Over the last two parts of this three-part series, I covered two broad concepts.
First, that God is invisible, and we cannot see Him.
Second, the second commandment forbids the fashioning of any representation of God.
We can’t see God, and we can’t create images of what we think God looks like.
Now, one objection is that Christ has a body. He has a physical countenance that we will one day gaze upon in adoration and wonder. If Jesus has a body, and we know that He is a man, why can’t we have someone play Him in a movie or musical, or paint a picture of what we think He may have looked like? There are several good reasons why we wouldn’t want to do that (besides the overt prohibition in the second commandment.)
Christ is more than a man
When anyone creates an image of a man and labels it “Jesus,” they are only portraying one aspect of His being. After the incarnation, Christ exists eternally as truly God and truly man. His manhood is just as central to His existence as His God-hood is. We have already established that God (as He exists as pure spirit) cannot be seen, what cannot be seen cannot be depicted with images. So any and all images that claim to be depicting Christ are only displaying His man-hood. What you get when you try to fashion an image of Christ is only a half Christ. You only get the humanity and not the divinity.
All images of Christ are false
Images of Christ assign false attributes to Christ. Any “image” of Christ is necessarily false. Any depiction of Him is physically inaccurate. There is no denying this. Jesus only has certain physical features, and we will be able to see Him face to face when we die; not before. When Christ is depicted either by an actor or by the imagination of an artist, you are assigning a false set of physical characteristics to Christ. If you were to add spiritual characteristics to Christ which He did not possess (like, say, arrogance) all of Christendom would be justifiably angry. I don’t see why some think it’s ok to add physical characteristics to Christ and not other characteristics to Him. This is most notably characterized when painters attempt to depict the (invisible) divinity of Christ by adding a halo or something similar around His head. This does nothing but highlights the vanity and futility of trying to depict our Lord.
We worship in spirit and truth
Images incline us toward worship using said images. The driving factor behind why this is wrong is the fact that Scripture is perfectly sufficient. If we add to it, we really take away from it. The Regulative Principle of Worship states that whatever is not commanded in Scripture (either explicitly, or by good and necessary consequence) is out of bounds. So even if you fail to recognize the forbidden nature of images, you cannot get past the fact that they are not commanded in Scripture. “But I don’t worship the image” is a common rebuttal to this argument. To that, the Reformed answer is that if an image informs or influences worship in any way, it’s a violation of the second commandment.
These are but only three reasons, besides the explicit prohibition in the second commandment, why fashioning or promoting images of God (usually Christ) is impious at best and blasphemous at worst. Even if you’re not convinced at the Reformed understanding of the second commandment, perhaps the implications would be enough to give you pause before sharing, or even creating, images of God.