Q: In Genesis 32:30, Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face.” Moses, too, saw God “face to face” (Exo. 33:11). So how can Jesus say that that “no one has ever seen God” (John 1:18)?
A: That’s a great question. It’s the same kind of question that the New Testament was written to answer. How is possible that people had actually seen God (“And they saw the God of Israel,” Exo. 24:10), but also that he could never be seen (“No man can see me and live,” Exo. 33:20)? And what can it possibly mean, for example, that the “LORD” (YHWH) stood there with Moses (in Exo. 34:5) while the “LORD” (YHWH) passed by (or over) him (in Exo. 34:6)? Passages like these are mind-bending to say the least. They led to all kinds of speculation in Israel about the nature and identity of God, including the “two powers in heaven” idea that the later rabbis rejected.
The first verse that you mention, John 1:18, begins to unlock the New Testament’s answer: “No one has ever seen God; an only begotten God, the one who is in the bosom of [or beside] the Father, that one has made him known.” The New Testament’s answer is that there are two distinct identities in heaven: (1) the God no one has ever seen (or the God “who is in secret” as Jesus put it in Matt. 6:6), and (2) a begotten God, also known as the Son of God, who has revealed this hidden Father. Early Christians understood this to mean that when the Bible speaks about people seeing God, it’s referring to the begotten God, God the Son. So when Adam or Abraham or Moses or any of the others saw God, they were actually seeing the Son of God, also referred to at times as the Messenger (or Angel) of the Lord. So for example, when the “captain of the Lord’s army” (Josh. 5:14) speaks as the “LORD” (YHWH) to Joshua (Josh. 6:2), this was the Son of God appearing as the Messenger of the Lord. Or when Ezekiel saw someone with the appearance of a man seated on the throne of the chariot of God (Eze. 1:26), who then speaks as the LORD (YHWH; Eze. 2:4), this too was the Son of God (compare Eze. 1:28 with Heb. 1:3). This was who Moses and the elders of Israel saw on Mt. Sinai (Exo. 24:10).Though this answer to the problem may seem to mean that there are two gods, as some Christian heretics understood it (notably the Gnostics), orthodox Christians were always careful to explain that this Son of God was not a different God. As Jesus put it, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). How exactly the Father and the Son (and the Holy Spirit) are one God has been the subject of lots of speculation ever since. But this all grew from pre-Christian speculation in Israel, based on the Hebrew scriptures, that there was some kind of complexity or plurality within the one true God.
For more on this topic, be sure to check out the article about Jesus on our website with its links to several specific teachings on the different appearances of the Son of God in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament): https://www.totheends.com/jesus.html
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