Is God male or female?
God is not a man, and the Bible never presents Him as one sex or the other. Scripture answers the question by telling us what God is in His own being, and then by showing which names He chose to make Himself known by.
God Is Spirit
The Lord's own statement to the Samaritan woman is about God's essence, not merely His character. One writer presses the wording closely:
William J Hocking"God is a spirit." He is the Being who is spirit in essence. It is not merely that this is His character, as would be expressed if the phrase were "God is spirit." But God is a spirit. It refers to His being, to the Person. He has no bodily shape. He is not limited as we are, and He is an omnipresent spirit, so though He is in heaven, He is here, and we, being spirit, are in His presence.
No Likeness, Male or Female
When God spoke to Israel at Horeb, He deliberately let them hear a voice and see no shape. The ban that followed named the sexes directly:
Leslie M. GrantAgain Moses insists that Israel saw no form when the Lord spoke to them at Horeb, for there was a danger that they might corrupt themselves by making a carved image, whether in the form of a male or female or any animal, bird, reptile or fish.
Commentators read that silence as a safeguard built into revelation itself:
William KellyThe point urged here is that when they came and stood, as far as anyone then could stand, in the presence of God, they had seen no likeness of Jehovah. What a protection this was against the misuse of outward forms! God Himself did not disclose Himself by an external creature-shape.
Image Means Representation, Not Resemblance
Genesis says man was made in God's image and that He made them male and female. The image is about the role man was given, and it covers both sexes:
L. M. GrantMan is made in God's image, that is, he is created to represent God… The fact is stated, "Male and female He created them."
So sex belongs to the creature. It is one of the things God made, not something He shares.
The Name He Took: Father
God has revealed Himself under different names at different stages, and the name Christians know Him by is Father:
J. N. DarbyIn the New Testament, God takes yet another name — that of Father. So He says, "I will be a Father, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." That is, God (Elohim), who had the two earlier names, Jehovah or "Lord," and Shaddai, "Almighty," now took this special one of Father with the saints… I believe He is now God Almighty; but that is not the name by which He is known to me: He is known to me by the name of Father.
One writer suggests the direction runs from God down to us, not from human family life up to God:
J. S. BlackburnThe whole concept of fatherhood comes by the fact that God made man in His image. God made man with the concept and experience of fatherhood and sonship so much a part of his established constitution that when that secret comes to be told, we find that in our nature and in our being has been written beforehand the means by which the word immediately means something to us.
Motherly Tenderness in His Comfort
Scripture is free to compare God's care to a mother's, and does so without changing what He is:
G C WillisScripture says: "As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you." That is, I suppose, the highest earthly picture of the "comfort of love." When a little child (and often a big child) needs comfort, he goes to his mother, where he knows he will truly find the comfort of love. That is what we find in Christ, in how much greater a degree!
Seen Only in the Son
If God has no form, how is He known at all? Through a Person:
An Outline of Sound WordsGod essentially dwells "in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see" (1 Tim. 6:16), and is therefore "invisible" to men. It is therefore surpassingly wonderful that there is One who is called "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15)… The One upon whom the love of God rests has come into Manhood so that men might know the God who is invisible.
Summary
- Spirit. God is spirit in His very being — no body, no shape, therefore no sex.
- No image. He showed Israel no form on purpose, and forbade any likeness "of male or female," so that no creature shape could stand in for Him.
- Creature. Male and female are categories He created; both alike were made in His image, which means made to represent Him.
- Father. He is not male, yet He has taken the name Father as the name by which His people know Him — and human fatherhood is named after Him, not the reverse.
- Son. The invisible God is never seen; He is declared. Everything you can know of Him you learn in Christ, the image of the invisible God.