Yet with the Son of God it is different. With Him it is "Look and live!" As the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up". Numbers tells us that as many who just looked at this symbol, the mere symbol, of Christ's sacrifice lived. We are told in these last days (which started in the time of Christ) to look unto "the author and finisher of our faith".

What makes this all work for us, and what removes the inconsistency of the two ideas, is that the Son is the image of the Father. "He who has seen me has seen the Father". Jesus Christ is the One through which we have access to the Father.

With Christ it is "Look and live!" With the undiminished glory of the Father it is "Look and die". The Incarnation brings us closer to God, the Mediator manifests what we need to know of the Father, intercedes to Him for our failings, and reveals to us - as much as we can bear, through His Spirit - the knowledge of Him. The Father sees the well-beloved Son and is satisfied. We, from our humble position, see the Son (the image of the Father - Heb 1:3) and have life and the constant flow of life-giving grace ("streams of living water", etc.) that is ours by faith.

These are just a few gems from John Owen's "Christologia" (somewhere in the first five chapters).

"All the rational conceptions of the minds of men are swallowed up and lost, when they would exercise themselves directly on that which is absolutely immense, eternal, infinite. When we say it is to, we know not what we say, but only that it is not otherwise. What we [deny] of God, we know in some measure � but what we [affirm] we know not; only we declare what we believe and adore."

...

"In answer hereunto God tells him, that he cannot see his face and live; none can have either bodily sight or direct mental intuition of the Divine Being."

The passage above is about the Father, and His unapproachability. But we have the remedy, and the means of our salvation, in Christ. Owen goes on:

"He [God] had taken care that there should be a glorious image and representation of himself, infinitely above what any created wisdom could find out. But as, when Moses went into the mount, the Israelites would not wait for his return, but made a calf in his stead; so mankind � refusing to wait for the actual exhibition of that glorious image of himself which God had provided � broke in upon his wisdom and sovereignty, to make some of their own."

This is why idolatry is such a horrible cheat and a disgrace. It isn't just that God commands us not to make idols: It actually cheats us of the True image of God - Christ, in whom dwells bodily the fullness of the godhead - and gives us cheap and damning knock-off instead. Whether it is a brazen bull like Aaron made, or a beatific looking Jesusoid on our church walls, it will be destructive of our faiths if we let these representations horn in on our conception of God that the Holy Spirit is trying to enlighten us about. Christ, the true image of God, is to dwell in our hearts by faith. This is what the Holy Spirit strives to do in us. Our idolatry (any false images of God) wars against this spiritual work.

This is so important to us that the Apostle John ends his epistle with this:

"Little children, keep yourselves from idols."