SEEING GOD -- Devotional for November 17, from "Good Seeds"

Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man can see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8). No man has seen God at any time (John 1:18).

Here’s another one of those curious apparent contradictions in the Bible: On the one hand it is said of those who live sanctified, peaceful and pure lives that they are able to see the Lord, yet on the other hand we know that God cannot be seen at all with the human eye, for God is spirit, existing in perfection wholly apart from corporal manifestation. The eye organ can only see objects that have atoms and molecules. If God could be seen this way, He couldn’t be God at all, for the God of the Bible has no physical substance. If His essence were contained in – and therefore limited by – a body, He could only be in one location at a time, whether in geography or in history, and therefore not omnipresent, which is one of the attributes of the God we meet in the Scriptures. This is what makes man and God eternally distinct: man is incomplete without a body, whereas God would be incomplete with one. And yet, we are made in His image: we are on the same wavelength; we speak the same language. We are brothers, in a sense, at the heart level. And so, when conditions are right, we “see” one another. He always can see us, and yet because of our sin He must continually look away, even as He had to avert His face from His beloved Son on the cross, as He bore in His body the sin of the world. It is only because of the purity imputed to us by His grace, through our faith, that God can once again look upon us, for now, when He sees us, He sees more -– He sees Jesus! But then, what about our seeing Him? In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve looked fully upon God, not His substance (for there was none), but His essence. And with the eyes of their hearts they saw Him, and loved Him, and fellowshipped deeply with Him. But then, when they chose to follow the counsel of Satan, immediately their hearts were darkened –- the light in their spirits went out -– and they lost sight of the Lover of their Souls. The declaration of John 3:19, “Men loved darkness because their deeds were evil,” refers to all men, all the way back to the first man. When people make the foolish assumption that since they cannot see God, He doesn’t exist, it escapes their notice that it is not their cleverness, but their blindness, that leads them to such a conclusion. And there is only one way for those blinders to fall off: it happens by the work of Him who is THE WAY! He alone can cleanse men’s hearts. Through daily communion with Him and obedience to His Word we are gradually but steadily separated from sin and unto holiness and peace, and before we know it, with the eyes of faith we are beholding His lovely face.