Hebrews 4:14-16
Brothers and sisters:
Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
Did you know that physical images of God are prohibited as idolatry in Jewish synagogues and Muslim mosques?
That’s because contemporary Judaism is Rabbinical Judaism of the 10th century which inherited the Second Temple period’s opposition to images. Despite what the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible (and the Christian Old Testament), says in Genesis 1:27 that “God created man in His own image,” Judaism became an abstract faith wherein God is an intangible being with no physical form or material features. Therefore there is no way to draw or sculpt an image of Him.
Islam, too, in the name of avoiding idolatry, rejects the portrayal of God in any physical image. Like synagogues, mosques are devoid of figurative images. According to Islamic theology, God has no body or gender, and there is absolutely nothing like Him in any way whatsoever. God is transcendent, unique and unlike anything in or of the world as to be beyond all forms of human thought and expression.
Like Judaism, Islam rejects the doctrine of the Incarnation — that God took human form. Both Judaism and Islam, therefore, reject the notion of a personal God as anthropomorphic and demeaning. That also means this: Mere humans cannot have a personal relationship with God.
Of the world’s major religions, only Christianity believes that God took human shape, wherein the Second Person of the Triune Godhead incarnated Himself for the express purpose of sacrificing His life as recompense for Adam and Eve’s unimaginably calamitous sin of pride and disobedience in that first garden, so that humanity can be redeemed.
That also means that, being both divine and human, God in the Second Person had human experiences. He knows, understands, sympathizes and empathizes with us — our hopes and fears, triumps and travails, joys and sufferings. In the words of St. Paul:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.
Not only that, God invites us to a personal relationship with Him — to speak with Him, tell Him of our worries and concerns, and ask Him for help.
How blessed we are!
Tell Him you love Him with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, and with all your strength.
And may the love and peace of Jesus Christ our Lord be with you,
~E
Best way to start a Sunday morning or any morning by getting into the Word.
Thank you Dr.E for this most beautiful post! It is so incredible and wonderful to be able to talk to Our Lord Jesus, as our God who is also one of us, a human, who understands everything we experience as human beings. He is interested in anything and everything we do, and as you so masterfully stated, we enjoy a personal relationship with Him. Indeed, I received Jesus in the Holy Eucharist this morning, body, blood, soul and divinity; He entered into me, my body and soul, and I have prayed to Him that I have decorated His dwelling place with love, kindness, empathy, understanding, courage and joy. As St. Athanasius said about Jesus being in the consecrated bread and wine, “God has made Himself accessible to us.”
For some reason, I was brought to tears after reading this beautiful article this Sabbath morning. Thank you so much Dr E
Yes, we Christians are also against idolatry. Yet the central question remains: Did God come down from Heaven in human form?
From previous articles in FOTM about Our Lord’s conception and about His burial site, we can safely assume that He did. But even without these reports, we have, thanks to quantum physics, discovered more in the past 20 years than in the previous two thousand, about the nature of light and matter.
But putting these things aside, would it insult God to say He did this? Can we say that God cannot do What He Wills? As a Christian, I believe that God considered us so good that we are His “crowning achievement,” that we, in some way, are higher than the angels. Looked at this way, representations are not idolatry!
Thank You! Very thought-provoking. I love your Sunday postings Dr. E. And, this time I was comforted to see an artwork of Jesus & a lamb very similar to the ONE art work, displayed behind the lectern, in my little one-room, rural, childhood PA church. It doesn’t matter how Christ is portrayed in any painting or photo of a painting through the centuries (people will always argue about skin color, hair, eyes,….). But it matters to me that…this ONE portrays loudly, without words, as to the life of Christ as a living mortal, and as the Son of God in Heaven….a Shepherd who protects and guides those who follow…even the least amongst us….like a newborn babe, the weakest and most innocent…..like the lamb in His arms. And, as a tiny child, I also understood from this one painting, that I was just as important to Him as were others of longer & more accomplished ages. I truly believe that this was the one most important things given to me in my tiny years that has stood with me against many odds, setbacks, and so on…throughout my life time…even today. It all began with this visual representation of Christ with his arms around the newest, weakest, least able to survive without Him, in the flock.
Glad you like the Jesus lovingly holding the lamb pic! 🙂