If you’ve spent any time exploring or teaching our Sunday school curriculum, you may have noticed something—none of our teaching aids, student materials, or teacher manuals depict Jesus.
In a world where children’s Bibles, storybooks, and classroom posters often rely on visual portrayals of Jesus, our approach may stand out. But this was not a small design decision—it’s a thoughtful, intentional commitment rooted in God's Word.
Honoring the Second Commandment
Great Commission Publications does not make pictorial representations of Jesus in any of our Christian education material. Many Christian traditions—Reformed, Presbyterian, and others—choose not to depict Jesus Christ visually in order to abide by the Second Commandment (often cited as a 2CV or a second commandment violation). To make a likeness of the Son of God in his human nature is held to be as fully a transgression of this commandment as the making of a likeness of the first Person of the Trinity, God the Father.
This may seem difficult when teaching concrete-thinking children, as we know that Jesus became flesh and dwell among us (John 1:14). And as John continues in his Gospel, "we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." So how do we "show kids Jesus" without showing them images of God the Son?
Keeping the Focus on the Story
Instead of illustrating Jesus, our artwork uses creative, reverent techniques to keep attention on the message rather than the image. Stories from the New Testament that include Jesus are typically drawn as though the artist is looking over his shoulder. Our goal is to create artwork that illustrates the narrative while allowing Scripture to shape each child’s understanding of who Jesus is. We encourage children to seek truth about Christ from Scripture, not from an artist’s interpretation. We see illustrations of people whose lives were impacted by meeting the Lord Jesus Christ in person.
Speculation on the details of Jesus' appearance is as vain as speculation as to unrecorded words or deeds of our Savior. Another reason involves the absolute sovereignty of God in revelation. Because of the immediacy of the presence of God in Christ, his appearance commands worship. Any representation of his appearance, any portrait of him, is a statement as to the revelation of God in Christ and therefore also inescapably presumes to command worship. When his words and deeds are reported to us in the preaching of the gospel, we worship him in this revelation. A presumed portrait cannot escape this claim, and its pretense must be rejected. Through such pretended portraits, idolatry has been introduced into the church of the new covenant.
Illustrations That Point Kids to Scripture
Ultimately, our mission is to build God's Kingdom by equipping the church to teach his Word. When children learn about Jesus, we want their imagination shaped by the Bible’s own descriptions—not by artwork that could unintentionally shift the focus. It is in Scripture that Christ is presented to us. We do not possess the fulness of revelation that came through Jesus (John 21:25), but we have in Scripture an inspired selection of all that we need to know for salvation. Now it is striking that we have no inscripturated descriptions of our Lord, except in the figurative language of the book of Revelation. Scripture does tell us that Christ had a true and apparently normal human body. But we look in vain for physical details.
By not having illustrations or any other pictures of Jesus, we aim to keep his Word central and honor the beautiful mystery of the One who is both fully God and fully man.