Deuteronomy 5.8-10

“‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.’”

1 Corinthians 10.14; 1 John 5.21

The worship of God invites the use of a sanctified imagination, one that is shaped, not by the creations of finite men, but of the descriptions of God and the forms used to appeal to our affections which are provided in His Word.

Much of the great hymnody of the Christian tradition captures these Biblical referents extremely well, combining words and music in ways designed to lift us up to the very presence of the majesty of God. On the other hand, it is my experience that much contemporary worship music wants to bring God down to our frame of reference, forcing our worship into forms and expressions that we hear each day in the popular culture with which we are surrounded, and depending on lyrics which, while simple and true, frequently lack the power to life us beyond our own frame of reference into the heavenly courts.

The eye of the heart (Eph. 1.18), or the eye of faith, is a particular use of our imaginative souls to engage unseen realities in exalting, sustaining, and transforming ways. Informed by the teaching of Scripture and engaged through discipline and worship with the glory of God, we soar, by means of the eye of the heart, into realms beyond description, where our experience of God cannot be captured in forms or words, but comes to expression in a love that exceeds knowledge and that fills us with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3.19).

Any depictions of God – in word, music, or other form – that do not conform to Scripture’s use of such devices, or that do not encourage and expansive vision of unseen things, cripple the eye of the heart rather than engage it, keeping it from functioning as it should and making us dependent in our worship on created things rather than God Himself.

We shall have more to say about the proper way of worshiping God as we unpack the rules and statutes which attend the second commandment.

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