Why are statues of Jesus not regarded as “graven images”; forbidden by the third commandment?
Comcerning “icons” the Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say: Holy images 1159 The sacred image, the liturgical icon, principally represents Christ. It cannot represent the invisible and incomprehensible God, but the incarnation of the Son of God has ushered in a new “economy” of images: Previously God, who has neither a body nor a face, absolutely could not be represented by an image. But now that he has made himself visible in the flesh and has lived with men, I can make an image of what I have seen of God . . . and contemplate the glory of the Lord, his face unveiled.27 1160 Christian iconography expresses in images the same Gospel message that Scripture communicates by words. Image and word illuminate each other: We declare that we preserve intact all the written and unwritten traditions of the Church which have been entrusted to us. One of these traditions consists in the production of representational artwork, which accords with the history of the preaching of the Gosp
The commandment isn’t specifically against making pictures or statues. It is against worshiping the images themselves. For example, in the book of Exodus, the Israelites created a golden calf when Moses went up the mountain. The problem wasn’t that they created the image, but the fact that they were worshiping it as their god. So the statues of Jesus are ok because they are not worshiped directly, only used to get spiritually closer to Jesus.
