He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. (Colossians 1:15)

Simply put, God is invisible; we can’t physically see Him the way we would see another person. He is beyond our five senses. Yet God at times, straining language conventions, does seem to appear to people in some fashion.

On the one hand, we read that He told Moses, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” (Ex 33:20). God’s invisibility to fallen humanity protects us all from being blown away by the unfiltered radiance of His glory. Just as He prevented the first couple from eating from the tree of life lest they live forever in a fallen state, so too, His cloak of invisibility protects us from immediate annihilation. If one glimpse at a solar eclipse can leave a person blind, one look at God could rip a person apart atom by atom in his own personal nuclear explosion.

Yet Jacob, after wrestling with the Angel of the Lord, said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved” (Gen 32:30). It appears God at times does reveal His awesome glory, but it must be dialed down for human consumption. How else could it be? In fact, how could God possibly reveal anything about Himself in a way that is humanly perceivable? Simply putting anything about God into words is a reductionist exercise. Like trying to proverbially describe an elephant to an ant, it’s virtually impossible.

Yet God, in the ultimate cosmic condescension, shows His glory in a way that we can comprehend: He sent Jesus to explain Him fully to us. As the apostle John write, “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). God in the flesh, Immanuel, can now be seen.

Today, we can’t physically see Jesus. We see Him through reading the Word and contemplating what has been written about Him. The Spirit of God in us resonates these truths deeply so that we can say, “Yes, once I was blind, but now I can see.” The words Jesus spoke to Philip are profound: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

What does all this mean for us? Some day we shall literally and physically see Him in all His glory, unmitigated, unfiltered. Not just an earthly Jesus, but a resurrected Jesus. And then we will not be blown away, but instantly changed. John writes, “We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). What glory that will be!

Lord, I eagerly await the first thing I shall see in heaven: You.