Diminishing God

Diminishing God

Idols do not enhance worship, but confine it.

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 Westminster Catechism reminds us that “God is a Spirit, infinite and eternal….” He is not bound by any limits beyond Himself. The worship we owe to Him is thus unlimited and qualified only by our growing knowledge of and love for Him. The more we grow in the Lord, the greater our love for Him will be, and the more complete and satisfying our worship will become.

Idols, on the other hand, create limitations, forcing our ideas of the infinite God into images constructed by our own finite and fallible minds and contained within the parameters of the object we have made. Contrary to what we may suppose, such images, because they limit and constrain our understanding of God, do not enhance worship but actually confine it and, at the same time, bring the honor of the uncreated God down to the paltry substance of created things. While there is a place for representations of God in the arts and in education, in worship all such representations must be set aside, leaving our hearts and minds free to search the infinite depths of the holy God under the guidance and tutelage of the Spirit of God alone.

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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.