God:
God is a Spirit

John 4:16-24

By Rev. Kevin Chiarot

The affirmation that God is a spirit is probably uncontroversial to everyone in this room. Maybe even to the point of being so obvious, as to be boring, or at least less than stimulating. And yet, beloved, these things ought not be. For if God is interesting, then the fact that he is a spirit is also interesting, and highly relevant.

Think of the famous answer in the Shorter Catechism to the Question: What is God? Which begins with: God is a spirit…infinite, eternal and so forth. The spirituality of God is the first thing said of him. It has a certain primitive and pervasive quality --- it needs to be fronted in any discussion of who God is. It's a crucial part of our Lord's discussion with the woman at the well in John 4 (our gospel lesson). He affirms simply: God is a spirit.

The Confession of faith calls God "a most pure spirit," and then immediately mentions two things which follow from being a spirit: Namely, that God is invisible and without (a) body. (that is, incorporeal). So, in unpacking the mystery of the spirituality of God, we will make the same two points. Incorporeal and Invisible.

I. Incorporeal

First, then, incorporeal. When we confess that God is a spirit, we mean that he is without a body – incorporeal.

"A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have" – the risen Jesus tells his stunned disciples. A spirit does not have a body. Now this way of speaking, of using terms like in-corporeal or in-visible or in-finite, is called the via negative, or the way of negation.

These negations – he is not embodied, not visible, not finite, he is impassible (doesn't suffer), he is immutable (he doesn't change) – these negations alert us to the mystery, to the infinite depths into which we are launching out when we speak of God.

In many cases we cannot say just exactly what God IS – so we indicate his being indirectly, by terms such as these, which say what he is not. And because we are cognitive idolators, we come to think that these are positive definitions of God, rather than negations drawn from creaturely realities. And if you do this long enough (assume that negative terms are positive definitions), you can come to think you have God wired, basically figured out, and pretty well-defined.

This can only happen when a people does not think about thinking about God. And does not talk about talking about God — when we don't pay attention to our terms which, by their very nature, should humble and chasten us, before the mystery of God and his spirituality.

So God is bodiless. Without a body. It's strange to us, because we live in and through our bodies. So we can only gesture toward what it is to be pure spirit.

A few things can be affirmed: In speaking of God as a spirit, its clear that the Bible means, among other things, that there are no boundaries to his being. Angels and demons are spirits, bodiless creatures, but they are finite spirits. When Scripture speaks of God as spirit, it's clear that God is an infinite spirit. For God, to be bodiless, is to be boundless.

Also, since bodies are extended in space, God, then, is without extension. He is a-spatial. He doesn't take up space (the fact that he's fully and truly present in your inner being, does not mean there is no room for your pancreas). He is not a creature in space (or even over space, in some other space). God is not IN space – he transcends it utterly.

As a bodiless spirit, he is im-material. He is not a physical being. He is not a really refined material, like a gas. Or like breath or wind (metaphors: do not describe his essence). He is not something really thin-- almost immaterial -- like ether. Or like sound waves or electro-magnetism. God is a spirit. If someone denies this – they are a heretic. Or they are profoundly confused. But affirming it is not as boring or obvious or trite as it might appear. It requires some sophistication to affirm this. Your just not used to seeing the difficulty, so you surmount it easily. Here's what I mean.

Do you recall, last week, when we spoke of the simplicity of God? I'm sure some of you are still not sure – or are opposed – to something or other that was affirmed in that sermon. Among other things, we said the attributes of God do NOT mean that God is cobbled together of various virtues – or properties -- like we are. In God, all his attributes are one – though there are, plenty of texts which seem to say otherwise, and treat them as diverse and distinct (if related) qualities.

We will see the same thing when we come to look at how God is without passions. He is impassible. He does not suffer. He is not the subject of passions.

