
radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being,
sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided
purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in
heaven." Jesus is "the exact
representation (image) of God's very being.
He provided our purification and now resides with God where He
sends His Spirit, His image, into the lives of believers, making them, and
thus the church, God's present-day image.
If I am correct when I
say that the command not to make any graven image boils down to a matter
of the heart, then we as New Testament Christians that comprise the church
must guard our hearts. We
cannot allow the sins of the heart to distort the image of God that we
are. If we fail in this
matter, we become a graven image that prevents people from coming to Jesus
and drives many who have come to Jesus away from Him.
Maybe you will agree with me that the western-world image of God is
pretty distorted and in need of serious heart surgery.
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