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Scripture focus
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them...
Exodus 20:4-5 KJV
At a glance
Does the prohibition on graven images still matter to people who would never bow down to a carved idol?
Yes — because the commandment reaches further than physical statues into the mental pictures of God every person is tempted to construct, and Packer argues those homemade images are just as capable of misleading worship.
Summary of the chapter
Packer notes that the second commandment is easy to dismiss as irrelevant to a modern reader who has never been tempted to bow before a carved figure. He argues that this misses the commandment's real target: any device, physical or mental, that substitutes a manageable, human-sized picture of God for the God who has actually revealed himself.
He works through why images — however well intentioned — are dangerous rather than helpful. They inevitably borrow their content from the imagination of the person who makes them, so instead of leading worship toward the true God, they quietly reshape God into something the worshipper finds comfortable, and that reshaped god is not the LORD of Scripture at all.
The chapter presses the question inward: what mental picture of God actually governs a reader's private sense of him? Packer's answer is that authentic worship has to be disciplined by God's own self-disclosure in Christ and Scripture, not by inherited impressions, cultural habits, or whatever image of 'God' feels most agreeable.
Key points
- The second commandment forbids not only physical idols but mental substitutes for the true God.
- Any image — carved or imagined — necessarily reflects its maker's ideas rather than God's own self-revelation.
- Images of God, however sincerely intended, obscure his glory and mislead worship rather than aid it.
- The only reliable corrective is to let Scripture and Christ define God, rather than intuition or preference.
- The question the chapter leaves is uncomfortable but necessary: is the God I actually worship the God of the Bible, or a private substitute?
A line worth remembering
Idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images.
J. I. Packer Knowing God, ch. 4
Related Scripture
- Exodus 20:4-5
- Deuteronomy 4:15-16
- Isaiah 40:18
- Romans 1:22-23
For reflection and discussion
- What mental images of God have you inherited from upbringing or culture rather than drawn from Scripture?
- Where might a comfortable, 'manageable' idea of God be quietly replacing the God who actually reveals himself in the Bible?
- What practical habits keep your picture of God accountable to Scripture rather than to preference?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of the book. Read the full chapter — chapter 4, “The Only True God” — in Knowing God by J. I. Packer (InterVarsity Press / Hodder & Stoughton, 1973).