"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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 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 the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Exodus 20:4-6
The second commandment prohibiting the making and worshipping of graven images is clearly connected with the first, but as clearly distinct from it, and should not be confused with it. What is forbidden here is the use in worship of anything that detracts from the fundamental reality expressed in our Lord's words, 'God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth'. No mere representation of God is permitted, since at best it can only be like Him, a mere approximation, and not He Himself, and therefore misleading and ultimately distorting. If what Moses says in Deuteronomy 33:26, 'There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun' is true, then any attempt to make a representation of Him, however noble in conception, must necessarily fall short of the mark, and therefore mislead. This is something that has not always been remembered in people's desire for aids to worship. 'Images' of whatever sort, whether ikons, statuettes, or pictures, so easily tend to gather worship to themselves, because they become confused and idealised with what they are meant to signify. God knows how weak we are and how we need help in our spiritual lives, but it is much safer to restrict ourselves to His appointed means of grace and help than to fabricate our own. He has given us His Word, and the sacraments, and worship and fellowship, as means of strengthening our faith and nourishing our spiritual lives, and when these are used as He has ordained, the need for other aids must surely become superfluous. Not that even here can we be immune from the danger of violating this commandment, for a wrong use of the Sacraments can become a particularly terrible idolatry. The simple memorial of our Lord's death can, and has in the Roman Church, become a horrible and dangerous perversion of the truth as the sacramental elements are made the object of worship. This is idolatry, and violates the commandment.