Exodus 20:4-6 NKJV:
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments."
Clearly, the 2nd commandment forbids making carved images of anything for the purpose of worship.
However, we do have various types of images of Jesus as we understand and assume that He appeared when He was a Man on earth.
And of course, those who lived during Jesus' time saw what He looked like in human form.
There are some, though, who say that having any image of Jesus is tantamount to idolatry and therefore also a violation of the 2nd commandment.
Personally, I don't feel that it's automatically idolatry (although one can make an image of Jesus into an idol). I say that because some people actually did see what Jesus looked like. Also because I believe that the prohibition against carved images was because God knew that man would try to make an image to represent Him or some other god. And one of the times that did happen was the golden calf incident.
My question is: why do some say that it's idolatry to have images of Jesus today?
Thanks!
Statues, paintings, and those things aren't 'images' of Jesus, as they cannot ever represent Him, a living Person. The real 'images' of Jesus, are the true Christians, living persons, who have the character of Christ Jesus in thought, word and action.
Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
2Co_3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Php_2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Col_3:10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
Rev_14:1 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.
Rev_22:4 And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.