The Goodness of God, Part 1: When Moses Asked to See God's Glory
A Request That Changed Everything
Part of a short series on Exodus 33
Moses had an unusual relationship with God. The scriptures tell us that “the Lord would speak to Moses face-to-face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11). This was not a general impression or an inner nudge. Moses was looking at someone and speaking with someone, and that someone was looking back and speaking in return. For those of us who long for deeper communion with God, this is a breathtaking detail. Moses had what we all want: direct, personal, conversational access to the living God.
Yet there is a problem hidden in this passage that most readers walk right past. The scriptures also tell us that God is Spirit (John 4:24), that he is invisible (Colossians 1:15), and that “no one has seen God at any time” (1 John 4:12). Paul described God as the one who “alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16). If God is invisible Spirit, then who was Moses looking at during these face-to-face conversations?
The answer lies in a concept the early Church Fathers understood well. They distinguished between a theophany, which is an appearance of God in non-corporeal form (such as the burning bush), and a Christophany, which is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ in visible, often human form. When Abraham looked up from his tent and saw three men standing nearby, he bowed to them and served them a meal (Genesis 18:1–5). When Joshua encountered the commander of the army of the Lord, he fell on his face in worship, and the commander accepted it, something no angel would do (Joshua 5:13–15). When the three Hebrew men were thrown into the fiery furnace, a fourth figure appeared in the flames, and the king himself declared that this figure looked “like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). These were not appearances of the invisible Father. They were appearances of the second person of the Godhead, the pre-incarnate Christ, stepping into human history in visible form long before Bethlehem.
This is who Moses was speaking with face-to-face. The invisible Father did not suddenly acquire a body for these conversations. Christ, the eternal Son, appeared to Moses in a form that could be seen and heard and spoken with. This had been going on for some time. Moses knew this presence. He was accustomed to it. The face before him was familiar.
Then Moses made an extraordinary request. “Please, show me Your glory” (Exodus 33:18). This is a stunning moment in the narrative. Moses was already beholding the pre-incarnate Christ. He was already in face-to-face conversation with the second person of the Trinity. Whatever Moses was asking for, it was something beyond what he had already been experiencing. He wanted to see something more, something deeper, something he had not yet been shown.
God’s response is equally stunning, and it is often overlooked. Moses asked for glory, yet God answered with a different word. “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you” (Exodus 33:19). Then God added a warning: “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live” (Exodus 33:20). Now, Moses had been seeing this face for a long time without dying, so something different was about to happen. The face that Moses could not survive beholding was not the familiar face of the pre-incarnate Christ he already knew. It was the face of the fully glorified Christ, the risen and ascended King of Glory in the fullness of his radiance. Had Moses, still tainted by sin, looked upon that face directly, it would have killed him. Even Isaiah, when he beheld the Lord high and lifted up in the temple, cried out, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5).
So God made arrangements. He told Moses, “Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen” (Exodus 33:21–23). Moses would be hidden in the rock, shielded by God’s own hand, and permitted to see only what he could survive. He would see the back of the glorified Christ, not the face.
Moses was about to behold something that no human eye had ever seen, something that would cause his own face to glow with such radiance that the Israelites could not look at him when he came back down the mountain. What exactly did Moses see from that cleft in the rock? That is where we are headed next, and what he saw will reframe everything you thought you knew about the goodness of God.
Next: The Goodness of God, Part 2: The Scarred Back of God
About this series: These posts explore one of the most mysterious encounters in all of Scripture, the moment Moses beheld the glory of God from the cleft of the rock. What he saw reveals the deepest truth about who God is and what his goodness looks like.
For those interested in the quantum architecture beneath this story, the Arrow Song Blog will be exploring the physics of time and eternity as they relate to this encounter. Visit the Quantum section for more.