“Can you explain seemngly contradictory statements about seeing God face to face?”

QUESTION: Please explain these seemingly contradictory statements:
“You cannot see My face, for no man shall see Me, and live” (Ex. 33:20 NKJV), and “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Gen. 32:30).
“God is not a man, that He should lie” (Num. 23:19), and “Then Jacob was left alone: and a Man wrestled with him” (Gen. 32:24).

ANSWER: Our Lord tells us that “God is Spirit” (Jn. 4:24). No man can look upon God in His essential being. He dwells in “unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16), and no man has seen Him or can see Him. Even those holy angelic beings, the seraphim, cover their faces in His majestic presence, crying one to another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isa. 6:1-3).

Yet God in His marvelous grace has condescended to reach out to man. It is important to keep this clear. God can reach down to man. Man cannot reach up to Him – witness the disastrous end of the tower of Babel project (Gen. 11). But from the very beginning of man’s history God has reached down to him. In Eden, the guilty couple “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God” (Gen. 3:8). When God has thus reached down to man, He has done so in a visible form.

Such appearances are sometimes referred to as theophanies (appearances of the deity). We may read, for example, of “the angel of the Lord” appearing to someone in the Old Testament; as we read on, we realize that it was God Himself in visible form. God (and two angels) appeared to Abraham (Gen. 18), wrestled with Jacob (Gen. 32:24-30), spoke face-to-face with Moses (Num. 12:8), appeared to Joshua as Commander of the Lord’s army (Josh. 5:13-15), appeared to Gideon (Jud. 6:11-18), to Manoah’s wife (Jud. 3:3-9), and others in the Old Testament. Some were afraid. Those accustomed to walking with God showed respect – fear of the Lord – but not terror.

The supreme example of God reaching out to man, of course, is in the New Testament: “The Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world” (1 Jn. 4:14). “God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels” (1 Tim. 3:16). How marvelous to realize that angels beheld the face of their Creator for the first time when they looked down upon the “Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger” (Lk. 2:8-16). One great purpose of the Lord Jesus being here on earth was to reveal the Father in all His heart of love. He said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9). And since His death and resurrection, His Father is now also our Father (Jn. 20:17).

Balaam was right in saying “God is not a man, that He should lie”(Num. 23:19). But in His infinite, marvelous grace, God stooped to become man. And the Lord Jesus, as man, has now ascended into heaven and seated Himself at God’s right hand (Heb. 1:3,13). He is there on our behalf, our Great High Priest and our Advocate with the Father (Heb. 4:14; 1 Jn. 2:1). Indeed, in the psalmist’s words, “This was the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes” (Ps. 118:23).

God has come down to man that He might raise man up to His very presence: “And thus we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Th. 4:17). Throughout eternity, “the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). With the apostle we may well exclaim, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33).

By Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.