No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.

Now here, John poses a problem for us. If no man has seen God at any time, how then can Jesus be God? John saw him, and it is very clear from John’s Gospel that he considers Jesus to be God.

But that is not the only problem. In the Old Testament there was an occasion where it says very plainly that a group of men saw God. Small problem, right? Rather than trying to explain it, let’s first just try to understand what all this reveals to us—beginning in the First Epistle of John.