Seeing God?

“The Love of God, will never fail nor lose its glory, ‘till we see Him face to face.”  That line is from the old song “The Love of God” (words by Frederick Martin Lehman and Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, music by Frederick Martin Lehman and  Claudia Lehman Mays, written in 1917, now in the public domain). 

We have always found that line to be curious because it does seem to imply that the love of God will fail or lose its Glory once we get to Heaven.  We find no such spiritual justification for this.     We may be overanalyzing it a bit.  It is just a song, and song authors frequently use metaphors for emphasis.  In this case, the clear emphasis is on the fact that God’s love for us is very great here on earth.

This does raise an interesting question that people often raise about the scriptures.  Paul in the second letter we have that he wrote to Timothy, wrote about this very fact in what we know as chapter 6 verse 16 when he wrote that wrote that no one has seen or can see God.  But we know people have seen God. 

The list of people who saw God in the Bible is longer than most people expect.    While it is not an exhaustive list of the people who saw God, there are a few obvious cases: Jacob (Genesis 33:20), Job (Job 42:5) and Stephen (Acts 7:56). 

But perhaps most notable is the way God chose to communicate with Moses.  In the same chapter (Exodus 33), the Bible notes that God used to speak with Moses face to face “just as a man speaks with his friend,” (Exodus 33:11) but then also notes that Moses cannot see His face because “no human can see me and live.”  (Exodus 33:20)

The clear answer lies in the duality of God.  God in His full glory cannot be seen.   He was in His full glory when He carved what now call the Ten Commandments with His own finger (Exodus 31:18) which was why He hid Moses in rocks on the mountainside and covered him when He passed by (Exodus 33:22).  In this case, Moses was still shining so brightly just from being exposed to God’s glory that he had to put a cover over his face.  (Exodus 34:29)

God can clearly choose not to represent himself in his full Glory.  After all, He sent His Son Jesus to represent him on earth in the form of a human. When God was talking to Moses face to face, He was obviously choosing to do so in a way that would not harm Moses.

So what about Stephen?  He saw the glory of God (Acts 7:55).  Remember we noted before that no one can see God and live. Stephen saw God in his full glory but then he died right away.

So how bright is God’s glory?  We get a hint that it is very bright.  Remember that when God created the world, He called light into existence on day one (Genesis 1:3-5), but did not create the sun until day four. (Genesis 1:14-19).   Where did the light come from until then?  We get another clue in Revelation 21:23 where we read that in heaven there is now need for “the sun or the moon to shine”, “for the glory of God gives it light.”

That is why whenever we sing the song “The Love of God” we sing the chorus slightly differently.  We say ““The Love of God, will never fail nor lose its glory, even when we see Him face to face.”