IMAGE OF GOD

It seems to be a stumbling-block to many in this world that they cannot see God. ‘If only I could see God I would believe in Him’, they say. There are two fundamental reasons why mankind cannot see God. The first lies in the very nature of God and is, simply, that He cannot be seen, 1 Tim. 6.16. He is a spirit being and therefore invisible to the human eye. ‘No man hath seen God at any time’, John 1.18; 1 John 4.12. Men have seen something of His glory, and they have seen manifestations of God, known as theophanies, but they have never seen Him in His essence. God’s answer to this problem was to send His Son into the world. Because Christ is God, He can reveal God to mankind. Therefore, Christ is the image, the perfect manifestation, of God. He could say, ‘he that hath seen me hath seen the Father’, John 14. 9.

The second problem in seeing God is in the spiritual sense. Here the problem does not lie in the nature of God but in the nature of man. Mankind is sinful and being sinful is neither able to see God nor to understand Him. This problem is compounded by the fact that Satan himself, the god of this world, has deliberately and maliciously blinded the hearts of sinners so that they cannot see God’s truth.

How then, can God overcome this blinding of the minds of sinners? In the beginning, when He created the heavens and the earth, He commanded light to shine out of primeval darkness with the majestic words, ‘Let there be light’, Gen. 1. 3. The God of creation in the Old Testament is the God of re-creation in the New. However, with spiritual blindness, He does not merely command light to shine into the hearts of men; His Son is the light that shines into their hearts. This light shines out of spiritual darkness to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This is a sovereign act of God in salvation, for without it, a sinner, as Paul knew, would remain bound in the darkness of ignorance and sin, unable and unwilling to see. Satan has indeed great power over the hearts of men. Yet, God has the greater power, to over-rule and over-ride this blindness, enabling men to see the truth and believe it.