My ongoing pastoral concern is that our doxology and praise is inadvertently introducing competitions and cancellations of various parts of the counsel of God. God does not deny Himself, and neither does His Word deny itself. Psalm 144 is a wonderful, tutorial, doxological look that consolidates various features of the Christian life that we have too often compartmentalized or set in opposition one with another.

In recent years I have incorporated Psalms (not exclusively) in the sung worship of God’s people at the church where I serve. Out of all the Psalms, I have come to find myself looking forward to the singing of Psalm 144 the most. The chief reason why I find this Psalm so exciting and useful is due to its ability to bring together various elements of the Christian faith cooperatively that are often made out to be irreconcilable dichotomies.
Piety & Polemics
The themes of warfare and worship, piety and polemics dance together harmoniously. Verses 1 and 2 speak about being trained for warfare and verses 5 to 8 speak about God’s judgments while verse 9 speaks about pious devotion to the Lord. It seems that it is often the case that piety and polemics, warfare and worship are polarized and/or presented as antithetical to one another. Yet Psalm 144 shows how true piety demands spiritual warfare with darkness, and also how spiritual warfare with darkness always demands devotion. Devotion devoid of spiritual warfare is superficial and sentimental, and spiritual warfare devoid of devotion is simply vain self-interest.
Deliverance & Destruction
The themes of deliverance and destruction also dance together harmoniously in the Psalm. You will notice how pleas for rescue in verses 7 and 11 are accompanied with pleas for judgment in verses 2 and verses 6-8. The deliverance of God’s people goes hand-in-hand with judgment of the ungodly (think of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt). A worship that celebrates judgment devoid of deliverance is contrary to God’s decree and covenant of grace, and yet a worship that sings of deliverance devoid of divine judgment is humanistic. The songs of God’s people praise His deliverance that is destructive and yet speak of a destruction that is redemptive. God’s redemption in every sense of redemption is always through judgment.
Heavenly & Historical
The heavenly and the historical also hold together harmoniously in the Psalm. There can be a tendency for our songs to see God exclusively in the heavenly and the consummate realm as we sing praises unto Him. However, what can be seen here in verses 5-7 and 10-11 is that the Lord above is actively intervening in time and space. God’s people are not merely praising a God who sits in heaven and is one day returning; they are also praising a God who rends the heavens and comes down and intervenes according to His will and ways in history.
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Whether ministers recognize it or not, the reformed tradition has always seen the real correlation between superstition and idolatry and images of God’s being (for all persons of the trinity). Images of Christ are antithetical to what is at the heart of the reformed tradition which focuses on the audible rather than the visible. Portraying God via images is essentially pagan and the means by which the pagans worship their gods (Amos 5:5-27). 

This is the third and final installment of this series. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.
Having laid down the foundation for how allowing for images of Christ indeed strikes at the vitals of various reformed doctrines, let us consider some common objections:

We do not use images in Lord’s Day worship but simply in teaching children. Answer. The second commandment of the Decalogue and the Standards do not forbid making images of Christ simply in public liturgy but rather the making of images of any kind (as it pertains God’s essence and any person).
I am not worshipping the image; it is simply about Christ in a pedagogical manner. Answer. All knowledge of Christ is unto the end of worship and doxology (Ephesians 1:3-18) and therefore, to learn of Christ pedagogically but not doxologically is not Christian pedagogy. Furthermore, the scriptures and confession not only forbid worshiping images, but also worshiping Christ in and by and through the image. In addition, if people truly do not worship the image of Christ why has it often been the case when such images are removed from nativity sets, windows, and other places on church property that people are deeply troubled, angered, divisive, and demanding that such images remain?
This logic leads to the rejection of the Christian arts. Answer. Christians are free to depict the Christian story, events, and concepts visibly; however, God’s being and essence are not to be visibly depicted. God commands His people to remember Him and His acts of redemption with stones and various visible monuments and yet condemns them for visibly portraying His essence.
This logic would make the incarnation impossible as the incarnation indeed makes Christ visible. Answer. God made His Son visible by His own prerogative and He never told anyone else to do the same or imitate Him.
Jesus took on flesh and so it is that we can physically portray Him. Answer. You do not know what He looks like therefore, such portrayals are idolatrous projections. Jesus is God and man in one flesh and portraying one nature and not the other truncates the hypostatic union.
Images are only for Children in their early years. Answer. The proverbs say that one is to raise up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. If you train children in the way of images, then they will very likely not depart from knowing Christ through images. The thousands of adults in the visible church (reformed and all others) who have and use images attest to this.
In the OT God appeared visibly in various ways (fire, smoke, bushes, temple) and so it is that it is appropriate to portray God visibly. Answer. In all the visible manifestations of God His essence remains hidden. Notice how on Sinai and the temple, God’s naked essence is hidden in smoke. God’s visible manifestations portray His essence and being as hidden.

