How do you reconcile John 1:18 with Exo. 24:9-11, etc.?

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In John 1:18 it says: "No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him."

How do you reconcile the above verse with scriptures like:

Exodus 24:9-11:

9 Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel,

10 and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself.

11 Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank.

Isaiah 6:1: "In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple."

The issue: in John it says no one has seen God at any time yet you have these OT scriptures that plainly tell us some did see him. How do you reconcile this discrepancy?

Sandra

Maybe it means no one has seen God (the Father) in all His essence and glory. That's why the second part of John 1:18 says that the Son has explained (revealed) Him. Hebrews says that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father.

As an interesting side note, I have heard that Jewish tradition says the original 10 commandments given to Moses were made of the same sapphire stone like the pavement mentioned in the exodus passage you quoted. Supposedly the letters were inside the stone, not etched on the outside. Of course this is not mentioned anywhere in scripture but I have always been curious about where that tradition came from.

About the sapphire pavement - in Revelation 4 it describes a 'sea like crystal' before the throne. I try to visualize the scene John describes here and all I can say is it boggles the mind and imagination - but I love it! :-)

Back to my original question - are there no more answers?

Sandra

Matthew Henry says that the prophets saw a "similitude" of God, not God himself. This is because God is spirit and cannot be seen unless he somehow chooses to reveal himself in some manner. Recall that he hid Moses in the cleft of a rock and covered him with his "hand" as he passed by allowing Moses to only view from "behind" as He passed by.

The Greek for "seen" in John 1:18 means more than just visual sight. It includes perception with experience. Read alongside "Son has revealed Him" makes clear that Jesus as God the Son alone knew the Father intimately and far more than any man.

I checked this verse out on an interlinear Bible (http://biblehub.com/interlinear/john/1-18.htm) and this is how they interpret it: The only begotten God. Ok, I understand this: Is the text saying no one has yet seen the incarnate God until now, or soon to be?

There were other times on the OT when the LORD appeared to individuals but many times he was initially identified as an Angel but later he was called LORD.

I know this is a difficult question but I think there must be a simple answer and it is eluding me...I have to teach John 1:1-18 next Sunday and always work to demystify difficult passages.

What say?

Sandra

Hi Sandra-

The verse is talking about God the Father and Jesus (the begotten God). No one has seen God, period. The verses that talk about men seeing God mean they are seeing a revelation of God. God cannot be seen because he is a spirit. But Jesus has revealed the Father to us.

The verses in the OT talking about the angel of the Lord are talking about a preincarnate appearance of Christ. That is my understanding.

There is no contradiction between John 1 and the passages you mention. The prophets did see God- but only as much as He wanted to reveal to their limited senses.

When Jesus the Son "saw" God in Jn 1:18, it was a visual sight but it was an experiential sight related to the oneness of God. No other man could possibly "see" God in this way, in spite of theophanies and epiphanies where men visually saw Him. This is not contradiction.

Jn 1:18 says something important about the eternity of Christ as God the Son: Jesus is co-eternal. He is Himself God. That is John's point, at least in part.

I read Luke 24:14-32 last night. Jesus walked with two of His own followers, people who had spent time with Him, and yet they did not recognize Him. But as we read the dialogue, we see that their minds were on carnal things. They were reasoning within themselves. They were focused on the geopolitical, on their idea that Christ would rescue Israel from Rome. Their eyes could not see Him because they were not discerning Him in the Spirit.

I think this parallels the passage in John 1. It says that no one has seen the Father at any time, but that the Son has REVEALED Him. Before the time of Christ, men saw only a dim figure of who God really was. But Jesus revealed to us the very image of the Father. We see, we perceive who God is through Christ. I don't think that this passage is talking about the literal eyes and the physical eyesight. The word used is that Jesus declared God. The word does not mean to see with the physical eyes, but rather to unfold who the Father really is. It is like me saying, "No one has really seen ME yet. They don't really know who I am. I want to explain to them who I really am."

Think of it this way. God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must do so in Spirit and in truth. It is only the Son that had a physical body. When Moses and Isaiah saw God, they were not really seeing God Himself. They were seeing some physical representation that God had, if this does not sound too strange, manufactured in order for them to see something, some representation of Himself. But they did not really SEE God. To see God, we must have Spiritual eyes.

So I think that really is the key to understanding why these verses sound contradictory. These verses are not talking, in my opinion, about literal, physical sight, but rather about revelation or spiritual sight.