Yet, there sure are plenty of texts which appear to say that God is deeply passionate-- and even suffers. Or when we look at God's unchanging character, his immutability. It will appear there, that plenty of texts assert repentance, the changing of his mind, and other sorts of change in God.

So notice the situation. The church holds God is simple, without any parts in his being – but the Bible can appear to say otherwise. The church holds that God is impassible, that he does not suffer, nor is he subject to passions. Yet, the Bible certainly can be read as saying the opposite. The church holds that God is immutable and unchanging, yet the Bible, in various places, directly asserts change in God.

Ok – what am I getting at? Two things here. First, if your read the text naively, just a simple surface kind of reading – you will be wrong about all sorts of things. The text needs to be read in its complexity and wholeness, and in and with the tradition of the church, or you will surely end up with fringe and idiosyncratic – and corrupt – conceptions of God and Christ.

The second thing I want to say about this situation – where the church affirms A, and the Bible can appear to affirm not A –is this. You grasp that this can be so, and you handle it with ease, when it comes to the bodiless, spiritual existence of God. Because everyone in here, I trust, affirms that God does NOT have a body.

Yet, the Bible attributes body parts to God in literally hundreds of places. Here's just a very few: Prov. 15:3 & 2 Chron. 16:9: God has eyes. Exodus 24:10 – God has feet. Hosea 11:8 – God has a heart. Isaiah 40:5 – God has a mouth. Isaiah 59:1—God has an arm. And on and on and on. And the church has had movements – based in part on this raft of texts --- which have affirmed that God, in fact, DOES have a body.

One group, known as the anthropo-morphites (the form of man people). Arose in the fourth century in Syria, and took the text of Genesis 1:27 literally, and held that God has a human form – since he made man in his image. And this idea, and similar ones, has cropped elsewhere. The Mormons, I believe, hold that God has a body. And there are scholars working today who believe we should re-think the whole "God does not have a body thing." So the ideas and issues at stake here, are not boring or irrelevant. In fact, RC Sproul tells a humorous story about being in seminary, under a very learned and intimidating professor, who, by playing devil's advocate, got every student in the class to back off the proposition that God does not have a body.

Precisely by using all of these other texts in a sophisticated and clever way. So – in spite of what certain texts appear to plainly say -- God is a most pure spirit – immaterial and thus bodiless.

II. Invisible

All that is really introduction to our second point – invisible. If God has no body, he has no properties that can be accessed with our senses. He is then, to our senses, undetectable. Invisible.

In a world where there were visible pagan gods everywhere, this point would be shocking, but we are just used to it. Let's look at a few texts. Romans 1:20 says this: For his (notice) invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. Creation is visible, but it points us to the invisible attributes of God. It's a clear affirmation of God's essential invisibility.

Moses endured, Hebrews 11 tells us, as seeing him who is invisible. Faith is a kind of seeing of the invisible God.

In 1 Timothy1 we read of the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God.

1 Timothy 6:16 we hear of he who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.

No one ever has seen God. John tells us this in his gospel (prologue) and in first epistle (1 John 4:12) – No one has ever seen God. And here Paul adds -- or can see God.

It would seem that God's invisibility is a permanent and unchangeable reality – and this is precisely what was affirmed in our OT text from Exodus 33. Moses asks to see God's glory and is told:

"I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name 'The Lord.' But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live."

God then hides Moses in the cleft of a rock with his hand (which we know he doesn't have), telling him, you shall see my back (doesn't have), but my face (doesn't have – but refers to his essence, his immediate glory) – my face shall not be seen." Invisibility is such, that were we to somehow violate it, we would die. The invisible God cannot be seen by creatures, and is in fact, in his holy splendor, lethal to them.

Now, I want to assert --- that this incorporeal, invisible God is something of a problem for us. Deep down we wish it were not so. It means God is elusive, ungraspable, un-manipulatable. It means he often seems absent. It means his existence is hard to prove, since its not self-evident, like say, the existence of apples. It means he is not a person like other human persons, and thus a relationship with him is not akin to chatting with a friend, no matter how much Christians insist on saying stuff like that.

