A Sanctified Imagination

A Sanctified Imagination

We must worship with the eye of faith.

Exodus 20:4-6

^“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.”

Deuteronomy 5:8-10

“‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on 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 fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.’”

The worship of God invites the use of a sanctified imagination, one that is shaped, not by the creations of finite men, but of the descriptions of God and the forms used to appeal to our affections which are provided in His Word.

Much of the great hymnody of the Christian tradition captures these Biblical referents extremely well, combining words and music in ways designed to lift us up to the very presence of the majesty of God. On the other hand, it is my experience that much contemporary worship music wants to bring God down to our frame of reference, forcing our worship into forms and expressions that we hear each day in the popular culture with which we are surrounded, and depending on lyrics which, while simple and true, frequently lack the power to lift us above our own frame of reference into the heavenly courts.

The eye of the heart (Eph. 1:18), or the eye of faith, is a particular use of our imaginative souls to engage unseen realities in exalting, sustaining, and transforming ways. Informed by the teaching of Scripture and engaged through discipline and worship with the glory of God, we soar, by means of the eye of the heart, into realms beyond description, where our experience of God cannot be captured in forms or words, but comes to expression in a love that exceeds knowledge and that fills us with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19).

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.