Have you seen God lately? It’s not uncommon to hear people say that they’ve seen God. They usually claim this by some spiritual experience, near-death experience, or vision of some sort. The internet is full of people who say, “I saw God.” Even George Strait has a song called, “I Saw God Today.” Of course, some people mean this literally, and others figuratively. Either way, we need to know if we can see God, and if so, in what sense.

Exodus 24:9-11 presents a problem for us.
“9 Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel,
10 and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself.
11 Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank.”
Twice in these verses (10 and 11), it tells us they “saw God.”

This is a problem because elsewhere the scriptures clearly teach that God cannot be seen.
“You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” (Exodus 33:20).
“No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18).
“He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:15-16).

In this last verse, the Apostle Paul says no man has seen the Lord because no man can see the Lord. Why are we not able to see the Lord?

God is invisible. 1 Timothy 1:17, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” You can’t see something that is invisible. That’s what invisible means!

God is invisible because God is Spirit. John 4:24 simply says, “God is Spirit.” His essential nature is spirit, and so He is invisible.

God is also invisible to us because He “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 5:16). This means that God is incomprehensible. He is infinite, and humans are unable to see his full glory. We can see glimpses, but we are not able to see the full glory of God. Because of our sinfulness and His holiness, we are not able to physically see Him. He is too much, too bright, too awesome, too otherworldly for our limited being to comprehend.

God in His essential nature as spirit and in His fullness of glory is unseeable by humans. We can easily understand that certain animals have capabilities that we do not. Dogs can hear frequencies we cannot hear. Birds can see things at distances we cannot see (Funny that my Collies can hear better than me, and the Robins in my yard can see better than me—and I’m supposed to be at the top of the evolutionary chain!). So it is easy to imagine that we lack the capability to see God. The comparison between a man and a dog is one thing, but the comparison between people and God is incalculable.

So what does it mean when “They saw God” in Exodus 24? Or Isaiah when he said, “I saw the Lord, seated on the throne”? Or, when Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor, for they shall see God”? Two things are in view.

First, they saw a manifestation of God—a display, a representation, or a form of Him—but not Him directly, rather his glory, holiness, power, etc. This representation is sometimes in the form of a being (an angel), a smoking mountain, a fire, a cloud, etc. When God appears to people in some form, as an angel, fire, smoking mountain, He is still not physically seen by humans in His essence, and in the fullness of His glory.

Second, when people see God in the Bible, the scriptures are employing metaphorical language. That is not to say that what they saw was metaphorical, but that “seeing” God is metaphorical. The word “see” then is used in the sense of “comprehend.” In these instances, people see something “of God,” not God Himself in all His glory.

I believe it’s okay to say (metaphorically), “I saw God today” referring to His handiwork in creation (the moon, stars, mountains, sunrise, etc.), for we are saying we saw the glory and power and beauty of God—but not God Himself. It’s okay to say, “I see God in you” because in this dispensation Christ lives in us, and should be seen in us: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

One day we will see Him. We will see the resurrected and glorified Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, who took on human flesh. He is the only way that we can see the fullness of God that we are capable of ever seeing, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18).

We will see Him face to face. “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). That one day will the most exciting, spectacular day of our lives. There are no words to describe what we will see. We get bits and pieces of descriptive words from the Bible, which merely whets our appetites. Those bits and pieces will have to hold us for now. One day we will see Him in all His glory. I can’t wait, can you?