Truth That Bears Fruit: The Icons and the Incarnation
On the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Fr. Nicholas Frazer explains why the Church fought for the holy icons: because the Son of God truly became man. Drawing on St. Paul's warning against empty quarrels and Christ's prayer that His disciples may be one, he asks whether our Orthodoxy bears fruit — in humility, communion, repentance and love.
Transcript
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Beloved in Christ, today the Church commemorates the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which gathered at Nicaea in the year 787. The Council defended the honouring of the holy icons and, more deeply, defended the truth of the Christian faith: the Son of God truly became man.
At first this may seem like a very distant theological dispute. Why should Christians have fought over icons? Why was this important enough for an Ecumenical Council? The answer is that the controversy was not simply about paintings. It was about who Jesus Christ is. The question before the Church was this: can the One whom we confess as the eternal Son of God truly be depicted as a man?
The Fathers answered, "Yes" — not because wood and paint are divine, and not because an icon itself is a god, but because the Word truly became flesh.
This is precisely what we hear in today's Gospel. Christ lifts His eyes to heaven and says, "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You." Here Christ is addressing the Father, the first Person of the Holy Trinity. Yet the One who speaks these words is the eternal Son, consubstantial with the Father, who has taken human nature upon Himself and entered into our world for our salvation.
Christ therefore speaks both of His eternal divine glory — "the glory which I had with You before the world was made" — and of the work He has accomplished in the flesh: "I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work which You gave Me to do." The eternal Son has become truly man without ceasing to be truly God.
This is why the holy icon matters. The Seventh Council taught that icons of Christ and His saints may be honoured, while the worship due to God alone is not given to created things. The Council famously expressed the principle that the honour shown to the image passes to the person represented. More deeply, the Council affirmed that the depiction of Christ bears witness to the reality of His Incarnation.
In other words, when we stand before an icon of Christ, we are being reminded: God has really come among us. God has taken flesh. God has entered human history. God has made Himself visible.
St. John of Damascus, one of the great defenders of the icons, expressed this beautifully: "I do not worship matter. I worship the Creator of matter, who became matter for my sake."
This is profoundly Orthodox. We are not saved by escaping creation. We are saved because God Himself has entered creation. Water becomes the instrument of baptism. Bread and wine become, by the grace of God, the Body and Blood of Christ. Oil becomes an instrument of healing. The Cross, wood fashioned by human hands, becomes the sign of our salvation. And the human body itself, once marked by sin and death, becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit.
The Christian faith is therefore not a religion of contempt for the material world. Christ created the world, and in the Incarnation He entered it. The Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council understood that denying the possibility of depicting Christ ultimately threatens the confession of the Incarnation itself. The Church confesses Christ as fully God and fully man.
But now we must listen carefully to the Apostle Paul, because it is possible to defend the faith with our lips while failing to live the truth in our lives. So Paul tells Titus, "Let our people learn to apply themselves to good deeds." And then immediately he warns against stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions and quarrels over the law, because such things are unprofitable and futile.
This is an important word for us on the Sunday of an Ecumenical Council. The Church does not tell us that doctrine is unimportant — quite the opposite. The Fathers of the Council endured controversy, suffering, persecution and even death, because the truth about Christ mattered. But Paul reminds us that theological truth is not given to us so that we can become argumentative and arrogant people. We are not Orthodox merely because we know the correct words. We are Orthodox so that the truth of Christ may become the life of Christ within us.
An icon of a saint is therefore not merely a portrait of someone who lived long ago. It silently asks us a question: am I becoming like Christ?
St. Basil the Great spoke of sacred images as communicating visually what the word communicates through hearing. What Scripture teaches our ears, the icon places before our eyes. Look at the saints. We see people who prayed, people who forgave, people who endured suffering, people who gave their possessions away, people who remained faithful when remaining faithful cost them everything — people whose human nature was transfigured by divine grace. The icon is therefore not simply telling us who the saint was. It is showing us what a human being can become in Christ.
And this brings us to the Gospel. Christ is approaching His Passion, and He lifts up His eyes to heaven and prays to the Father. And what does He pray for? He prays for His disciples: "Holy Father, keep them in Your name... that they may be one, even as We are one."
The unity of the Church is not merely organisational unity. It is not simply agreeing to belong to the same institution. Christ points us toward the eternal communion of the Father and the Son. The Church is called to become a living icon of that communion.
And that is why the Seventh Ecumenical Council is not merely a lesson in eighth-century Church history. It is a lesson for us now. The Fathers defended truth, but they also called the Church back to communion. Paul tells us to avoid quarrels that produce nothing. Christ prays that His disciples may be one.
And so the Church places these readings before us and asks: Does my Orthodoxy lead me into deeper communion with Christ and with my brothers and sisters? Does knowing the faith make me more humble? Does defending truth make me more charitable? Does venerating the saints make me more eager to imitate them? Does kissing the icon of Christ lead me to repentance before Christ? Does receiving the Body and Blood of Christ make me more willing to serve the person standing beside me?
St. Paul says that believers must not be unfruitful. That is perhaps the simplest test of our Christian life. The Orthodox faith must bear fruit. The icon must lead us to Christ. The doctrine must lead us to worship. Worship must lead us to repentance. Repentance must lead us to love. And love must lead us to good works. Otherwise, we risk becoming people who can speak correctly about the faith while failing to live the faith.
Today we honour the Fathers because they preserved for us the truth that God truly became man. But let us remember the consequence of that truth. Because the Son of God has taken our human nature upon Himself, human nature has been exalted, and every human life bears a dignity that comes from God Himself.
If God has taken flesh, then our bodies matter. Because the Son of God has united our humanity to Himself, the ordinary things of our earthly life can be touched by His grace and become occasions for holiness. And if Christ has prayed that His disciples may be one, then our life together in the Church must become an offering of love, forgiveness, patience and unity.
This is the purpose of the icons. This is the witness of the Fathers. This is the teaching of the Apostles. And this is the prayer of Christ: "Holy Father, keep them in Your name, that they may be one."
May the prayers of the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council preserve us in the true faith, guard us from empty controversy and division, and teach us to make the faith fruitful in our lives through mercy, humility, forgiveness and good works. And may we who behold the image of Christ become, by His grace, ever more truly conformed to His image. For He became man that we might become by grace what He is by nature. Amen.
