Image of the Invisible God – A Messianic Title of Jesus
Introduction
Moses had seen more of God than almost anyone alive. He had stood before the burning bush, watched Egypt fall under ten plagues, and received the law on Sinai while lightning split the sky. And after all of that, he made one more request: "Now show me your glory" (Exodus 33:18). The answer he received was careful and partial. God would make Divine goodness pass before Moses, would proclaim his name, but no one could see God's face and live.
That answer defines a persistent tension running through Israel's story. God is both intimate and beyond us, close and concealed. God is genuinely present, speaking and acting and dwelling among his people in cloud and fire, and at the same time genuinely beyond the range of human vision.
His glory fills the tabernacle with such weight that the priests cannot stand to minister. He settles on Solomon's temple, and Solomon himself acknowledges that the heavens cannot contain him, let alone a house of cedar and stone.
Philip voices the same longing in the upper room on the night before the crucifixion: "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us" (John 14:8). It is the request of every earnest worshiper since Moses: let me see, not just believe. I find that desire in my heart very often.
Paul's description of Jesus in Colossians 1:15 answers that hunger directly. The Son, he writes, is the image of the invisible God. The phrase joins two realities that seem irreconcilable: an image that can be seen and a God who cannot. It declares that in Jesus, the problem of divine invisibility has been resolved, and the resolution is the person of the Son himself.
The Greek Title and Its Meaning
The title comes from Colossians 1:15: eikōn tou theou tou aoratou (εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου). The image of the invisible God.
Eikōn (εἰκών) is the Greek word for image, likeness, or representation, and its force in the ancient world was considerably stronger than the English word "image" typically conveys. An eikōn was understood to participate in the reality of what it represented, sharing its nature rather than merely depicting it from the outside. A portrait of a king carried royal authority because it was the king's genuine expression in visible form. The eikōn was the original made accessible, the hidden made present.
This is the same word the Septuagint chose in Genesis 1:26-27 to translate the Hebrew tselem, the image in which God made human beings. When Paul describes Jesus as the eikōn of God, he is reaching for the word the Greek Old Testament used for humanity's origin, and the connection is deliberate. Jesus is the eikōn after which humanity was patterned, the original of which human beings are themselves the image.
Aoratos (ἀόρατος) means invisible, unseen. It appears in Romans 1:20, where Paul writes that God's invisible qualities have been clearly perceived through what has been made. It appears in 1 Timothy 1:17, where Paul doxologizes the eternal, immortal, invisible God. Invisibility is a consistent attribute of God across the New Testament, marking the infinite distance between the divine nature and the range of creaturely perception. The title "image of the invisible God" does not resolve that invisibility by denying it. It resolves it by the Son taking on a form in which the invisible God is genuinely and fully present.
Key Occurrences in Scripture
The Old Testament Background: The Invisible God and the Image of God
The tension between divine presence and divine hiddenness runs through the Old Testament with remarkable consistency.
God is present in ways the senses can register: the burning bush, the pillar of cloud and fire, the thick smoke on Sinai, the glory that fills the tabernacle and the temple. Ezekiel's vision of the divine chariot in Ezekiel 1 strains language to its limits trying to describe what the prophet saw. Isaiah's throne room vision in Isaiah 6 leaves him undone by proximity to holiness.
And yet every one of these encounters involves concealment as much as disclosure. The cloud and fire hide as much as they reveal. Moses is placed in a cleft of the rock and sees only God's back. The veil before the Holy of Holies keeps the presence at one remove from anyone who is not the high priest, and even the high priest enters only once a year, only with blood, only with deliberate care. God's invisibility is not distance or indifference. It is the condition of the creature standing before the uncreated.
At the same time, Genesis 1:26-27 establishes that human beings were made in the image (tselem) and likeness of God. This is a remarkable claim about human dignity and vocation, but it raises a question that the text does not immediately resolve: if God is invisible, what does it mean to be made in his image? The imago Dei implies there is something in God's own nature that corresponds to what human beings are made to be. Paul's use of eikōn in Colossians 1:15 provides the answer. The image of God after which humanity was fashioned is the Son. He is the original. Human beings are made in the image of the one who is himself the image.
Colossians 1:15-20: The Christ Hymn
The title appears as the opening phrase of what scholars widely recognize as an early Christian hymn embedded in Colossians 1:15-20. Whether composed by Paul or received from the churches' liturgical tradition, the hymn is one of the most compressed and exalted Christological statements in the New Testament.
"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."
The title opens the hymn and establishes its governing claim. Everything that follows about creation, cosmic sustenance, headship, and reconciliation belongs to the one who is the full and genuine expression of the invisible God.
The phrase "firstborn over all creation" (prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs) has been contested since the early church because it can appear, on a surface reading, to suggest the Son was created before everything else. The hymn itself excludes that reading: verse 16 states immediately that in him all things were created, including everything in heaven and on earth. The one through whom all things were created cannot himself be a creature. "Firstborn" in Jewish usage was a title of preeminence and supremacy designating the one who holds the highest place of honor. Psalm 89:27 applies the same word to David, calling him God's firstborn and the most exalted of the kings of the earth, even though David was the youngest of Jesse's sons. Applied to the Son, the title declares his supremacy over all creation, the one who holds the place of highest honor in relation to everything that exists.
