There are some Scriptures that clearly state, “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18; 1 John 4:12; cf. 1 Tim. 6:16 1 John 4:20). But there are other verses that indicate Moses and company “saw the God of Israel” (Ex. 24:10), Jacob saw “God face to face” (Gen. 32:30), and Moses spoke with God “face to face” (Num. 12:8). How can some Scriptures say that no one saw God and other Scriptures say that people saw God? Isn’t that a contradiction?
Add to that these verses. God said, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live” (Ex. 33:20), and yet Jacob said, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Gen. 32:30). Those seem to contradict each other. Don’t they?
Let’s start with the nature of God. This is the key. Jesus tells us that “God is spirit” (John 4:24). He is “invisible” (Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17). Paul further explains that the Lord dwells “in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16). It’s not just that “no man has seen” God—no one, by the very nature of God’s essence, “can see” that which is “invisible.”
So then what did those persons “see” when they “saw” the invisible God who cannot be seen? Jesus said that He was the only one to see God in His true essence, as He alone shares that essence (John 6:46). So, while “No one has ever seen God,” Jesus, “who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18, ESV). By seeing Jesus in the flesh, man was able to see the Father (John 14:9).
When man saw God in the flesh, he was seeing God, but in a human form (not in “His [spirit] form,” John 5:37; cf. Phil. 2:7). Could this, then, be the same thing that Jacob (Gen. 32:30) and Moses (Ex. 33:11) saw? That’s the conclusion that follows the evidence, as the Bible does not contradict itself, especially within the same paragraph—“the Lord spoke to Moses face to face…But He said, ‘You cannot see My face…and live’” (Ex. 33:11, 20).
Let’s allow the Bible to explain speaking to the Lord face to face. In Numbers 12, the Lord spoke to Aaron and Miriam in “vision” and “dream” (12:1-6), but He spoke with Moses “face to face” (12:8). “Face to face” meant that God was speaking “plainly, and not in dark sayings; And [Moses] sees the form of the Lord.” God spoke in an intimate way with certain Bible characters, revealing Himself (even His “glory,” Ex. 33:18, 22) through visible forms and manifestations, as if they were seeing His face. It is a figurative way of emphasizing how close God was with certain ones, but as humans, they were limited to only see God in limited capacities through which God revealed Himself to them. They saw what God wanted His humans to see.