Body and Soul

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