When God’s Face Shines on You

I have been thinking about this question for a long time: How do I get God’s face and countenance turned toward me?

The question developed when I was reading Numbers 6:24–26, a passage commonly called the Aaronic Blessing. It is a blessing that was to be spoken by Aaron and his sons over the children of Israel: “May the LORD make His face shine upon you… may the LORD lift up His countenance upon you.”

I became fixated on the idea that God’s face and countenance were on me, and I wanted to know how I could cause that to happen. So I set out to research and study to discover the answer to that question. But the more I considered the language, the more I realized that I didn’t really know what the words truly meant.

In my imagination, God’s “face” was something like divine approval, spiritual success, or perhaps a sense that I was doing things right. I assumed that if God’s face shone on me, He would answer my prayers and my life would be obviously blessed.

It Started with God’s Face

The first thing I learned was that I had the wrong mental picture of God’s “face.” The Hebrew word is panim, and I was surprised to discover that it is plural. It does not describe a single visible feature. Instead, the “faces” of God convey the idea of God’s presence. More specifically, it refers to the orientation of God’s presence—what, or who, God is paying attention to.

I found a very clear illustration of this distinction in Exodus 33. God tells Moses, “My face will go with you, and I will give you rest.” That is the literal translation. However, Moses immediately responds, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.” Moses interprets the face of God as His presence, not as God’s facial features.

In fact, God plainly tells Moses, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live.” If the Aaronic Blessing meant God’s literal countenance facing a person, God’s brilliance, holiness, and purity would consume that person.

When I grasped that the “face” of God refers to His presence, orientation, and attention, I realized that the Aaronic Blessing conveys the idea of relationship.

“May the LORD make His face shine upon you.”
“May the LORD lift up His countenance upon you.”

It is a prayer that God would be present—attentive, favorably oriented toward a person. It is God turning toward you rather than away from you. God is paying attention to you. God being relationally near.

An Unexpected Effect

The need for relationship is an intense human longing. We want to know that we are seen. That we matter. That we are important to someone, more than just a face in a crowd. Relationship with God meets this need in a unique way—like a hand in a glove. Knowing that God is relationally oriented toward you causes you to recognize that you matter simply because you exist.

When our need for real relationship goes unmet, we tend to look for ways to compensate.

We compete.
We perform.
We look for ways to establish our worth by comparison.

Much of the tension and conflict we experience with others does not come from hatred or malice. It comes from insecurity—from the quiet fear that we are invisible, replaceable, or insignificant.

As I gradually realized that having God’s face turned toward me reduced the pressure to secure my worth from others, I experienced powerful internal adjustments.

I suddenly felt less need to win conversations.
Less urgency to be right.
Less dependence on the affirmation of others.

In other words, the reality of the Aaronic Blessing is that it frees us from the exhausting work of trying to be noticed. Having our deepest need for relationship met by God changes how we live among people.

Face to Face, Without the Contradiction

There was one other passage of Scripture that cropped up in my studies, which required me to carefully consider whether there was yet another layer of intimacy available in God’s presence. While God indeed says to Moses, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live,” in the same chapter, we are told that “the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to another.”

We have already established that there is a distinction between the facial features of God and the “face” of God as a reference to His presence. So clearly, Moses was not exposed to the full, consuming glory of God. But does the privilege of speaking to God face to face suggest that Moses may have experienced an intimacy with God even deeper than that indicated by the Aaronic Blessing?

I looked for clarification on what it meant for God to speak to Moses face-to-face. In Numbers 12:6–7, God makes it clear that when He spoke to a prophet, He did so through dreams or visions. But when He spoke to Moses, He did so “mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles.” While other prophets received visions, symbols, and layers of mediation, Moses received direct speech. There was no middleman. There was no obscurity. There was no interpretive fog.

In this case, the phrase "face to face" does not describe what Moses saw. Instead, they describe how Moses heard.

God turning toward a person is covenant language. And God’s privilege to Moses in speaking to him face to face indicated covenant action. He spoke directly to Moses because clarity was necessary to establish the covenant with Israel. In particular, the covenant with Israel required the Law, and the Law needed to be clear, not open to interpretive perspective.

Covenant is relationship, but not merely a casual or conditional relationship. When God turns toward His people and orients Himself toward them in an act of covenant, He promises more than His attention, more than His care, more than His faithfulness. He promises Himself.

That is why there can be no stronger revelation of covenant than Jesus Christ — God Himself. Christ came to openly show the face of God—once again, not in splendor and glory, which would have consumed people. Instead, He came to demonstrate a covenant relationship, to give Himself so fully that, by His death, He would demonstrate the extent to which God turned Himself toward humanity.

Only Grace Could Resolve the Fatal Problem

At this point, a different question began to press in on me. Actually, several questions pressed in.

Does the fact that no one can survive the full, visible, manifest “face” of God mean that we will never be able to enjoy the fullness of God?

I had already come to understand that Scripture does not contradict itself when it speaks about God’s face. Seeing God’s “face” is not about His physical features, but about His presence. But if God's presence is so overwhelming that it cannot be endured in the physical state, would it not also be true that we would be just as consumed in the spiritual state if we experience His full, unabated presence? Where does that leave the hope of an authentic relationship with our Creator? Where does it leave the longing for nearness that the Aaronic Blessing seems to invite?

I began to realize that this statement—“no one can see God and live”—is not meant to limit God’s desire to be known. It is intended to expose something about us.

The problem is not that God’s presence is incompatible with relationship. The problem is that something in humanity makes His presence dangerous. God’s presence is brilliant, pure, and holy. To stand fully exposed in His presence while still marked by sin is not simply uncomfortable—it is destructive. Not because God is hostile, but because sin cannot survive unfiltered holiness.

Seen this way, I realized I was not dealing with a contradiction. I was dealing with a diagnosis.

This is teaching us that the barrier between God and humanity is not distance, but condition. And once that becomes clear, the final movement of the blessing—and of the Gospel itself—comes into focus.

The fatal problem was never God’s presence. It was ours.

And yet, this is where the story takes its most exciting turn.

God did not lower His holiness to draw near to us. He did not diminish His glory. Instead, He resolved the problem at its root. Grace addressed not the danger of God’s presence, but the condition of the people who longed for it.

This is where Christ stands at the center of everything the Aaronic Blessing pointed toward.

Jesus did not come merely to show us that God was turned toward us. He came to deal decisively with the sin that made God’s presence fatal in the first place. In His life, He fulfilled the Law that defined covenant. In His death, He bore the judgment that separated humanity from God. And in His resurrection, He opened the way for a kind of nearness that had never been possible before.

Because of Christ, God’s face is no longer turned toward us temporarily, cautiously, or at a distance. It is turned toward us once and for all.

This is why the New Testament speaks with such confidence about the future. Scripture does not say that we will avoid God’s presence forever. It says the opposite. It says that one day we will behold the beauty and glory of God and not be consumed. It says, "Your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory" (Colossians 3:3–4). We will dwell fully and eternally in His presence—not because God has changed, but because grace has changed us.

What began in the Aaronic Blessing as a prayer for God’s countenance was always moving toward this moment. God’s desire was never simply to bless from afar, but to bring His people all the way into His full presence. His face turned toward us was a promise that He intended to dwell with us forever.

I began this journey asking how I could get God’s face and countenance turned toward me. What I discovered instead was something far more profound. God had already turned toward us. And in Christ, He made a way for that turning to become eternal.

Grace resolved the fatal conflict—not by shielding us from God’s presence forever, but by making us capable of living within it.

That is the blessing of God’s countenance in its fullest form.