The Personality of God

It is a majestic, glorious theme of the Bible that God is revealed as a real being.  It is also a fundamental tenet that Jesus is the Son of God.  If God is not a real being, it is impossible to have a Son who was the “image of His person” (Hebrews 1:3).  Further, it becomes difficult to develop a personal, living relationship with God if God is an unreal, intangible conception.

As God is so infinitely greater than we are, it is understandable that many people’s faith has balked at the clear promises that ultimately we will see Him.  It is impossible for sinful man to see God (Exodus 33:20), although this implies that were it not for our sinfulness, God is indeed a being who ‘can be seen’.  Israel lacked the faith to see God. Such faith comes from knowing God and believing His word. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).  “His servants shall serve him; and they shall see his face and His name shall be in their foreheads” (Revelation 22:3, 4).

Such a wonderful hope, if we truly believe it, will have a profound practical effect upon our lives.  “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

“We shall see him as he is (manifest in Christ).  And every man that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:2, 3). In this life our understanding of the heavenly Father is very incomplete, but we can look forward, through the tangled darkness of this life, to meeting Him at last.  Our ‘seeing’ of Him will doubtless be matched by our greater mental comprehension of Him.  Thus from the absolute depths of human suffering,

Job could rejoice in the totally personal relationship with God which he would fully experience at the day: “Though after my skin (death) worms destroy the body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:26-27). “Now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

Sis. Nancy Sikolia (Tongaren, Kenya)