One fun part of having two little girls is watching them draw pictures of our family. Here is an actual image of our family… It is not an exact representation because it is not three-dimensional, and it won’t respond to you if you talk to the picture. But it is a picture of our family.
Here is Eden’s latest attempt at depicting our family. Notice how she has me looking at Kaye. We think this is healthy—between a husband and a wife—for the record. It is a cute attempt, but if you saw the picture hanging on a wall somewhere, you wouldn’t think, “Oh – that’s the Geigers.”
And here is Evie’s latest depiction of her and me. I have it as my desktop background right now because I think that it is so cute, but she has me with three legs so it is not fully accurate. I couldn’t say to you, “If you want to see what Evie and I look like together—take a look at this.” It is an image that falls short of the reality.
The depictions fall short of the reality.
One of the reasons God was so adamant to His people in the Old Testament not to make any image of Him in their worship of Him was because every image we create falls way short of the reality of who God is. The Lord told His people in Exodus 20:4-5, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them.” Don’t worship any image, God says, even an image that is supposed to depict Me who is in heaven. Because the image falls woefully short of who I am.
Yet Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). He rightly received worship while He walked this earth, and one day every knee will bow before Him (Phil. 2:9-11).
While we were created in the image of God, Jesus is the uncreated image of God. He is not a created depiction of God. He does not fall woefully short of the reality because He is God.
He is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). He is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature (Heb. 1:3).Jesus fully and accurately depicts and expresses who God is. Jesus told His disciples, “The one who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus is not a depiction that falls short. He is THE image of the invisible God.
