John 1:18 : No one has seen God at any time. The one and only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.

Again, this verse seems to be filled with mysterious paradox. First, John writes that no one has seen God, then, he says that now we have seen God revealed in Jesus. The Bible is clear that if we have seen Jesus we have seen God as we read earlier. The question then is, what is meant by, “No one has seen God” and He has been “revealed?”

We know that no one had been able to “see” God as clearly as they were able to when He came in the form of a man. The Bible tells us, however, that Jesus had to be reduced to be put in human form (Philippians 2:7). The Bible also says that God is Spirit (John 4:24), so in order to see Him, He would have to take a physical form of some kind. God has and will represent Himself in other physical ways such as in light (Revelation 21:23). There are two things that I can think of that make God impossible for mankind to fully “see.” They are His immensity and His intensity! Because of God’s great power and perfection, the best that we would be able to “see” would be someone who is made small enough for us to understand and more than that, He would have to be someone whose presence we could withstand.

Did you know that if a man looks at God he dies? You can read about this in Exodus 33:18-23. God is so much more powerful and perfect than we are that we would not survive just looking at Him. We can understand this in a small way by the considering the fact that we cannot look at the sunlight for long without going blind. God, who created the sun, would logically be brighter and considerably more harmful.

Jesus has revealed what God is like to us by meeting us where we could understand. After all, God would look like a man if He were in human form. We know this because of what Genesis 1:26 says. Not only that, Jesus has given us a view to what God’s personality is like though our relationship with Him. We can now get to know God through Jesus Christ.