Having considered the common objections and answered them, let us conclude with some further considerations and conclusions.
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Images [of Christ] undermine the supremacy and sufficiency of the means of grace which is a vital organizing concept for reformed ecclesiology, missiology, and piety. Means of grace and images of Christ are antithetical to each other. 

This and the previous article show that images of Christ undermine various essential doctrines, not simply an essential doctrine.  Let us continue setting forth the reasons why.  First, it undermines the doctrine of the bodily resurrection and ascension of Christ. Consider WLC question 53 which states, “How was Christ exalted in his ascension? Answer:
Christ was exalted in his ascension, in that having after his resurrection often appeared unto and conversed with his apostles, speaking to them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and giving them commission to preach the gospel to all nations, forty days after his resurrection, he, in our nature, and as our head, triumphing over enemies, visibly went up into the highest heavens, there to receive gifts for men, to raise up our affections to where He is, and to prepare a place for us, where he himself is, and will continue until his second coming at the end of the world.”
Note a few things. The Catechism teaches that Christ in our nature visibly went up into the highest heavens and that we are to raise our affections to where He presently is visibly. This means that Christ being visible in the throne room of God in true flesh is to be where our affections are to be regularly directed. Our minds and thoughts are to be directed to where He is embodied in heaven, not pictured below. This implies that any embodiment of Christ on earth (whether by statues, movies, or drawings) assumes that His bodily presence in heaven is an insufficient and/or inappropriate embodiment. Indirectly applied, it means, by implication, that by making Christ visible below it assumes that something is wrong with His present visibility above. With that logic, unless Christ can be seen below, His visibility above lacks efficacy and or sufficiency. The necessity of making Christ visible below undermines His embodied efficacy high above and, in so doing, distracts the Christian from setting His affections where Christ is seated above.
The scriptures tell us to find comfort in the knowledge that Christ is visibly in heaven. This is why question WLC question 55 states, “How does Christ make intercession? Answer:
Christ makes intercession, by his appearing in our nature continually before the Father in heaven, in the merit of his obedience and sacrifice on earth, declaring his will to have it applied to all believers.”
Christ’s humanity appearing in our nature continually above means that we do not need to make Him visible anywhere else because He is indeed actually visible where it is essential for Him to be so. To make images of Christ below is to declare that His true incarnate self as seen above is deficient. God perfectly made His Son visible and to make Him visible is to presumptuously assume that the Father’s work needs human improvement. Making Christ visible consequently assaults the doctrine of the incarnation rather than affirming it.
Second, it undermines the efficacy of the word of God and the sacraments. In Galatians 3:1 Christ is said to be vividly portrayed as crucified through the verbal proclamation of Christ. This is to say that in the word of Christ in the Spirit through faith, the Saint indeed sees Christ vividly. WLC question 89 states that God especially makes the preaching of the word of God an effectual means to convince and convert. Chapter 25:3 states, “Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God for the gathering and perfecting of the saints in this life to the end of the world and doth, by His own presence and Spirit, according to His promise make them effectual thereunto.” The making of images of Christ seriously undermines the ability of the word of Christ to effectually portray Christ.
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Since we cannot portray Christ’s divinity which is without parts, to portray His humanity is inevitably to separate His divine nature from His whole person. Orthodoxy demands that we see Christ’s whole person in light of His divinity and humanity which is not confused and/or separated. 

Recently, I was part of a floor examination in presbytery and heard a very common exception taken to the WCF concerning the use of images as it pertains to the second commandment, that being, images are the books of the unlearned (or little children). I challenged and made the claim that such an exception should not be because it strikes at the heart of our system of doctrine. Meaning that an exception to the second commandment as it pertains to images is something that is connected to the whole doctrinal system of reformed confessionalism and therefore should not be an accepted exception for ordination and or licensure. Let me lay out a case for you as to why I believe this is so.  I will unpack this in three separate articles where in the first two I will lay the groundwork for my claim and in the last I will answer the objections to this claim and offer some conclusions.
First, the exception goes against scripture (Exodus 20:4). Furthermore, the making of images as how to worship God was a capital offense as can be seen by the Golden Calf incident and various others.
Second, the exception goes against the explicit language of the Westminster standards in multiple places of the Standards. This can be seen in Question 109 which states, “What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment? Answer:
The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of false gods, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them, all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever; selling blessings; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God has appointed.
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The more we recognize Christ and His work as sufficient, the less we need man’s endless legislation of rituals and observances to feel spiritually complete. However, the less we see Christ as sufficient the more vulnerable we will be to all sorts of clever ways to either add to the gospel’s sufficiency and/or efficiency. 

