God is Love: Invisibly Present Amongst Us 

One of the oft repeated idioms of one of my former spiritual teachers was, “God is invisibly present amongst us.” This turns out to be a profoundly scriptural formula for the ‘Unseen God,’ found in both Hebrew and Christian Scripture.

I have written elsewhere in this blog about the thorough Jewishness of all aspects of nascent Christianity. The pervasive use of Hebrew texts by the authors of the Christian Gospels, and in the authentic letters of Paul, makes this unequivocal.¹

It is therefore not surprising when John’s Gospel boldly proclaims, “No one has ever seen God,” (John 1:18; 6:45-46). Or that the invisibility of God features in first Timothy 1:17; 6:16.

God as ever present, but always mysterious when encountered.

Both scribes are drawing heavily upon the Hebrew text formula of presenting God as ever present, but always mysterious when encountered, which became standard practice in Second Temple Judaism.²

Even Moses, who, you know, gets up close and personal with Yahweh, on a number of occasions. Never really gets a face to face amidst all the smoke and fire on the Holy Mountain (Exodus 24-34).³  

It is however the use of the Unseen God formulation in the first letter of John (1 John 4:12), that really gets my mystic imagination twirling. The reason for this, is that it is within one of the most concise and brilliantly constructed biblical summaries of all that has gone before it. Yes, that’s right, at the heel end of the mighty book, is the repeated use of a three-word phrase that captures the message contained in the whole scriptural shebang, “God Is Love,” (1 John 4:7-12).⁴ 

If you can see love you are seeing God and where love is not seen so too is God unseen. But here’s the almighty rub, it turns out, that it is in loving the other warts and all, that love, and thus God become visible. As the text says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is Love.” (1 John 4: 8). Moreover, “No one has seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:12).

If you can see love you are seeing God and where love is not seen so too is God unseen.

Not a single drop of ink is wasted, in this early second century letter; it is hard-hitting from go to woe. Here is a scribe with much to say in very few words, about God being tangible in just the same way that love is. The two are inextricably linked, inseparable, but completely accessible for those with eyes to see.

However, this is not some futuristic utopian ideal, there is a real-time divine sting in the tale involved in the deal on the table here. Because all who venture into this kind of love territory, must lovingly embrace the ‘utterly unpalatable unforgivable other,’ in order to see the true vision of the sacred come into view.

Of course every mystic worth their salt knows that the self-centered ego is ever active in our inner being, constantly thwarting the crucial business of loving the ‘inexcusable other’ and thus making God visible. But mercifully we are never in this struggle alone. For right bang in the midst of the ongoing tussle, deep within every heart that ever was, there is the gentle whisper to love the other and see God, together with the active grace that makes such God vision possible. 

1. Steve Moyise,.The Old Testament in the New : An Introduction. T&T Clark Approaches to Biblical Studies (London; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004). [↩]
2. Gordon Fee, “Old Testament Intertextuality in Colossians: Reflections on Pauline Christology and Gentile Inclusion in God’s Story,” in History and Exegesis: New Testament Essays in Honor of Dr. E. Earle Ellis, ed. Sang-Won Son (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 213. [↩]
3. David H. Wenkel“The Lord Will Reveal the Lord: God’s Invisibility and Jesus’ Visibility in 1 Timothy,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 39 (2017), 200-201. [↩]
4. Anthony J. Kelly, God Is Love : The Heart of Christian Faith (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), chapters 1-2. [↩]