The Second Commandment – Is it Different from the First?

It occurred to me that the 1^st and 2^nd of the Ten Commandments are redundant if you do not have the proper understanding of what each one means. Read them and think about it:

Exodus 20:3 – You shall have no other gods before Me.

Exodus 20:4 – You shall not make for yourself a carved image – 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 nor serve them…

Depending on what you believe about how these two commandments are interpreted, they may appear redundant. The 1^st commandment says that you should have no other gods besides the true God. Some mistakenly assume that the 2^nd commandment is exclusively talking about idols. If so, then it is redundant, since an idol is a false god, and is therefore prohibited by the 1^st commandment. This begs the question: is the 2^nd commandment simply an elaboration on the 1^st, or is it addressing a separate issue?

I don’t think that God would have wasted one of the Ten Commandments by making the 2^nd a specification of the 1^st. I believe that the 2^nd commandment is specifically outlawing any likeness of God. Any representation that the human mind might contrive about the glorious appearance of God is inadequate. There is nothing in the “heaven above” (that is, the sky), nor in the “earth beneath,” nor in the “water under the earth” that comes even remotely close to the beauty of our God. The problem is that people have a hard time identifying with a God that they cannot picture in their minds, but we are told that God is invisible:

Colossians 1:15

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Not only is God invisible, but Christ is His image. Man was created in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27), but through sin we taint and distort that image. On the other hand, Christ lived and died without sinning, making Him literally the image of God. You aren’t supposed to make any kind of image to represent God because Christ is His image.

That brings us to another point then – is it okay to have pictures of Christ? When you see a picture of Christ, the truth is that the person in that picture is NOT Christ. Whether or not that picture bears any similarity to the face of Christ when He was alive in the flesh, the truth is that Christ doesn't look like that anymore! He has been resurrected and glorified as a spirit being, and John gave us a record of His appearance in Revelation:

Revelation 1:12-16

And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around His chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of rushing waters… His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

That’s what our Savior looks like right now. Make no mistake, John was not seeing an angel. This being identifies Himself in the next verse as "the First and the Last," conclusively identifying this to be Christ. That’s why it’s wrong to have pictures that are meant to be Jesus. He is not a painting on a wall of a body of flesh that existed 2000 years ago. He is not two crossing pieces of wood. He is not the bloodied and bruised man dying on a cross. He is alive even more so than we are alive, because He was resurrected from death to spirit, which cannot die. He has been restored to His former glory:

John 17:4-5

I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

This scripture is proof that when Christ became flesh, He literally became flesh – God the Father and Jesus are separate beings. Otherwise, this scripture would not make sense because Christ, if He is also the Father, would still have been in that glorious state while His human body was walking around on earth. The glory that Christ had before He became flesh is the same glory that the 2^nd commandment is prohibiting us from trying to imitate with pictures and statues, and this is a crucial point to understand.

So what should you do? If you have crosses and pictures of Jesus, get rid of them. If you go to a church that has crosses or pictures of Jesus, stop going there and find a church that understands the second commandment. Don’t permit yourself to associate the glorious appearance of your Savior with the man in that picture or with the object of His death, the cross. Many beautiful paintings and sculptures have been made that attempt to depict God, but, ironically, every one of them is an abomination to Him. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is aesthetically beautiful, but I hate it because it ascribes an image to God, who has specifically said not to make such images. For a biblical example of how the first two commandments are different, see my Spiritual Snack - "The Golden Calf - Which Kind of Idolatry?"