Short answer: The Bible never gives a physical description of God the Father. God is spirit, so he has no body for a painter to copy. What Scripture gives us are visions and word pictures, such as the glowing figure on a throne in Ezekiel, that describe his holiness, power and glory. The one place God became visible is in Jesus Christ.
In This Article
Almost everyone has a picture in their head when they hear the word God. For many it is an old man with a white beard, borrowed from paintings rather than the Bible. People ask me what God really looks like because they sense that picture is not quite right, and they want to know whether Scripture corrects it.
It does, and the correction is more interesting than a portrait would have been. This article walks through the visions the Bible records, what it means that we are made in God's image, why God forbids images of himself, and where the Bible says we can actually see what he is like.
What Is God Depicted To Look Like In The Bible?
The honest starting point is that there is no description. Nothing in the Bible says how tall God is, what color his eyes are or what his face looks like. Where Scripture does show us something, it comes as a vision given to a prophet, and the visions are full of fire, light, metal and gemstones rather than ordinary human features.
In Ezekiel 1:26-28 the prophet sees a throne that looks like sapphire. On it sits a figure with the likeness of a man, glowing like metal in a furnace, with a rainbow-like brightness all around. Ezekiel is careful with his words. He calls it the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord, which stacks three steps of distance between the prophet and what he saw, and he does so on purpose. He is telling us that language is straining.
Daniel has a similar vision of the Ancient of Days, with clothing white as snow and hair like pure wool, seated on a throne of flames (Daniel 7:9). Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, with the hem of his robe filling the temple, and the seraphim covering their faces (Isaiah 6:1-3). Notice that Isaiah describes the robe and the room, and not the face.
The picture of Christ in Revelation 1:14-16 is the most vivid of all: hair white like wool, eyes like blazing fire, feet like glowing bronze, a voice like rushing waters, a sharp double-edged sword coming from his mouth, and a face like the sun at full strength. No one reading it thinks John is giving a police sketch. Each detail is a symbol. White hair speaks of age and wisdom, fiery eyes of searching judgment, the sword of the power of his word, and the shining face of his glory.
That is how I would read all of these passages. They are given to make us bow, not to help us draw.
Why Can No One See God As He Is?
The Bible says plainly that God has no physical body. Jesus told the Samaritan woman the nature of God in one short sentence.
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.
John 4:24 (NIV)
A spirit is not a very thin body. God is not located in one place the way we are, and he is not made of anything. That is why Moses, who spoke with God as a man speaks with a friend, was still told something he could not do.
you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.
Exodus 33:20 (NIV)
Exodus 33:11 says the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, and some readers think this contradicts verse 20. It does not. The phrase describes closeness and directness of speech, as friends talk, not a direct look at God's unveiled being. The next verses show Moses sheltered in the rock while God's glory passed by, and only afterward allowed to see God's back.
The New Testament repeats the point. John writes that no one has ever seen God, and Paul says God lives in unapproachable light and that no one has seen or can see him (1 Timothy 6:16). So the visions in the prophets are real encounters, but they are God accommodating himself to creatures who could not otherwise bear it.
What About The Hands, Eyes And Face Of God?
Scripture does speak of God's face, eyes, ears, arms and hands (Psalm 34:15, Isaiah 40:10). Teachers call this anthropomorphic language: describing God with human parts so that we can grasp what he does. His eyes mean he sees everything. His arm means strength. His hand means he acts and holds. Nobody reads "the Lord is a strong tower" and goes looking for bricks. These are the same kind of picture.
What Does It Mean That Humans Are Made In God's Image?
This is the question that quietly sits under many people's thinking about what God looks like. If we are in his image, is his appearance like ours?
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27 (NIV)
Because God is spirit, the image cannot be about shape. It is about what kind of creature we are. We reason, speak, create, tell right from wrong, love and rule over the rest of creation as his stewards. When Genesis says God made us in his image, it is saying we are his representatives on earth, and that each person, of every race and age, carries a dignity that comes from him. This is also why harming a person is so serious in Scripture. You are defacing something that belongs to God.
The image was damaged by sin, but not erased. In Christ it is being restored, and that points us to the real answer.
Why Does God Forbid Making An Image Of Him?
The second of the Ten Commandments deals with this directly.
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
Exodus 20:4 (NIV)
The reason is not that art is wicked. Elsewhere God commands carved cherubim in the tabernacle. The problem is making a picture of God to worship or to use as a stand-in for him. Any image shrinks him. It turns the living, speaking God into something that sits still where we put it. Israel was told they heard a voice at Sinai but saw no form, so they were to build their worship on his word and not on a likeness.
Christians disagree about how far this reaches. Some traditions, including Catholic and Orthodox churches, use icons and sacred art as aids to devotion and see this as consistent with the incarnation. Many Protestants, including me, are cautious about any depiction of God the Father, and are wary of the way a film or painting can fix a picture in the mind that the Bible deliberately leaves open. That is a matter of conscience on which believers differ, but all of us should agree that no picture can be what God actually is.
Where Can We See What God Is Like?
Here is the heart of the matter. The Bible does not leave us with only an invisible God.
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Colossians 1:15 (NIV)
In Jesus, God entered his own creation in human form. John 1:18 says no one has seen God but the Son has made him known, and when Philip asked to see the Father, Jesus answered that whoever has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9). The Gospels do not tell us what Jesus' face looked like either. What they show us is what God is like: patient with the broken, fierce against hypocrisy, willing to touch lepers, willing to die for enemies.
If you want to know what God looks like, read the Gospels slowly. And one day, the Bible promises, believers will see him. 1 John 3:2 says we shall see him as he is. What we cannot do now, he will let us do then. You may also be interested in what angels look like in the Bible, which is another place where our pictures run ahead of Scripture, and in what the Bible says about the heavens.
Key Bible Verses About What God Looks Like
- John 4:24: God is spirit, not a body.
- Exodus 33:20: no one can see God's face and live.
- Ezekiel 1:26-28: a vision of the glory of the Lord on a throne.
- Genesis 1:27: humanity is made in God's image.
- Exodus 20:4: no carved image to worship.
- Colossians 1:15: Christ is the image of the invisible God.
- Revelation 1:14-16: the glorified Christ in symbolic detail.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is God depicted to look like in the Bible?
Scripture uses pictures, not a portrait. Ezekiel saw a figure like a man on a throne, glowing like fire. Daniel saw an Ancient of Days with white hair. John saw the risen Christ with eyes like fire. Each vision points to holiness, wisdom and authority rather than giving us a face to imagine.
What is the real image of God?
The Bible says the visible image of the invisible God is Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:15). Human beings also carry God's image in who we are: made to think, speak, love and rule creation under him. That image is about character and calling, not about shape or skin.
Does Jesus know how God looks?
Yes, in a way no one else does. John 1:18 says no one has seen God, but the Son, who is closest to the Father, has made him known. Jesus said that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9). Knowing the Son is how we come to know what God is like.
Why does the Bible forbid making an image of God?
Any image shrinks him to something we can manage. The second commandment bans carved images because the true God cannot be captured in wood or stone, and because worship is meant to rest on his word rather than on our imagination. See The Ten Commandments for the full list.
Did anyone in the Bible actually see God?
People saw visions, glory and, in the Son, God in human form, but not God's full unveiled being. Moses was shown God's goodness and allowed to see his back, never his face. The Bible's consistent line is that no one can see God as he is and live.
