Reason 1 of 10
God was never a man
Latter-day Saint teaching says the Father has a body of flesh and bones and that, as man now is, God once was. The Bible says God is spirit, is not a man, and has been God from everlasting.
What Latter-day Saints are taught
The Doctrine and Covenants teaches that the Father has a body of flesh and bones. The Church's essay on becoming like God traces the teaching that humans can progress to godhood to Joseph Smith's King Follett sermon of 1844, and quotes Lorenzo Snow's couplet. The same essay also notes that little has been revealed about the first half of that couplet.
Since that sermon, known as the King Follett discourse, the doctrine that humans can progress to exaltation and godliness has been taught within the Church.
The Church's own words Gospel Topics essay, "Becoming Like God" · source
22The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.
Doctrine and Covenants 130:22 · read it at ChurchofJesusChrist.org
What the Bible says God is
Jesus said God is spirit. Scripture says God is not a man, that he does not change, and that he is God from everlasting to everlasting, not a being who became God after a mortal life on another world.
The God of the Bible has no beginning to his godhood. If God was once as we are, there was a time when he was not God, and the Bible knows of no such time.
24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 4:24 (WEB) · context
19God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and he won’t do it? Or has he spoken, and he won’t make it good?
Numbers 23:19 (WEB) · context
9I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath.
Hosea 11:9 (WEB) · context
2Before the mountains were born, before you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
Psalms 90:2 (WEB) · context
6“For I, Yahweh, don’t change; therefore you, sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
Malachi 3:6 (WEB) · context
Then why does Jesus have a body?
Because the eternal Son became man. The Word who was God took on flesh at a point in history, and he rose bodily. That is the incarnation of the Son, not evidence that the Father has always had a body.
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1 (WEB) · context
14The Word became flesh and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the only born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 (WEB) · context
39See my hands and my feet, that it is truly me. Touch me and see, for a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.”
Luke 24:39 (WEB) · context
What Latter-day Saints answer
Many Latter-day Saints point out that humans are made in God's image, which they read as a physical likeness, and that Jesus has a resurrected body.
27God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27 (WEB) · context
Why that answer falls short
The image of God in Genesis is never explained as a body shape; the same Bible that says we are made in God's image says God is spirit and not a man. Jesus' body is real and risen, and that is exactly the wonder of the incarnation: the eternal God the Son became what he was not before.
Sources
- Doctrine and Covenants 130:22 (churchofjesuschrist.org).
- Gospel Topics essay "Becoming Like God" (churchofjesuschrist.org).