To understand whether the creation or use of a visual representation of Jesus violates the second commandment, we must ask whether the work: diverts glory away from God and toward a false object, distorts the story of God’s relationship with his people, or diminishes God’s nature and deforms those who use it. While icon veneration may divert glory away from God, narrative and exegetical depictions of Jesus perform a different function.

For years, Christian leaders have sounded the alarm over declining biblical literacy. In past eras, knowledge of biblical history, characters, and concepts was far more common, even among non-Christians. To make matters worse, the decline in biblical literacy is accompanied by a parallel decline in book literacy. The percentage of Americans who regularly read books of any kind (much less Scripture) is astoundingly small.
But people today aren’t dumb. Many nonreaders can talk for hours about the history, characters, and metaphysics of fictional universes like the MCU. This is a form of literacy; it just isn’t grounded in books. It’s grounded in visual media.
It’s not surprising, then, that visual adaptations of biblical stories like The Chosen have been so influential in recent years. Such works help nonreaders access biblical stories, characters, and ideas. They also prompt regular Bible readers to engage with well-known stories in fresh ways.
Throughout history (especially in premodern times), visual representations of biblical stories have fostered biblical literacy. But there’s also a long history of opposition to biblical images. This opposition is largely rooted in the belief that the second commandment prohibits visual depictions of Jesus.
Yet not all depictions of Jesus serve the same purpose. An icon, designed for veneration, doesn’t work the same way as an illustrated Bible storybook or a biblical show (like The Chosen).
As we’ll see, images of Jesus can be used to retell biblical narratives or illuminate biblical ideas without violating the second commandment, as long as they don’t divert glory away from God, distort the new-covenant story, diminish God’s nature, or deform those who use them.
Purpose of Second Commandment
When applying a biblical command to a new context, we should understand its original rationale. We mustn’t be like the Pharisees who, forgetting the purpose of Sabbath regulations, applied them in an overly broad and restrictive manner (Matt. 12:1–14). Before we can discern how to apply the second commandment to depictions of the incarnate Son of God, we need to consider its purpose. 
Fortunately, the second commandment explains itself. When God prohibits graven images, he says it’s because he’s “a jealous God” (Ex. 20:5). An idol diverts glory away from the One to whom it belongs—and toward a false object. God forbids idols because he refuses to share his glory with anyone or anything—even an image that ostensibly represents him (Isa. 42:8).
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No one has the authority to say it is permissible to willingly violate the Lordship of Christ as expressed in His Word. So ultimately, this issue is about the authority of the Word of God and the authority of Christ Himself. I will not make a biblical case for complementarianism in this article. But I must reiterate that the failure to pass the Law Amendment was a massive failure on the part of the SBC to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The SBC has a biblical authority problem.

At the end of his life, Charles Spurgeon faced a great controversy in the Baptist Union, which he called the “downgrade.” The Baptist Union would even censure him for his outspoken warnings against it in his magazine, The Sword and the Trowel. The Baptist Union would go on to adopt a compromised doctrinal statement on biblical inerrancy by a vote of 2000 to 7.
Evidence of Downgrade
By God’s grace, the Southern Baptist Convention is nowhere close to that type of compromise. However, the evidence of theological downgrade within the Convention is present. How can I utter such a statement when nearly everyone within the SBC affirms biblical inerrancy? The downgrade in the twenty-first century evangelical church is not primarily over inerrancy but on biblical authority—specifically on the issues related to human sexuality. It is at this point that Satan is attacking. At this year’s Convention in Indianapolis, a super-majority of 66% was needed to pass the so-called “Law Amendment,” which delineates that partnering churches should only have qualified men serving in the office of “pastor” or with the title of “pastor.” Specifically, the amendment proposed adding this clause to the SBC Constitution:
Affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.
Unfortunately, the amendment did not pass, receiving a solid 61% of the vote but failing to reach the super-majority of 66%, which was needed. The bright side is that there is a broad majority within the SBC, which stands as thoroughly complementarian and affirming biblical authority in the area of men’s and women’s roles. The bad news is that nearly 39% of the Convention voted against the amendment. Arguments were made that there are better ways to convince churches to comply with the SBC’s doctrinal commitments. Or there is just a problem with nomenclature and not theology (I am not sure how you can legitimately argue that a title in a church is not theological). My friend, David Schrock, does a very helpful job of summarizing all the more egalitarian-leaning arguments against the amendment here.
However, these arguments fail to consider what the Bible plainly states about the issue. The question is really about biblical authority and Christ’s Lordship over His church, or in this case, a denomination.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Monday, October 3, 2022
We need God to unsettle us, to make us dissatisfied with anything but Jesus, and with anything but the age of come. This unsettled longing for an age to come is what the Bible calls joy. It, strangely enough, tends to make contented people, because God satisfies.

There is a gift from God that we do not want. If we’re honest with ourselves, I suspect there are many gifts from God that we don’t want. We enjoy both sin and comfort too much to value all of God’s gifts; we are indicted by our lacklustre enthusiasm for the things of God.
The gift I’d like to focus on is dissatisfaction. There is a spiritual gift of dissatisfaction. And in our comfortable, western, industrialised world we dearly need it.
There’s also something that looks like the spiritual gift of dissatisfaction but is actually the infernal curse of cynicism. I have this one in spades.
Let me flesh out what I mean: if we believe that our world is passing away, that it is in fact groaning in the birth pangs of a better world (Romans 8) then we should compare our lives, our churches, and our societies, with what we understand is coming.
If we believe that the old creation is gone and the new come in Christ’s resurrection (John 20-21), but that the kingdom—the new creation—is also not yet here; that we live in what theologians call realised eschatology and I call the Between, then we must expect to see partial fulfilments of what the world will be like after she is reborn in fire. And we must expect to not see total fulfilments of that pregnant promise.
There’s a sense in which a Christian’s life is orientated towards a future that we only see through a glass, darkly (1 Corinthians 13). Or it’s supposed to be, anyway.
We also desire to see our hearts, our churches, and our cultures, changed and shaped in the direction of the Kingdom here and now before we die. That’s a good desire, and we should expect to see some fulfilments as the Spirit acts on us. As always, God changes churches by changing people. Typically I think he also changes cultures by changing churches—in Leithart’s language “the heavenly city resurrects the cities of men.”
These are good desires. It is good to ask what God requires of us in order to do as we ask. I think there are two criteria for a move of God, one for us and one for him. The requirement that sits with us is found in the logic of baptism in the Spirit. In John 7 Jesus gives one requirement for us to be changed: thirst.
In other words, we must want it. Want requires a precondition: dissatisfaction.
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