2 Corinthians 4:4-6
Paul uses the eikōn language again in 2 Corinthians 4:4-6, this time in the context of the gospel's power and the problem of spiritual blindness. "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." The language then shifts from blindness to illumination: "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ."
The creation of light in Genesis 1 becomes an image for the new creation that occurs when someone encounters the gospel. The knowledge of God's glory is available in one specific location: the face of Christ, who is the image of God. Divine invisibility is overcome not by philosophical argument or mystical ascent but by the gospel, which displays the glory of the one in whom the invisible God is fully present.
Hebrews 1:1-3
Hebrews opens with a parallel claim using different vocabulary. "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being" (Hebrews 1:1-3).
The Greek words in Hebrews carry their own precision. Apaugasma (ἀπαύγασμα), radiance or effulgence, describes the Son as the outshining of God's glory, the way light radiates from its source while remaining inseparable from it. Charaktēr (χαρακτήρ), exact representation, was used for the impression left by a seal or stamp on wax: the precise, complete, and faithful imprint of the original. Together they make the same claim as eikōn tou theou tou aoratou in Colossians: the Son is the visible, exact, and complete expression of the invisible God.
Theological Significance
The Image and the Incarnation
The title "image of the invisible God" describes the incarnate Son specifically. It is the claim that the resolution to divine invisibility is a person with a human face, born of Mary, walking the roads of Galilee, dying on a Roman cross and rising on the third day.
This is what Philip's request in John 14 meets. Jesus answers him: "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). He does not say that seeing him is like seeing the Father, or that his life gives a partial impression of what the Father might be like. He says that seeing him is seeing the Father, because the one who is the image of God embodies and participates in the nature of the one he represents. The ancient understanding of eikōn is precisely what Jesus is claiming in that sentence.
The Image and the New Creation
The connection between the eikōn of Colossians 1:15 and the tselem of Genesis 1:26 opens into a larger narrative arc. Human beings were made in the image of God, but that image has been distorted by sin. Paul's vision of redemption is the restoration and completion of what was begun at creation. Romans 8:29 describes God's purpose as conforming his people "to the image (eikōn) of his Son." Colossians 3:10 describes the new self as "renewed in knowledge in the image (eikōn) of its Creator." 2 Corinthians 3:18 names the process directly: "And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory."
The movement runs from the original imago Dei of Genesis 1 through the distortion of the fall, and forward to the full image of the Son that believers are being conformed to by the Spirit. Jesus as the image of the invisible God stands at every point of that movement: he is the original image after which humanity was fashioned, the means by which the distorted image is restored, and the goal toward which the Spirit is shaping every believer.
The Image and the Colossian Context
Paul writes Colossians into a situation where some form of teaching was introducing "hollow and deceptive philosophy" (Colossians 2:8), apparently combining Jewish legal observance with speculation about cosmic powers, angelic intermediaries, and ascetic practices. Against this, the Christ hymn of Colossians 1:15-20 insists that the one in whom all the fullness of God dwells is sufficient. There is no cosmic hierarchy to navigate, no spiritual powers to appease, and no intermediary beings needed between the believer and God. The image of the invisible God is also the one in whom "all things hold together" (v.17) and the one through whom reconciliation extends to "all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven" (v.20). The scope of his person and work is as vast as creation itself.
What This Title Means for Christian Faith and Practice
Philip's request in John 14 is, in some form, the request of every person who has ever prayed with earnestness. We want to see, not just believe. We want something more than inference and argument. We want to look at the one we are trusting.
The title "image of the invisible God" says that this request has been answered, and the answer has a face.
The knowledge of God available in Jesus is complete and final, the full disclosure of the one he represents. This is the claim of the ancient meaning of eikōn: the image participates in and embodies the reality of what it makes visible. To know Jesus is to know the Father, because the one who is the image of God is the Father's own self-expression in visible form. There is no further layer of the divine character that lies concealed behind the Son.
This has a transformative implication that Paul draws out in 2 Corinthians 3:18. Beholding the glory of the Lord, believers are being changed into his image from one degree of glory to another. The God who made human beings in his own image is now at work restoring and completing that image in his people. The veil that Moses kept over his face after descending from Sinai, shielding the people from a glory that was fading, has been removed. Those who turn to Christ behold with unveiled faces the glory of the one who is the full and final image of God.
Moses asked to see God's glory and was shown a partial glimpse. Philip asked to see the Father and was told he was already looking at him. The long human longing to see the invisible God has received, in the image of the invisible God, its answer.
Sources
Dunn, James D. G. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. See commentary on Colossians 1:15-20.
Fee, Gordon D. Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007.
Harris, Murray J. Colossians and Philemon. Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2010. See commentary on Colossians 1:15.
O'Brien, Peter T. Colossians, Philemon. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco: Word Books, 1982. See commentary on Colossians 1:15-20.
Liddell, H. G., Scott, R., and Jones, H. S. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Entries: εἰκών (eikṓn); ἀόρατος (aóratos); ἀπαύγασμα (apaúgasma); χαρακτήρ (charaktḗr).
Strong, J. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Entries: G1504 (eikōn); G517 (aoratos); G541 (apaugasma); G5481 (charaktēr).
See Also
Names of God:
