In response to readers’ feedback, the second paragraph under “The Second Commandment and the Normative Principle” has been modified at the author’s request on 21st July 2023. The original text has been preserved in a footnote.
Sometimes our minds work in funny ways. When I was very young, there was a picture of the then popular children’s character Humphrey B. Bear’s head hanging over my bed. Because that’s the location where I’d pray with Mum and Dad, for many years I thought God looked like a man wearing the Humphrey B. Bear hat.
I remembered this in my late teens when my youth pastor started meeting with me to read J. I. Packer’s Knowing God.
Worshipping the God Who Speaks
In chapter 4 of Knowing God, Packer argues that the second commandment is not primarily concerned with Israel worshipping false gods—the first had already ruled that out. Rather, the second commandment forbids worshipping the right God in the wrong way. Using any man-made images to represent the LORD as they worship him is idolatrous. He writes:
God is not the sort of person that we are … we cannot possibly guess our way to [God’s attributes] … by intuition or infer them by analogy from our notion of ideal manhood. We cannot know him unless he speaks and tells us about himself.
… Thus it appears that the positive force of the second commandment is that it compels us to take our thoughts of God from his own holy Word, and from no other source whatsoever.[1]
He appeals to Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 15 where the LORD explains that because Israel saw no image when he spoke to them out of the fire at Mt. Sinai they ought not to make any images for the purposes of worship:
So, he exhorts them to continue to live, as it were, at the foot of the mount, with God’s own word ringing in their ears to direct them and no supposed image of God before their eyes to distract them.[2]
All Images? Or just Images of God?
The LORD was not ruling out images for all purposes. Not long after the giving of the ten commandments, he instituted an image of a bronze serpent for the Israelites to look at and live (Num. 20:4-9), which anticipated Christ being lifted up, to achieve a greater salvation (Jn. 3:14).
Images per se are not the problem, but images as instruments of worship. As the bronze serpent was later tragically misused by Israel (2 Ki. 18:4). Packer notes:
Historically, Christians have differed as to whether the second commandment forbids the use of pictures of Jesus for purposes of teaching and instruction … but 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.[3]
Because the problem is worshipping the right God in the wrong way, Packer even argues that if we imagine a picture of God in our head as we are praying, we are guilty of breaking the commandment. Thus my imagined childhood picture of a man in Humphrey B. Bear hat was rebuked!
Provocative as I found Packer’s argument at the time, I am convinced his case is sound and want to honour God by keeping the second commandment.
The Second Commandment, TV and Films
In the fifty years since Packer first published Knowing God an enormous number of Jesus-films and shows have been produced, many with the genuine intention of seeing the gospel go out. It’s undeniable that many have been saved through viewing the Jesus film (1979). Recently the impressive television series The Chosen has understandably had a positive impact on many. Yet the proliferation of Jesus-films ought to give us pause, in the light of the second commandment. What are the implications of this for Jesus-films and shows?[4]
The importance of these questions first struck me about two years ago. I had been using lots of images while preaching, including images of actors portraying Jesus. But one day I attended a church where images of the Last Supper from a Jesus-film were on screen during the communion liturgy. Suddenly my soul cried out “This is wrong!” I could not escape the conclusion that using images of Jesus during the Lord’s Supper (or during congregational prayers, singing, or hearing the sermon) was idolatry.
I immediately stopped using images of Jesus in my sermons (I still use lots of images in my sermons by the way, but not ones intended to represent God). This was a matter of repentance for me. I asked for forgiveness and turned to trust God’s revealed means of grace.
The Second Commandment and Corporate Worship
There are two general approaches that Protestants have taken to the ordering of church services: the regulative principle and the normative principle.[5]
For those who follow the regulative principle, only elements clearly taught or derived from Scripture (ie. prayer, singing, preaching, and the sacraments) ought to be part of the corporate worship of the church. If you are part of a church that follows the regulative principle, a lot of the heavy lifting regarding the second commandment has already been done for you. Depending on how strictly the principle is applied, Jesus-shows and movies can’t be included as an element in church services because Scripture doesn’t explicitly call for them.
Those who hold to the normative principle believe right worship includes both things explicitly taught in Scripture, and things not expressly forbidden in Scripture, but maybe not for the reasons you might be thinking. For someone like myself, who belongs to a denomination holding to the normative principle, assessing the suitability of Jesus-films for corpoarate worship is slightly more complicated.
The Second Commandment and the Normative Principle
My simple plea is this: viewing picture of Jesus as an aid to corporate worship is not God’s will for his church.[6] I feel a certain amount of trepidation here; I fear heaping destructive guilt and shame on churches and fellowship pastors. I don’t believe there are many people wilfully sinning in this way, rather I believe this comes from living in an intensely media-driven and visual culture. I suspect I was not alone in not having properly reflected on this matter.
My hope is this article might convict my fellow workers, as I myself was convicted, that we should let God’s self-revelation in his word shape how we worship him. He has not invited us to worship him through man-made images of himself but through hearing and responding to his word.[7] It is through the various ministries of the word, through Christian fellowship, and through the sacraments that he has chosen to minister to his people. We should not see this as stiflingly restrictive; God’s commandments are “the perfect law that gives freedom” (Jas. 1:25).
Two Perplexing Questions
First, what does this mean for the way in which I worship the Lord with my whole life? While I love the corporate worship of God’s people each Sunday (twice each Sunday in my case), I’m also struck by the call of Romans chapter 12 verses 1 to 2, for our entire lives to be spiritual worship by offering ourselves as living sacrifices to God. If my whole life is worship to God, is there ever a time when it is appropriate to view images of actor’s portraying Jesus?
Second, is it appropriate to read children’s Bibles that have pictures of Jesus in them?[8]
I don’t think the answers to these questions are simple, and different Christians will land in different places on them. I do think it’s vital for us to prayerfully ask and wrestle with them though. One group this is especially true for is those who minister to children: parents, kids ministry leaders, and those who publish Christian materials for children.
I really appreciate the thoughtfulness, and earnest desire to honour God which is evident in Kevin DeYoung’s introductory note to The Biggest Story Bible Storybook. He writes:
Some children’s books present Jesus in ways that are culturally unrealistic, cartoonishly silly, or lifelike in a way that can lead children to think “this is what Jesus looks like”. We tried hard to avoid those dangers. In the end we thought it would seem strange, if not theologically misleading, to have a big book where Jesus never shows his face but appears only in shadows and silhouettes. We believe that by presenting Jesus in a way that is obviously artistically stylized, we are not depicting the God-man or trying to say this is what Jesus was like as much as we are trying to tell the story of the Bible without keeping the main character off stage for every scene.[9]
May God enable all of us to keep sharing his story and worshipping him while taking the second commandment with great seriousness.
[1] Packer, Knowing God, 53.
[2] Packer, Knowing God, 53.
[3] Packer, Knowing God, 49.
[4] Tim Challies has written some very helpful reflections on this matter: “Use Your Catechism, Silly”. 23rd February 2017. https://www.challies.com/articles/use-your-catechism-silly/.
[5] Last year, Rory Shiner and John McClean wrote complimentary pieces discussing these two Reformed approaches to Christian corporate worship. Rory Shiner, “Holy Fire in New Covenant Worship”. 13th June 2022. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/holy-fire-worship/. And John McClean, “Worshiping with Westminster: A Response to Rory Shiner”. 27th June 2022 https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/worshiping-with-westminster-a-response-to-rory-shiner/.
[6] While there is possibly a grey area between an educational/illustrative use and a devotional/worship use, we need to recognise that what the minister intends by the images may not be how the congregation engages with them. Therefore I caution against even such illustrative/educational uses in the context of corporate worship.
[7] Original text: My hope is this article might convict my fellow workers, as I myself was convicted, that we should let God’s self-revelation in his word shape how we know him, worship him and make him known to others. He has not made himself known through images of himself but through his word.
[8] A third perplexing question we might ask is “how does our use of images in everyday life relate to passages such as Psalm 19:1–6 or Romans 1:20?” Clearly God teaches us in some ways through his creation. How all this relates to the matters raised in this article would be well worth exploring.
[9] Kevin DeYoung, The Biggest Story Bible Storybook (Wheaton: Crossway, 2021) 11.
