Making the Invisible God Visible
“Mary did you know…
…when you kiss your little baby
You’ve kissed the face of God…"
Buddy Greene and Mark Lowry
This popular Christmas song attempts to capture the incredible moment when the God of the universe took to himself full humanity, including a human body, and was held and nursed by his own creation. In the above quoted line in particular, the song captures the incarnate reality of the embodiment of God: Jesus makes the invisible God visible. Perhaps even more striking, however: that was originally our responsibility. That was our role, our job. Humanity was created to image God, to make the invisible God visible.
The first chapter of the Bible reminds us that in the beginning God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26, ESV), and he did. The chapter continues, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27, ESV). Part of this image of God, of course, includes representing his rule over all that was created. Humanity was made to represent and reveal God to the created world. Importantly, this representation of God comes through the very “imaging” of God: humans making the invisible God visible to the created world. I love how Derek Kidner captures this “embodiment” of God through humanity in his commentary on Genesis:
When we try to define the image of God it is not enough to react against a crude literalism by isolating man’s mind and spirit from his body. The Bible makes man a unity: acting, thinking and feeling with his whole being. This living creature, then, and not some distillation from him, is an expression or transcription of the eternal, incorporeal creator in terms of temporal, bodily, creaturely existence — as one might attempt a transcription of, say, an epic into a sculpture, or a symphony into a sonnet.
Through humanity, God reveals himself in bodily form. This embodiment of God through humanity made “in his image” informs the prohibition against idols in the second commandment: the only physical representation of God approved by God is the human form. Humanity was made in the image of God in order to image God to the created world. We were supposed to make the invisible God visible. As the story unfolds, however, we blew it. And throughout history, we continue to blow it. We do not reveal well the character and nature of God; we have become, post-Adam, faulty imagers of God. Therefore, God himself had to embody himself in human flesh, so we might be restored to our first calling and our created design. Humans were made to make the invisible God visible, and the incarnation of Christ makes that possible again.
Made Flesh
John 1 reminds us that the Word, which “was God” and through whom “all things were made,” “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 3,14, ESV). Here we see the Word making the invisible God visible. In fact, the apostle John continues, because of this embodiment of God, “we have seen his glory” (John 1:14, ESV). Surely, the apostle is reflecting on Moses’ request to glimpse the glory of God (Exod. 33:18-20), and he uses those events at Mount Sinai to explore this embodiment of God in the life of Jesus. Similarly, the apostle Paul attempts to capture this embodied representation of God through his reflection on Genesis 1 in Colossians 1. He writes, Jesus Christ “is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15, ESV). In turn, the apostle Paul describes our new status in Christ as the restored humanity. “New in Christ” means, in part, that redeemed humanity now again images God, making the invisible God visible, as we live out that new humanity which is being restored in Christ to the original intended design.
Resurrection
This restored design, the apostle Paul points out, comes to us particularly through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He writes, “…having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith…” (Col. 2:12, ESV, see also 3:1-4). This resurrection is distinctly embodied, as the Apostles’ Creed reminds us. Why embodied? Because humanity was made, in part, to make the invisible God visible to the created world. The apostle John may already be hinting at this bodily resurrection when he combines “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” with the affirmation “we have seen his glory” (John 1:14). Furthermore, he signals here the new humanity coming through this embodied Word: a people restored to their original design of making the invisible God visible. In both anticipation and present reality, the apostle can say, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man” (Rev. 21:3, ESV).
Holy Spirit
How is that anticipation of Revelation 21 a present reality? The Holy Spirit of God inhabits every follower of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the Old Testament pictures of tabernacle and temple come forward into the New Testament where the apostles describe both the individual follower of Jesus and especially the collective body of Jesus followers as God’s holy temple (1 Cor. 6:19; 1 Peter 2:5). This glorious picture of the embodiment of God in human flesh prompts the apostle Paul to exclaim, “So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20, ESV). Incredible, isn’t it?! The very Spirit of God himself is embodied and made visible through us. We are being renewed in the image of God, a renewal which includes being restored to our original design. Through our lives, through our character—indeed through our very bodies—we make the invisible God visible to the world around us.
Did You Know
This song with which we began is, then, not just a song for the honored Mary who got to hold God in her arms, but it is also a song for each one of us. It’s a reminder that the Word was made flesh because of our failure to image God. It’s a reminder that Jesus Christ, in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19, ESV), came to us, embodied, so he might—through his life, death, and resurrection—restore humanity to our original design.