Throughout Scripture, God makes His people a stunning promise: “I will make my dwelling among and walk among. To be interacted with-even wrestled with. Though He is “the invisible God,” in Christ He does not hide from us. Now what does all this mean for us? What difference does it make that the invisible God has made Himself visible to His people in Christ?Īmong other things, it shows-quite tangibly-the disposition of God towards us. Or to put it another way, we cannot see God the Father-and yet “anyone who has seen has seen the Father.”
No one has ever seen God the only God, who is at the Father’s side, has made known. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. . . Only when Christ “became flesh” in Bethlehem did the world witness the ultimate theophany, the ultimate appearance of God. Now, these Old Testament appearances of Christ were of course preincarnate theophanies. Jesus Christ is the One who makes the invisible visible. The Apostle Paul puts the answer plainly in Colossians chapter 1: Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. How is it that God can be visible, when God tells Moses, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live”? How is it that God-who the Apostle Paul calls “the invisible God”-can appear to Abraham and Moses, or be spoken to “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend,” or be physically wrestled with by Jacob? So Jesus Christ is indeed present in the Old Testament-we have it on the authority of the New Testament.Īnd that helps us answer what would otherwise be a very tricky question.
that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” In a remarkable passage, the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 4, speaks of God’s people in the Old Testament being led through the wilderness by Christ.Īnd Jude is similarly quite explicit about the identity of the One who delivered God’s people from slavery in the Old Testament: “I want to remind you. There are also numerous Old Testament appearances of someone described as “the angel of the LORD” but who is-unlike other angels-treated as worthy of worship and who is identified with God Himself. Think of Moses and the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3, where a voice addresses Moses by name from the fire, and the voice identifies Himself as “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Think of Exodus chapter 13, where we’re told that “the LORD went before by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light.” In Exodus chapter 24, we read that “Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel.”Įxodus chapter 33 even says that “the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”Įven more frequent are references to God “appearing” in clouds of smoke and fire. Again, in Genesis chapter 18, we read that “the LORD appeared to Abraham.” In Genesis chapter 32, Jacob even wrestles with someone he later identifies as God. In the garden of Eden, as described in Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden.” In Genesis chapter 12, verse 7, and again in chapter 17, verse 1, we’re told that “the LORD appeared to Abram” and spoke to him. And a Christophany is an appearance of Christ. In the Old Testament, there are frequent “theophanies” and “Christophanies.” The word theophany comes from the Greek word theos (meaning “God”) and the Greek verb meaning “to appear.” So a theophany is an appearance of God. It can feel, well, like a truck driver’s gear shift.īut if we’re paying attention to the Old Testament, we’ll find that by the time we meet Jesus Christ in the New Testament, it’s not actually the first time we’ve met Him.
I think some Christians think of Jesus in that way: not really present in the Old Testament, so that when He arrives in the New Testament, there can be a sense of discontinuity from what’s gone before. They call it “the truck driver’s gear shift” because it often sounds clunky and awkward, something dropped in near the end which gives the song a dramatic conclusion but feeling sort of disconnected from what’s gone before. You know those songs where in the final chorus, everything suddenly goes up a key?
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