What does God look like according to the Bible?
The Bible never gives a physical description of God, and it goes further: it says plainly that no one has ever seen Him. Yet Scripture also speaks of His face, His hand and His eyes, and it tells us that God has made Himself known — so the real question is not what shape God has, but how the unseen God has shown us what He is.
God Is Spirit
The first answer Scripture gives is that God has no dimensions to describe. One writer puts the problem in terms anyone can test:
W. H. WestcottIt stands to reason that no one has ever seen God. We can take account of a thing if it is twenty miles long or wide, and if it is a solid substance that can be weighed. But can we imprison the wind to measure its size, or tell where the light ends? God is a Spirit; and heaven, and the highest heaven cannot contain Him. He is everywhere present throughout this vast universe, greater than all He has created, not subject to change or decay. Where could we begin to take account of Him?
Why Scripture Speaks of His Face and Hands
If God has no body, the Bible's physical language about Him must be doing something else. One writer treats these expressions as a settled pattern of Scripture rather than a description:
A. J. PollockThe Bible is full of such symbolism. For instance, God is a Spirit, and therefore has no body. Yet we read of His "back," His face, His eyes, His nostrils, His feet, His hands, and so on, all intended to convey definite thoughts in symbolic language.
Glimpses Before Christ Came
God did appear to people in the Old Testament, but always in a covered, partial way. Even the greatest of those encounters had a limit set on it — Moses was allowed to see God's back, not His face:
F. B. HoleThe full revelation of God, however, waited for the coming of the Lord Jesus. The most that was possible even for so great a man as Moses was to see God's back (Ex. 33:23). Certain of the divine attributes were emphasised, such as His mercy and patience; the full revelation of Himself was only possible in the only-begotten Son who was God and became Man.
Those earlier appearances were not all alike, and one writer sorts them by how much was hidden. Abraham met a visitor at his tent door; Jacob wrestled a man at a place he named Peniel; Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel saw something far more overwhelming:
J. G. BellettIn earlier days there were manifestations of Him, the Son of God, sometimes in veiled, sometimes in unveiled glory. To Abraham at the tent door, to Jacob at Peniel, to Joshua under the walls of Jericho, to Gideon, and to Manoah, the manifestations were veiled… To Isaiah, to Ezekiel, and to Daniel, the Son of God appeared in unveiled glory; and He had, by a gracious process, to make the brightness of the glory bearable to them (Isa. 6; Ezek. 1; Dan. 10).
Commentators differ on how far to press this. Darby writes, "I believe myself that all the appearances in the Old Testament are the Son's," while others describe them more cautiously as appearances of "the Angel of the Lord" in which the speaker uses language only God could use.
The Son Is the Image of the Invisible God
The New Testament's answer to "what does God look like" is a Person, not a picture. Christ is called the image of the invisible God — and one writer draws out exactly how much that claim covers, and where it stops:
James BoydHe is the image of the invisible God; that is, the God whom no one can see is found in Jesus… As far as God can be seen by the creature He will be seen in Jesus. He could say when He was here on earth, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." In Him, in the days of His humiliation, the manifestation of God was perfect… In His essential Being He cannot be seen. He is the invisible God, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or is able to see.
What He Is, Rather Than How He Looks
Scripture does describe God — but in terms of nature, not appearance. And it is careful about which words it uses that way:
Julius A. Von Poseck"God is light," and "God is love." These two are His essential qualities — His very being. We know that power, dominion and authority, wisdom and riches belong to Him. But nowhere does Scripture say that "God is power," or that "God is wisdom." We know that God is holy, righteous, and just, and that He is good, gracious, and merciful. But these divine qualities are only the visible results of what God is in Himself, that is, "Light," and "Love."
The Promise of Seeing
Jesus promised that the pure in heart would see God, and that promise is not cancelled by God's invisibility:
Arend RemmersGod in His nature is a spirit and invisible… But in Colossians 1:15 it is added that the eternal Son of God is the image of the invisible God… We shall see Him who is the Son of God, who became Man to reveal God, and in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily. We shall see Him in perfect and undisturbed glory, and will worship Him eternally.
Summary
- Unseen — God is Spirit: without body, without measurable size, never seen by anyone.
- Symbolic — His "face," "hands" and "eyes" in Scripture are picture-language carrying definite meaning, not anatomy.
- Veiled — Before Christ, God showed Himself in covered glimpses; Moses got only God's back.
- Declared — In the Son the unseen God is perfectly expressed: as far as a creature can see God, He is seen in Jesus.
- Seen — What Scripture tells us to look at is not form but nature — light and love — and one day we will see Him in undimmed glory.