What does God look like according to the Bible?

"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.

It stands to reason that no man hath seen God at any time. We can take account of a thing if it be a score of miles in length or breadth, and if it be a solid substance to be weighed. But can we imprison the wind to measure its dimensions, or tell where the light ends? God is a Spirit; and heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. He is everywhere present throughout this vast universe, greater than all He has created, not subject to change or break-up. Where could we begin to take account of Him? We may well ask this, as we read Job 38. He is "the King of the ages, incorruptible, invisible" (1 Tim. 1:17, New Trans.).

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.

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.

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.

Verses 9-11, record what was seen by Moses and the privileged company that began the ascent of Sinai. They "saw the God of Israel" and this is not contradicted by 1 Timothy 6:16, which refers to God in His essential being and glory. As Ezekiel saw, "the likeness of the glory of the Lord" (Ezek. 1:28), and as John in Patmos saw One who sat on the throne, who was "like a jasper and a sardine stone" (Rev. 4:3) so these saw a manifestation of God. We note that no attempt to describe Him is made. We are only told that what was beneath His feet had the appearance of "paved," or "transparent" sapphire and the "clearness" of heaven. To this extent they "saw God," and were sufficiently sustained in their spirits to eat and drink before Him.

The meaning of this must be considered in the light of John 1:18: “No one has seen God at any time,” and 1 Timothy 6:16; “whom no man has seen or can see.” Therefore it was not God personally whom they saw, but evidently some partial manifestation of His nature or character, for the language is symbolical that tells us, “there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity” (v. 10). This appears to be a vision that would inspire awe in all who were observers, realizing that it was indeed the great God of creation who was dealing with them. Compare the vision of Ezekiel 1, which ends with the words, “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (v. 28).

None but the only-begotten Son could make God known. Moses had been privileged to see the glory of God from “a clift of the rock,” and to see His back parts (Ex. 33:18–23), but it still remained true that “No man has seen God at any time.” In the Son incarnate God was made known in His nature, and in His disposition of grace towards men. Until the only-begotten Son came God was really unknown to men as He truly is. No angel could make God known, only the Son who is “the image of the invisible God.”

"Behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat," etc. God is not named as such in this account, save as "He that sat upon the throne." John is about to show us what the aspect seemed of the One who sits upon the throne, while there is that in God which "no man hath seen or can see. This is a representation, in a symbolical way, of the glory of God. He may assume any appearance that pleases Him; but as far as He permitted it to be displayed here, it was what could be compared to these precious stones. In Revelation 21 the bride, the New Jerusalem, comes down "out of heaven from God, having the glory of God; her light [was] like a stone most precious, as a jasper stone," etc. It is quite evident that this cannot be the essential glory of God. It rather means, I think, that it was not a human but a divine glory. There is in God that which He can confer upon the creature, and there is that which is incommunicable. Here divine glory is meant in contrast with creature glory — not that which would derogate from His majesty, but be a reflection of it. Her light was like a jasper stone; the wall also was of jasper (verse 18), and the first foundation (verse 19).* The general appearance of the city was as it were of jasper. This a little answers, I think, to the view we have in Revelation 4 of what John enjoyed of the sight of Him that sat upon the throne. In Rom. 5:2 it is said, not only that we have access to the grace of God in which we stand, but that we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. That glory of Him who sat on the throne, as far as it could be viewed by the creature, was presented under the figure of jasper and sardius (verse 3); and when the church comes forth in the glory of God, her light will be jasper-like. That is, the thought of God's glory, not man's, is the thing conveyed to the mind. Even in the "eternal day," there will be no such change as God abandoning or lowering the dignity of His own proper Godhead; for there must always be an infinite difference between God and the most exalted of His creatures. Still, there is a resemblance between the glory of God as seen by man, and the church's glory by and by. And this answers exactly to the words of our Lord in the Gospel of John (John 17:22-23): "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me."

The question of "likeness" is more difficult. I think, however, that "in our image as our likeness" identifies one with the other. Man is in God's likeness, not from his bodily form, nor merely from his dominion over the creatures, but from a real resemblance: an image is not always "like."