Representing God

Representing God

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.’”

1 Corinthians 10:14; 1 John 5:21

In the Scriptures we find various descriptions and depictions of God in created forms—fire, smoke, mountains, heavens, thrones, weaponry, and so forth. The Lord uses these to enhance our understanding of His greatness and purposes, and to draw out our adoration and worship of His splendor, power, majesty, sovereignty, steadfast love and faithfulness, righteousness, wisdom, grace, and more.

These abstract ideas defy encoding in finite forms, although finite forms can help us in understanding such ideas and the God Who embodies them. Hence, as the Scriptures use such forms to teach us about God, we may use them—and others—for our instruction and edification, as aids to worship and not objects thereof.

God is so great, so vast and holy and utterly incomprehensible, that to bind Him to some material form is to deny His infinite character and to impose limitations on Him and on the worship which we owe Him.

We must be very careful in the use we make of art forms relating to God. They should be such as encourage an expansive, rather than a limiting view of God. This is perhaps why, in the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple, so much of the beauty and majesty of those edifices is represented in abstract forms—colors, shapes, textures, overlays, and so forth.

Even in writing or conversing about the Lord we must be careful lest our language tend to reduce the greatness of God rather than to exalt Him. And when, in our worship, we employ only the forms of popular culture to express our understanding of and love for God, we are again in danger of reducing Him rather than of exalting Him as we ought.

Sign up to receive Crosfigell, our thrice-weekly email devotional, featuring T. M. Moore’s insights to Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition.

–

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.