WHAT DOES GOD LOOK LIKE?

In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion . . . over all the earth. . . .”  God wanted man to be a reflection of Himself.  We might say that He wanted us to be made in the “spittin’ image” of Himself.  And in Genesis 1:27, God declared that He did just that; both male and female are made in His image. 

After the fall of Adam, He and Eve “. . . heard the voice of the LORD God (Jehovah Elohim) walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God (Jehovah Elohim) amongst the trees of the garden” (Gen. 3:8).  Jehovah Elohim refers to the Son of God, and not to the Father (see www.skipslighthouse.blogspot.com 02/07/12 JESUS IS JEHOVAH LORD GOD!).  The Word of God is clear; no man has ever seen the Father (Jn. 1:18; 6:46; 1 Cor. 2:29; 1 Tim. 6:16).  The Person Adam and Eve saw was the Pre-Incarnate Christ.  

Following their expulsion from the garden, lost human beings have been obsessed with knowing what God looks like.  From Genesis 31:19 through Revelation 20:4, mankind has repeatedly attempted to come up with an “image” to worship.  The Apostle Paul wrote that man has worshipped just about everything God created instead of worshipping the Creator Himself (Rom. 1:21-23).  Because we live and experience life through our senses, we want to see God.  Some say that if they could only see God, they would believe.  Unfortunately, that which could be seen of God was manifest, and man killed Him (Jn. 1:1, 14; 14:9; 1 Tim. 3:16; etc.).      

It is that desire in the heart of man which drives him to imagine what God looks like.  And, using his imagination, he “creates his own Creator” in the form of an idol.  God, of course knew this, and so the made His feelings known by forbidding the making of idols as part of His number one Commandment (Exod. 20:3-6):  “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exod. 20:4). 

A good example of how even the saved heart desires to comprehend God, is the song, “I Can Only Imagine” by Mercyme.  One stanza says, “I can only imagine / What my eyes will see / When Your face / Is before me.”  Unlike the lost who cannot worship without seeing, the saved who worship God without seeing, are worthy of the praise of Jesus (Jn. 20:29)!

Seeing is believing, but believing does not always require seeing!