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[Jethro Bodine]

God does not care, if you wear a cross or not. He does not care if you have pictures of His Son Jesus Christ, as long as you do worship or idolize those things.
What God does care about is if you are LOVING ONE ANOTHER.

When you stand before God on Judgment Day, whether you were wearing a cross or not will not even be brought up. What sins you have or have not committed will not be brought up either. What you will be judged on, is how much you have loved others, AND how much you have failed to love others when you had the opportunity to love them.

Dave steals something from Robert. On Judgment Day when Dave stands before Jesus Christ to to be Judged, Dave will not be judged of breaking the commandment Thou shalt not steal. He is going to be judged why he FAILED to love Robert. If Dave Truly loved Robert, he would not have stole from him.

It is not our sins that will be judged, but our love for one another, this is what will be judged. Are you loving as Christ loved? That is the question.

^i^

Sin is idolatry. When we are greedy, or covetous, or adulterous, we have erected a false god in our hearts that we worship and serve, not the true God who looks very different than those things. When we sin we are guilty of idolatry:

"Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry." (Colossians 3:5 NIV)

So, instead of getting hung up on literal images I think we should understand the true intent of setting up false images, false gods, in our hearts that we worship and serve and which condemn us as idolaters. Christ is the only authorized image of the living God that we can worship and serve. Because he is the exact image of the living God. You can't go wrong with him. Worship of that image won't lead you away from and against worship of, and service to the true God.

 

[Obadiah]

...So, instead of getting hung up on literal images I think we should understand the true intent of setting up false images, false gods, in our hearts that we worship and serve and which condemn us as idolaters. Christ is the only authorized image of the living God that we can worship and serve. Because he is the exact image of the living God. You can't go wrong with him. Worship of that image won't lead you away from and against worship of, and service to the true God.

While I agree with what you are saying here, I still think that most rational people, and YES, I KNOW not all people ARE rational, but I think most rational people in the 21st century understand that a picture of Jesus (or a cross, or whatever) only serves as a reminder of Him and is not actually God himself. But yes, when someone actually starts worshiping and praying to that thing, they are committing idolatry.

But going down that road of idolatry, I have to wonder how many other things are far more likely to be idols in today's world? How many people when faced with a choice will take on a job that interferes with their roll in their Christian community because they place money higher than God in their life? How many people (especially us guys) will go to church when a sports event is happening just to sit through a service impatiently waiting for it to end, not giving hardly a thought to God and only wondering what the score is (or skip church altogether to watch)? They have replaced God with the idol of sports. How many idolize their "image" among their friends and family, so they go to church only because they have too in order to live up to that image? Their personal image is more important to them than God, so they idolize their image and the positive things it brings them.

While we debate here regarding pictures of Jesus (irregardless of the fact that we don't know what He looked like in the first place) and such things, I really think there are way too many other things that we really do idolize, and many times don't even realize we are doing it. Maybe we should be looking at the bigger picture, rather then being distracted by rather inconsequential things like a smaller picture hanging on the wall that only serves as a reminder of God. When we as as adults idolize sports, money, jobs, etc and place them ahead of God, we can't complain later on when our kids spend their Sunday mornings sitting in front of the TV rather than going to church!

 

[WIP]

But going down that road of idolatry, I have to wonder how many other things are far more likely to be idols in today's world? How many people when faced with a choice will take on a job that interferes with their roll in their Christian community because they place money higher than God in their life? How many people (especially us guys) will go to church when a sports event is happening just to sit through a service impatiently waiting for it to end, not giving hardly a thought to God and only wondering what the score is (or skip church altogether to watch)? They have replaced God with the idol of sports. How many idolize their "image" among their friends and family, so they go to church only because they have too in order to live up to that image? Their personal image is more important to them than God, so they idolize their image and the positive things it brings them.

Sort of forces one to take a hard look at self, doesn't it?

Thank you for that.