To consider these sacred images as merely decorative or representative of a primitive style is offensive. Icons are essential to the faith because they bear witness to the Incarnation. The icon is the image of the invisible. The honor shown to these images is not offered to paint, wood, and mosaic. That would be idolatry.
Icons testify to Christian hope.
They help Christians live with confidence, to await Christ's return in glory, and to look forward to the completion of God's purpose for this world. How the icons do this is through the vividness and particularity of visual art. What they are concerned with is not portraiture in the conventional sense. They do not depict the body as we know it but rather the resurrection body as we will come to know it and as the saints in glory know it already. Icons present creation correctly, in the light of Christ's victory over death, and they assist in the process of opening our hearts and lives to that triumph.