The Departure
Images in Worship
The Cross on the Neck, the Steeple, and the Skin
Crosses · Icons · Christian Tattoos and Symbols
Look around any crowd and the images are everywhere: a cross on a gold chain, a cross on a ball cap, a crucifix on a rearview mirror, praying hands or a thorn-crowned face tattooed across a forearm. Each one is meant to say, “I belong to Him.” Each one is the very thing the second commandment forbids — a likeness made by hand and worn as a badge of faith.
Inside the church it is the same: a crucifix, an empty cross on the steeple, a stained-glass Messiah, a framed painting of a long-haired man with soft eyes. Most believers have never asked where those came from, or what Yahuah said about them.
He said a great deal. Israel “saw no manner of similitude” at Sinai, and was told to make none (Deuteronomy 4:15–16), and to print no marks on the body (Leviticus 19:28). Three Greek words opened the door that the Torah had shut. Choose a word.
The root word
Stauros “cross”
The verse
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
Galatians 6:14 (KJV)
What you were taught
Paul gloried in the cross, so we lift it high. The cross is the symbol of our faith. We put it on the steeple, over the altar, on a gold chain, and on the bumper of the car. Wearing it says, “I belong to Jesus.”
What the Greek brought in
Stauros (G4716) in Greek simply meant an upright stake — a pole set in the ground. It was a tool of execution, nothing more. The cross as a holy sign came later, with the emperor Constantine. Around 312 AD he said he saw a sign in the sky with the words “in this sign conquer,” and he put it on his soldiers’ shields (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.28). From the shields it went to the churches, and from the churches to the necks of the people.
The Hebrew beneath it
Paul tells us what he means by the stauros in this same letter. He calls it a tree, and he quotes Moses: “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Galatians 3:13). Moses wrote it in Hebrew: “he that is hanged is accursed of God” (Deuteronomy 21:23). The Hebrew word is etz (H6086), a tree or a piece of wood. To an Israelite, that wood was a place of shame and curse. No one would have worn it.
The Torah also shows what happens when a sign becomes an object. Moses lifted a bronze serpent on a pole, and Yahushua compared His own death to it (John 3:14). But years later Israel burned incense to it. So Hezekiah “brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made… and he called it Nehushtan” (2 Kings 18:4) — just a piece of brass.
Read it again
Now read it again the way Paul meant it: I will boast in nothing but what Messiah suffered on the tree — the curse He bore for us. Because of it, this world is dead to me, and I am dead to it.
Paul is not boasting in a shape. He is boasting in a death, and in a life that died with it. Yahushua said the same thing: “take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). A cross you carry every day by denying yourself. Not one you hang on a chain.
How it grew
- c. 312 ADConstantine Says he saw a sign in the sky with the words “in this sign conquer,” and puts it on his soldiers’ shields (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.28).
- c. 326 ADHelena Constantine’s mother is credited with finding the “True Cross”; relic veneration follows.
- 692Council in Trullo Orders the Messiah to be painted as a man rather than a lamb; the crucifix grows from it.
- ReformationProtestants Remove the body but keep the empty cross.
- TodayNecks, caps, and skin The cross worn on chains, caps, shirts, and tattoos as proof of belonging to Him.
What it built
- The cross as an object of reverence — a Nehushtan on every steeple.
- Relics and the “True Cross” — wood treated as holy.
- The cross as a badge — an image worn to claim the faith whose Torah forbids it.
The icon
Eikōn “image”
The verse
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:
Colossians 1:15 (KJV)
What you were taught
Jesus is God you can see. The invisible God became visible in Him, so now it is right to make pictures of Him. That is how the icons were defended, and why a painted face of Jesus hangs in so many homes and Sunday schools. Many also read this verse to say that Jesus is God Himself.
What the Greek brought in
Eikōn (G1504) means image or likeness. Plato, the Greek philosopher, taught that everything on earth is a copy — an eikōn — of a perfect pattern in heaven. Church teachers later built on that idea. Defenders of icons argued that since the unseen God had become visible, He could now be painted. At the Second Council of Nicaea (787) the bishops ruled that honor given to a painted image passes up to the one it shows. Our English word “icon” comes straight from eikōn.