No one sane has invisible friends. And besides, God does not talk back. Outside of his speech in Holy Scripture – he is silent. But we want assurances, signs, physical tangible tokens of nearness (hankering for miracles and signs). We are deeply embodied creatures – we know through our senses – and we crave EMBODIED intimacy – with God and with others. And it is true – gloriously true – that God has – in a profound sense – become visible in Jesus Christ. Here's Johns prologue:

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. But even Jesus has now been removed from the realm of sight and is not invisible to us.

It is true God has left us ordinary means of grace – ways to commune with him. But prayer is still speaking to an invisible being. The Word is physical, in the sense that it requires mouths and sound waves and ears, but its invisible, and dissipates the moment it is spoken. The sacraments are physical, visible signs. But they are signs that point way from themselves to him who is now invisible. They are not ends in themselves. Faith itself is a kind of seeing of him who is now veiled and invisible. So, yes, Christianity is an incarnational embodied faith – because WE are embodied creatures -- not because God is. And at every point then, even after the incarnation, the faith has to deal with knowing the invisible God.

I want to, in concluding, draw four practical applications.

First, we walk by faith, and that means we do NOT walk by sight. We need a revolution, whereby interior seeing by faith becomes dominant, and visible realities seen by physical sight, become subordinate. To take the spirituality of God seriously means to become spiritual people (not just led by HS) – and spiritual people to not live or walk by physical sight.

The great Puritan pastor, Richard Baxter, said that the invisibility of God should "teach us to think most highly of the things that are invisible, and less of these visible things."

We are far too worldly, far too sensuous (senses), to even know what to do with such advice. But Baxter is just echoing Paul – because our outer physical being is decaying, while our inner invisible person is being renewed, we look NOT to the things that are seen… But to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

"Value not sight and sense too much," Baxter says. Echoing Colossians 3, which tells us, to set out minds on things above, and NOT on things on earth, he says:

Fix not your minds on sensible things. Remember that your God, Your home, your portion, are unseen: and therefore live in hearty affections to them, AS IF you saw them.

Love him, fear him, trust him and serve him, as you would do IF you beheld him. Faith is the evidence of things not seen.

Second application. Because God is a spirit and bodiless, he can be near us – in comfort and power, through the sending of the invisible Holy Spirit. Because there are no boundaries to his being, we can be strengthened with power through his Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ, Paul says, may dwell in your hearts through faith. The gift of the invisible Spirit creates the invisible gift of faith, linking us to the Christ who is currently not visible to us.

Third, in the context of our gospel text, Jesus is talking about right worship. God is a spirit – and thus can be worshipped anywhere -- and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. This means worship is fundamentally a spiritual action, done by spiritual people, in the Spirit, rendered to the God who is spirit. The God who, the second commandment tells us, cannot be represented under any form or any visible images. The invisibility of God means our worship is regulated by the truth of scripture, and not by our own carnal sense oriented imaginations.

Finally, all the Scriptural assertions that God cannot be seen – should be taken in the following sense: he cannot be seen in the nature of the case by men – unless he should grant such a gift through a mediator. And in fact, in Jesus Christ, the invisible God made visible, we have been given the gift that will enable the seeing of God – not by faith as in this age, but by sight. Quite simply Jesus came so that we might see the unseeable God in face to face communion in glory.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for, he assures us – they shall see God (whatever mysterious mode that seeing might take). When he appears, John tells us, we will be like him for we will see him as he is.

And, in the consummation, after this visible creation has been judged, rolled up as a garment, and gives way to the new creation – there, we are told: his servants will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And, John continues, there will be no need of physical lights: For night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Fix your eyes, then, the eyes of your heart on Jesus, through whom you shall indeed gaze upon beauty of the invisible Holy Trinity. Amen.