It seems that in the recent years Lent has been trending in Evangelical churches where it was not a part of their practice.  In a period where things like woke religion, an inflated and ever-increasing civil government, and the general world of Pandemic are excessively binding the conscience and endlessly legislating all spheres of life, it seems timely to address the legalistic nature of Lent.  Below are thirteen reasons why Evangelicals in general, and the Reformed churches in particular, should leave Lent behind.

God never commands the church to observe annual fasts to remember the cross. God has always been specific about special days and certain rituals that the church is to observe; where God has not been specific on such things there is no need to fill in the blanks.
We have been given two sacraments in the New Testament church, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. So there is no need to add anymore sacraments and/or sacramental like signs. The sign that God gave us to regularly focus on Christ is the Table with faith and repentance, not an ashy cross on one’s forehead 40 days of avoiding burgers, social media or the like.
Jesus fasted in the wilderness before He went to the cross and that fast is sufficient. There is no need for us to deprive ourselves to come to the cross of Christ as Jesus sufficiently did that for us.
Lent began in a superstitious way where it was believed that there was something extra spiritual and special about avoiding certain foods. 1 Timothy 4:3 says that those who claim to be spiritual due to avoiding certain foods are being demonically deceived. There is nothing spiritual about avoiding French toast, there is nothing sinful about having bacon; spiritual is eating or drinking through faith in Christ in thanksgiving for His grace.
Christ commands us to fast in secret with no need to broadcast it to the world (Matthew 6:16-18). He tells us to go out of our way to not be obviously seen as fasting. Lent is an annual virtue signal fast that runs contrary to the way God calls us to fast when and if we believe the need to.
Colossians 2:20-23 says that merely abstaining from things has no value in making us godly or curbing our fleshly desires. Lent and the pseudo spirituality of asceticism are closely related. Finding our joy and satisfaction in Christ is that which makes us holy, not creating an annual rule of deprivation and abstinence of some particular thing.
We are called to repent of idols and receive Christ as a regular part of our walk with him, not a set month on a scheduled calendar (Colossians 3:1-8). We do not schedule repentance, rather we walk in repentance as a lifestyle.
Lent comes historically from Roman Catholicism which has an elaborate system of works and penance to add to the gospel. I personally am not interested in redeeming that system of works and penance at all.
Lent is part of enforcing a liturgical calendar throughout the whole year where the church mandates endless observances rather than simply acknowledging the one observance Christ has prescribed which is the one day in seven Lord’s Day.
The Reformation and what it stood for was sparked by Zwingli eating sausage during the season of Lent. He protested the extra-biblical binding of the conscience and the superficial view of sanctification taught by the Roman Catholic Church overall and in the practice of Lent in particular. The Reformed tradition is to protest the endless traditions of men that add to the commands of God, and not to observe them.
Lent (though people now define and practice Lent however they want) goes against the nature of the New Covenant where God has declared all foods to be clean (Mark 7:20-23; Acts 10:9-16); Lent takes the church back to the Mosaic era of types and shadows.
We are commanded to focus on the cross not by images of the cross but by the word of the cross (Colossians 3:16).
Contra the reasons for Lent, Jesus’ fast in the wilderness was not for exemplary purposes but objective, redemptive ones. His fast wasn’t a model but a unique and finished work for us to believe. It is inappropriate to see Jesus’ ministry as nothing more than moralistic acts of “go and do likewise,” rather than the unique and finished work to believe and apply.

The more we recognize Christ and His work as sufficient, the less we need man’s endless legislation of rituals and observances to feel spiritually complete. However, the less we see Christ as sufficient the more vulnerable we will be to all sorts of clever ways to either add to the gospel’s sufficiency and/or efficiency.  It is Jesus, fasting for 40 days to obey and fulfill where Adam and Israel failed, emptying, humbling, and sacrificing himself that makes us spiritually whole (Philippians 2:5-8).  And it is by God’s ordained and prescribed means of Word, sacrament, prayer, and weekly Sabbath worship, empowered by the Holy Spirit, that are the simple and sufficient means by which we are connected to Christ’s finished work.
Aldo Leon is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Pastor of Pinelands PCA in Miami, Fla.