What does God look like?

"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 circumscribed like ourselves, and He is an omnipresent spirit, and therefore though in heaven, He is here, and we being spirit are in His presence.

One of the essential attributes of God is His Invisibility; He is aoratos: Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17, etc. This, when applied to Him in His Essence must mean, not only that He cannot, but may not be seen; "Whom no man has seen, nor can see" (1 Tim. 6:16). Not even Moses could have looked on the face of God and lived. If God is to reveal Himself to the creature, it must be by an interpreting medium.

The apostle Paul tells us that God dwells in light — unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16). He is the invisible God (Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17; Heb. 11:27). No man has ever seen Him. It is not possible for man to see God in His essential Godhead. Man's constitution makes him able to see only what is within the range of his vision — not the invisible.

He is the image of the invisible God; that is, the God whom no man can see is found in Jesus. Every eye in redeemed creation shall be lit up with the glory of Jesus. He will represent God in creation, and will present Him perfectly to all. There will be no lack of light, for the One who is the image of the Invisible is Himself God, and therefore as far as God can be seen by the creature He will be seen in Jesus. He could say when here upon earth, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father.” In Him, in the days of His humiliation, the manifestation of God was perfect, for He could not be other than He was, and He was God manifest in flesh. When one of His disciples said to Him, “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,” Jesus answered him, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip?” Philip thought, like many another today, that there was something more to be seen of the Godhead than had come to light in Jesus, but what more can be seen than the Father? And He has been perfectly expressed in the Son. In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. When He, the Son, was here in manhood, the Father was also here in testimony, and the Spirit in power in Him; therefore all that God is in His approach to man came to light in Jesus. In His essential Being He cannot be seen. He is the invisible God, who dwells in light unapproachable, whom no man has seen or is capable of seeing.

The mind of man craves for some representation of the being he worships. From the degraded savage who tries to represent the supernatural forces around him by amulets and charms, to the idolater who invests his carved or molten image with divine powers, or the devotee who vainly prostrates himself before crucifix or images of saints, all betray this instinct for a tangible representation of the object of worship. Christ is the Image of God. An image of Christ is therefore absurd, and a negation of all that He is; for if He be the Image of God, why require an image of Him? God as God is invisible. He fills heaven and earth, and no finite creature could take account of so glorious a Being whose time is eternity, whose dimension is space, whose being is Spirit. There was every necessity why He should be adequately represented to our ken. But who among created beings could be the embodiment of the Uncreate? Our marvel is that all that God is in His own being is adequately set forth in Christ. There was no deficiency in Him; He brought down here the entire fullness of the Godhead — setting it forth without flaw from the stable of Bethlehem, the waters of Jordan, and the synagogue of Nazareth, right on to the grave of Lazarus, the garden of Gethsemane, the cross of Golgotha, the emptied tomb, and the throne of glory. There is no one else capable of compassing in his own person all the majesty and the nature of God. Jesus is the Son; there is therefore, no disparity between Him and God, in Him was most perfectly expressed every element in the divine nature. Renewed by grace, we draw near to our Saviour with unshod feet and gaze into His face; and in Him is the absolute, complete, final revelation of God. Never, in any religion or philosophy before, has it been written "GOD IS LOVE." But the truth is out now — in Jesus. God's nature is disclosed, set before men and celestial beings, revealed in the Man who is also, and must be, eternal Son.

Now God cannot be seen. Scripture says that “God is light” and that God dwells in unapproachable light, and no man has seen Him or can see Him. That was true then and it is true now and for ever. God in His absolute character as Creator, as Father, Son and Spirit—ONE GOD dwelling in unapproachable light—cannot be seen, just as my neighbour has never been seen.

Yet at this time Moses was denied the full answer to his prayer. Moses could not see God's face, for no one could see Him and live (v. 20). Yet the Lord would encourage him by what we may consider a partial revelation of His nature or character. He tells Moses to stand on a rock, and that God would put Moses in a cleft place in the rock while God passed by. He would cover Moses with His hand, however, so that Moses would only see God's back parts, not His face.

On God's part this was a condescending act of grace. For God's glory is so great that it is impossible for a creature to even imagine what He looks like. How can we ever comprehend a Being like this? But Moses seeing God's back parts is only symbolical of people in the Old Testament seeing the evidence of God's having been there. We too can read the Old Testament and conclude that God has certainly been present there, but not revealed as He is now in Christ.

These questions must be left without reply. The other Apostolic testimonies which declare the Son of God to be 'the image of the invisible God,'9 'the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,'1 though strikingly assertive of the Lord's divinity, are by no means identical in force with the language of the verse now before us. For they respect rather what is manifested than what is essential, though the latter is plainly involved in the former. But Paul here uses an expression of a different kind. With him essential Godhead has a form. No merely theological definition of deity exists of a perfectly satisfactory kind. Nor is this surprising, as the very attempt at such definition on any of our parts is but a spiritual impertinence, since what is neither visible nor mentally comprehensible cannot be defined. All such endeavours are in their nature not 'of faith,' and are therefore self-condemned. To listen to God's words, and record faithfully in our hearts what is by Him revealed on such a subject, is our safety and our praise. Accepting the unauthorised assumption that God is 'without body, parts, or passions,' very many who read Paul's words take 'form' loosely in the sense of 'nature.' But precision as well as truth belongs to all inspired words, and 'form' is surely not the same as 'nature.' And that the Father has a form or shape2 may be inferred from the Lord's own declaration to the Jews.

The Father's face is seen now in heaven by His children's angels, and will be seen by themselves hereafter;3 but this outshining or revelation of His name and glory is not the same thing as the discovery of His essential form. Invisible and unapproachable to man, God is; and, on the authority of this passage, has a form peculiar to Himself. And Jesus from eternity was in that form. This, as a point of revealed truth, is a part of the 'common faith' of Christians; intelligible it can never be, at least to any in this mortal flesh.

But that is not all. He lets them know they are to render to God the things that are God’s. If the coin bore the image of Caesar, and therefore was his, on whom was the image of God stamped? It was stamped at the beginning upon man, and in spite of the fall it has not been altogether effaced. The image and superscription of God are still discernable. Man was made in the image and likeness of God. No, I do not mean that skeleton of yours with its load of human flesh, sheltering something that death cannot touch. Infidels tell us that Scripture represents man as in God’s image, and that man is framed much after their ancestors that lived among the trees of the wood. I do not mind in the least whether a man’s skeleton is, or is not, like that of a gorilla, a chimpanzee, or a dog-faced baboon; God has made him in His own image and likeness, and this is moral, not physical. Man has been set as centre and head over a system that has been subjected to him, and upon which are his fear and his dread. Not only this, but he has been endowed with an affectionate regard for all that have been placed under his dominion. In this way, and not as to his physical frame, is man the image of God.

What are we to understand by the words, "image" and "likeness"? Certainly neither term has reference to man's physical frame. Putting it briefly, "image" represents; "likeness" resembles. An image is not necessarily like the thing or person it is intended to represent. The coin that was shown to the Lord Jesus in Matt. 22:20 may not have borne a "likeness" of Caesar, but it certainly bore an "image" of him. As made in the "image" of God, man is set in this world to represent Him to the lower creatures in rule and blessing; this term has thus to do with man's position. "Likeness" has reference to his moral being, as one capable of entering into relationships and bearing responsibilities. Neither God's "image" nor "likeness" has been lost by the fall (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9). It is because of God's image in man that the sin of murder is so serious. To kill one who represents God is high treason against Him whom he represents.