Not only these but a number of other scriptural passages that deal with looking at or seeing God seem to contradict each other at first glance. In 1 Timothy 6:16, Paul writes of God: “… who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see …” (cf. John 1:18: “No one has seen God at any time”; Colossians 1:15: “He is the image of the invisible God”; 1 Timothy 1:17: “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”). But then, the Lord Jesus says in Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
There are also other places in the Old Testament where people have seen God (e.g., Hagar in Genesis 16:13; the elders of Israel in Exodus 24:10; Manoah in Judges 13:22; Isaiah in Isaiah 6:5). In order to understand these apparent contradictions, which have caused many a Bible reader trouble, we need to look at the nature of God and the way He reveals Himself.
Unlike His earthly creatures, God is an immaterial being: “God is Spirit” (John 4:24). The invisible spirit stands in contrast to visible matter. When the risen Lord stepped into the midst of the disciples and, in their fear, they mistakenly thought they were seeing a spirit, He replied to them: “Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39). God Himself is invisible, and no creature can ever see Him as such.
On the other hand, in the short passage in Colossians 1:14 and 15, we find two facts that are significant for answering the above question. Firstly, it confirms that God is invisible. Secondly, it states that there is One who is the image of the invisible God. This One is the eternal Son of God. Whenever and wherever the invisible God reveals Himself, He does so in His Son. He is from eternity the image of the invisible God, the radiance of His glory and the express image of His person as well as the eternal Word, i.e., the perfect expression of what God is (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3; John 1:1). At His incarnation, it says: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth … No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:14, 18). It is also said of Him that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily (Colossians 1:19; 2:9). Therefore, anyone who believes in Him can already see the “glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6) in spirit and in faith. But when the Lord Jesus comes to usher His redeemed into the heavenly Father’s house, we will “see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). This means that we will see the fullness of the Godhead in Him, even though it is and will remain eternally invisible in the absolute sense (cf. John 14:9).
But what about the people in the time of the Old Testament who saw God before His Son became man? In principle, the same applies here as we read about the time since His incarnation in the NT. Whenever God revealed Himself, He did so in the Son, even when He had not yet become man. It was the eternal Son who created the worlds: “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16; cf. John 1:3; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Hebrews 1:2). When Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up,” it was, according to John 12:41, the eternal Son of God in His glory.
Even when the OT speaks of the “angel of the LORD,” it is not referring to a creature but to the Son of God, who appeared in visible form before He became man. In contrast to the created angels, He is referred to as “the angel of the LORD” on one occasion, but “the LORD” or “God” on another occasion in the same context. This was the case, for example, with Hagar at the spring of water in the desert. It was “the angel of the LORD” who spoke to her (Genesis 16:7, 9, 10, 11). But in verse 13, she mentions “the name of the LORD who spoke to her: You are the God who sees” (Genesis 16:13). The angel of the LORD appeared to Moses in the bush, but it is the LORD Himself who speaks to him (Exodus 3:2, 4). In Judges 6, the angel of the LORD appears and speaks to Gideon (vv. 11 and 12), but in verses 14 and 16, the LORD Himself speaks. In Judges 13, Manoah recognized “that it was the angel of the LORD” who appeared to them several times and rightly said to his wife: “We shall surely die, because we have seen God!” (Judges 13:22). The elders of Israel, who according to Exodus 24:10 saw “the God of Israel,” thus saw “the LORD” and therefore basically the Son of God, just as Isaiah did later.
To summarize, this means that God Himself is invisible to creatures. However, His eternal visible revelation is the Son, who also showed Himself to people in a visible form in the time of the Old Testament, i.e., before His incarnation. In Him, man can see God in all His fullness. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ is God revealed in the flesh.