The Hebrew beneath it
Paul’s word goes back to the first page of the Bible. The Greek Old Testament uses eikōn for the Hebrew tselem (H6754), image: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him” (Genesis 1:27). Adam was the image — a living man who showed what his Maker is like, the way a son shows his father. No one painted Adam on a wall.
And no one was ever to paint Yahuah. “Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that Yahuah spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image” (Deuteronomy 4:15–16). Temunah (H8544), similitude, means a shape or form. Israel saw no shape, so they were to make none. An image of the invisible God is not the invisible God. A son can look like his father; he is not his father.
Read it again
Now read it again the way Paul meant it: The Son is the living likeness of the unseen Elohim — He shows us what the Father is like, as Adam was made to do. And He is the firstborn, the Son who holds first place (Psalm 89:27).
Paul says who put that likeness in Him: “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell” (Colossians 1:19). And he says where the image is to be found now — not on a wall, but in changed lives: “the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10). Yahuah never wanted a painting of His Son. He wants a people who look like Him.
How it grew
- c. 380 BCPlato Earthly things are images (eikones) of heavenly realities.
- 787Second Council of Nicaea Declares that images of the Messiah and saints are to be venerated.
- 1940Warner Sallman Head of Christ is printed hundreds of millions of times for Protestant homes and Sunday schools.
- TodayThe living room A painted face that most believers take for His.
What it built
- Icon veneration — bowing before painted images.
- The Protestant picture of Jesus — a likeness Scripture never gives and the second commandment forbids.
The mark on the skin
Stigma “marks”
The verse
From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.
Galatians 6:17 (KJV)
What you were taught
Paul carried marks on his body to show he belonged to Jesus. So a cross or a Bible verse tattooed on the arm is a good way to witness. Rome reads it another way: Paul bore the wounds of the crucifixion, the “stigmata,” as Francis of Assisi later was said to. Either way, a mark on the skin becomes a badge of faith.
What the Greek brought in
Stigma (G4742) was the Greek word for a brand or tattoo pricked into the skin. Slaves were marked with their master’s sign. People who served a god were marked with that god’s sign. Herodotus, a Greek historian, tells of a runaway who fled to a temple of Heracles and received the god’s sacred marks (Histories 2.113). When King Ptolemy IV wanted to force Jews into the worship of Dionysus, he ordered them branded with the god’s ivy leaf (3 Maccabees 2:29). The mark said whose you were.
The Hebrew beneath it
The Torah forbids that kind of mark outright: “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am Yahuah” (Leviticus 19:28). The Hebrew words are ketovet (H3793), something written, and qa’aqa (H7085), a cut. Writing cut into the skin — a tattoo. Paul knew this law. He would never have printed anything on his body.
Israel did have a mark of belonging, but it was not ink: “thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes” (Deuteronomy 6:8). The sign was His words, kept and lived.
Read it again
Now read it again the way Paul meant it: From now on, let no one trouble me. The scars on my body show whose servant I am. I took them for Master Yahushua.
Paul lists those scars himself: “Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned” (2 Corinthians 11:25). In the same chapter as our verse, he warns about men who “desire to make a fair shew in the flesh” (Galatians 6:12). Paul’s marks were not for show, and he did not choose them. He did not print them on his skin. Others beat them into it.
How it grew
- c. 430 BCHerodotus Temple devotees bear their god’s sacred marks.
- c. 217 BCPtolemy IV Orders Jews branded with the ivy leaf of Dionysus (3 Maccabees 2:29).
- c. 55 ADPaul Calls his scars from rods and stones “the marks of the Lord Jesus.”
- 1224Francis of Assisi Said to receive the “stigmata,” wounds of the crucifixion in his body.
- TodayThe tattoo parlor Crosses and verses inked as a sign of faith, sometimes defended from Galatians 6:17.
What it built
- The Christian tattoo — the pagan devotee’s mark, renamed as a testimony.
- Stigmata — Paul’s scars turned into a miracle of the flesh.
The Old Path
Scripture shows the Son by what He did and what He said, never by what He looked like — and that was deliberate. The second commandment was not cancelled when the Messiah came; it was the very ground the apostles preached on in Athens (Acts 17:29).
Revelation shows that what is worn on the hand and the forehead matters: one mark belongs to the beast (Revelation 13:16), and the other is the Name. It ends with the face that matters: “And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads” (Revelation 22:4). Not a picture or a tattoo — His name, and the real face, when He comes.