The Scandal of the Face

There is a particular arrogance in preferring the God of the philosophers to the God of the fishermen. We often hide behind a sophisticated, abstract concept of the Divine, an infinite, benign mist of love or energy, because it feels safer and more intellectual than bending the knee to a Jewish carpenter from the first century. We convince ourselves that moving beyond the specific person of Jesus to a broader, more cosmic spirituality is a sign of maturity, a way of ascending above the supposedly naive stories of our youth. But this high-minded retreat into the abstract is not an ascent at all; it is a flight from reality. It is a convenient way to worship a deity who makes no demands and has no eyes to look into ours. It is, quite simply, a sophisticated form of spiritual hiding.

The Scriptures cut through this fog with a commandment that is often misunderstood. When God announced in Exodus that His people should have no other gods before Him, the Hebrew text implies a profound prohibition against seeking Him apart from His Face. The Creator never intended for us to worship a formless void or a distant concept. Throughout history, He has mediated His presence, appearing in the Old Testament as the Angel of His Presence, a distinct manifestation that carried His name and allowed humanity to encounter the Infinite without being consumed. The ancient warning was clear: to construct a version of God apart from this revealed Face, even if we attribute high and lofty titles to it, is to construct an idol of our own imagination.

This ancient pattern finds its shocking culmination in the New Testament. When the disciple Philip asked, perhaps with that same yearning for a direct, overwhelming vision of the Divine, to be shown the Father, Jesus did not point to the heavens or offer a metaphysical theory. He pointed to Himself, declaring that anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father. This is the scandalous crux of our faith. Jesus is not merely a messenger pointing to the Divine; He is the authorized, incarnate Face of the invisible Father. He is the precise location where the burning holiness of God is veiled in human flesh so that we might draw near and live.

Therefore, the invitation to deepen your spiritual life is not an invitation to look past Jesus toward something more cosmic, but to look directly at Him with greater intensity. True worship is not found in the silence of an empty universe, but in the specific words and actions of the Son. To treat Jesus as merely a starting point for a more advanced, formless spirituality is to miss the destination entirely. The profound paradox of faith is that the vast, unknowable Creator has made Himself knowable only through the specific features of Christ.

I encourage you to lay down the heavy burden of maintaining a high-minded, abstract theology and simply turn your gaze to the Person of Jesus. It may feel simpler, or perhaps even terrifyingly intimate, to speak to Him not as a concept, but as a man who hears you. But in doing so, you fulfill the oldest command to seek His Face. By fixing your eyes solely on Jesus, you are not limiting your view of God; you are finally seeing Him as He actually is.