No One Has Seen God at Any Time

What a worldview shattering claim in John 1:18!

No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

For centuries, even millennia, people had their religious perspectives. They would put their gods at war based on their own knowledge and understanding. We still see this trend today because, as natural and worldly people, we love to be puffed up in our knowledge and religious practice. After centuries of discovery and the development of tradition even within Judaism not only in their interpretive writings and extra-biblical authoritative sources like the Talmud, John dropped a line that shattered their haughty hearts and drew them to true repentance. No one has seen God at any time.

All of their tradition and interpretive writings didn’t help them to know God because they came from people who didn’t see God. As a preacher, this Gospel is humbling for me. As people who punch much value in our religious traditions, interpretations, and practices, it should be humbling for all of us. Who are we to think we know about God whom no one has seen at any time? Who are we to think we can get to the one who remains unseen? Who are we to think we can get so puffed up in our religious practice to have the pride to tell others how they can get to God? If we say we have seen Him, or that others did, we contradict the very Scriptures we have used to make ourselves so prideful.

If no one has seen God at any time, what hope is there in our pursuit for the divine? How can we know what the correct religion is? How can we be confident at all in our faith? Is any of that even the point? Or, have we set our sights too low?

Join us this Sunday as we continue through John’s Gospel. Have a blessed weekend thinking about these things.