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Colossians 1:15
“[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”
As we make our way through our study of the attributes of God, the divine names, and metaphors used for our Creator, we come today to another attribute that is both expressly taught in Scripture and a consequence of other attributes. We are talking about the invisibility of God, which belongs necessarily to His divine essence in light of His infinity and spirituality (Ps. 145:3; John 4:24). After all, we cannot view an infinite substance, at least not all of it, since it has no boundaries, and spirits are ordinarily not visible to us either.
God’s invisibility is not a reality necessarily only as a consequence of other divine attributes but also because the Lord reveals it explicitly in His Word. For example, we read in today’s passage that Christ “is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). The divine essence, in other words, cannot be seen, and this does not surprise us because His essence is spiritual, not material; thus, it is inaccessible to our five senses. This means that in the theophanies (manifestations of God) described in Scripture, people never really saw the divine nature in itself but rather a created effect that God used to represent Himself to our physical senses. For example, in seeing the fire of the burning bush, Moses did not actually see God in Himself but rather saw a vision that the Lord gave to demonstrate His presence (Ex. 3:1–2). With Jesus, it is more appropriate to say that those who viewed Him in the flesh actually saw God because the Son of God assumed a human nature, including a physical body, into personal union, and thus the human nature is truly His. To see the humanity of Jesus is to see the Son of God because it is the Son’s humanity. Nevertheless, even in the incarnation, the divine essence itself is not made visible to us.
Of course, the Bible does say that one day we will see the face of God, a reality that theologians commonly call the beatific vision (Rev. 22:4). We do not know exactly what that means, although we know that it will satisfy us completely. Perhaps, as theologians such as Jonathan Edwards have suggested, God will make His deity immediately perceptible not to our physical eyes but to our minds. In any case, as we wait for the day when we will see God, we should allow the invisibility of God to move us to humility and to not say more about Him than He has revealed. We cannot find the invisible Lord on His own, but He must speak to us, and we do well not to try to make God more visible than He has made Himself.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
John Calvin comments: “God in himself, that is, in his naked majesty, is invisible, and that not to the eyes of the body merely, but also to the understandings of men, and that he is revealed to us in Christ alone. . . . For in Christ he shows us his righteousness, goodness, wisdom, power, in short, his entire self.” Although God is in His essence invisible, we do see Him truly in Christ. We must therefore go to Him in order to know the only true God.
For further study
- Exodus 33:18–20
- Matthew 5:8
- Romans 1:20
- 1 Timothy 1:17
The bible in a year
- Deuteronomy 29–30
- Mark 16