“No One Has Seen God”
Question:
What is the meaning of the verse that says, “No one has ever seen God” (John 1:18)?
Did not God appear to many of the prophets and speak with them?!
Answer:
What is meant by the phrase “no one has ever seen God” is the Divinity, because the Divinity cannot be seen.
God—in His Divinity—cannot be seen by our material eyes, which perceive only material things, and God is Spirit…
Therefore, when God willed that we should see Him, He appeared in a visible form: in the image of a man, in the form of an angel. And finally, He appeared in the flesh, and we saw Him in His Son Jesus Christ, who said: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
For this reason, John the Evangelist, after saying, “No one has ever seen God,” continued by saying: “the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him,” that is, He has given us knowledge about God.
All those who depict the Father in a visible form are mistaken, and this very verse responds to them… such as those who portray the Father in an icon of the Baptism, saying: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” while the Father has never been seen.
As long as we are in this material body, its veil prevents the vision of God. We “see as in a mirror,” as the Apostle Paul says. But in eternity, when we put off the material body and put on a spiritual, luminous body that sees what the eye has not seen, then we shall see God.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Year Eight (Issue Forty-Four) 4-11-1977
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