4 “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. 5 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, (Ex. 20:4-5)This is, without question, the most abused commandment. It is clearly a commandment, powerful yet simple, against idolatry, and a corollary of the first commandment. However the pharisees of yesteryear and today claim it also means that you should not, under any circumstances, make any image that depicts God. That may indeed be a bad practice, as it may (or may not) be a struggle to do so in a way that glorifies God, but it is not forbidden by the second commandment, unless you make an idol of the image.
The commandment, in fact, says nothing whatsoever about God’s image. The commandment applies to anything from any realm, heaven, 1 earth, or the seas. You could have a painting depicting Jesus and Tom Brady poster, and it might very well be the latter, not the former, that is causing you to violate the commandment.
I often wonder whether the pharisees or modern legalists would have considered in a sin if a disciple of Jesus had sketched him in charcoal.
1 The natural interpretation of "heaven above" in the commandment is not as a reference to God's Heaven with a capital H, but the realm of the sky and the stars.
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