What God Looks Like

If you're anything like me, then at some point while you were growing up, you thought, "What does God look like?" It's not a bad question to ask. As human beings, our identities are intertwined with our appearance. Other people know us by the way we look. So what about God? What's he look like?

The issue with asking this, though, is that God is not like us. He doesn't exist in a physical body. God is spirit. So any image we create of God's appearance is only our own attempt at making sense of a personal being who is spirit. In the Bible, we find a lot of really cool descriptions of God, but even they aren't really what God looks like. Isaiah sees God on a throne in the temple while angels sing. But it's a vision. It's how God reveals himself to Isaiah in a way that Isaiah's finite mind can get some sort of handle on. 

In Exodus 33, Moses asks to see God's glory. It don't think this request was out of place. After all, Moses had already done a lot of things at God's direction. He went to Egypt and faced off with Pharaoh. He raised his staff while on the banks of the Red Sea and watched as the waters were pushed back. He had been leading a grumpy, discontented nation through the desert. So maybe he just wanted to see God's face as a reassurance that he was on the right track. But God's doesn't really give Moses what he wants. God says that no one can see his face and live, so instead, he puts Moses in a cleft in the rock while his glory passes by, and then allows Moses to see his back.

No one could see God's face.

And through all time, people have tried to put a face on God. I suppose the most common is to think of God as a giant man with a long white beard, wearing a toga, as if he were some sort of cosmic grandfather. Or maybe you think of God as a bright shining light. I don't know how you envision God. There might be a million different ways.

Today is Christmas Eve. And this weekend, we remember how, a couple thousand years ago, people did see God's face. You could look at God. And he looked like a baby in a feeding trough. I imagine he was probably crying because he was hungry or he was cold or because, well, that's just what babies do. 

It seems so....ungodly. Where's the giant white beard? Where's the golden throne? Why isn't he throwing lightning bolts around like javelins? God as a baby. It makes no sense. And that's the wonderful beauty of it. At Christmas, we celebrate how the Creator stepped into his creation to save his creatures. We were floundering in sin and guilt. Jesus entered the picture when "long lay the world in sin and error pining." We couldn't do anything to save ourselves, so God became enfleshed (or incarnate, I guess you could say) to save us. And the God whose face we couldn't handle, who stood so far above and beyond us that our descriptions of him were woefully inadequate, came near in Immanuel. 

Thirty years later, the picture doesn't look much more glorious. Instead of just being a shivering child in a manger, Jesus becomes a beaten, bloody body nailed to a wooden cross. Again, it seems so ungodly. God dies. The one who had legions of angels at his command allowed nails to be driven through his wrists. Why? Because he loves us. Because we had made a mess of things and were unable to pull ourselves back up. 

This Christmas, I hope you remember to take time to worship and thank God for what he has done in Christ. How wonderful that the baby in the manger would become our sin-bearer! That our Lord would serve us! That the one who deserves all of the worship and praise would give himself up for us! And while, for a time it all looked anything but divine, we look forward to the day when Christ returns in a way that seems more fitting. Even now, his eyes are like blazing fire, his feet are like glowing bronze, and his face is shining in brilliance (Rev. 1:12-16). And he'll come back and make our salvation complete. And we'll see him face to face. 

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. Enjoy your roast beast.