Voddie Baucham on Images of Christ in Films

Is the law sin? Absolutely not!

—Romans 7:7

That is what many Christians today say—that the Law is sinful.

"Aw, naw. No Christian today would ever say that the law is sinful!"

Yes, Christians say that—that it's sinful.

There is a ministry that we hopefully will have an opportunity to partner with, to do some Bible translations. This ministry has a partnership with another ministry that translates a very famous film on the life of Christ. And this very famous film that's used in the mission field all over the place, for the life of Christ, is usually attached to their translation projects. We were talking with them about doing their specific translation project—in a specific area where we are very intimately involved. And our response to them was,

"We love the idea of a translation project, you do this very inexpensively, we could probably sponsor this project as a church, but not if it means that you translate that film on the life of Christ."

They go,

"Wh...Why?"

"Be cause of the Second Commandment and graven images."

"What? What did you just say?"

"Yeah, because of the Second Commandment and graven images. These people don't know anything about God, you show them a film about God in Christ—there is a person who is playing God in Christ Jesus. You are calling them to be worshipers of God in Christ Jesus and you've given them an image of Him in a film. We believe that's a violation of the Second Commandment and we don't want to fund that."

The response,

"Oh, that's legalism! Legalism is sinful!"

—Voddie Baucham, The law is sin? By no means!