5.1 God Is Spirit
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
There is one God, the Father (Romans 3:30, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Ephesians 4:6, & 1 Timothy 2:5). The word “God” is always and intentionally generic. When we call God by name, we say, “Father.”
God is Spirit – God is Love – God is Word – God is Light. Spirit is the nature of God’s form. Love is the nature of God’s Person. Word is the nature of God’s Life. Light is the nature of God’s expression.
Because God is uncreated and God, He can speak to us only through the use of metaphors, including words, which are simply representations of something else. All representations of an uncreated God are figurative only.
God Spirit
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24). We are not speaking of the Holy Spirit, but only of Father.
Spirit has two primary qualities. Spirit is eternal and Spirit is infinite. Eternal means that all things in and of God are always right now in every moment of created time. Infinite means that all things in and of God are always right here in every point of created substance. Thus, God-is-Spirit means that God is without form, no boundaries in space, no cessation by time. We can express our perception of the form of God, that is, formlessness, by the phrase “All Here Now.”
God Is Invisible
Spirit also has one secondary quality. Spirit is invisible. When we say, “Spirit is invisible,” we are not referring to that portion of creation that is also spirit, that is, angelic beings and the human spirit. The substance of God Spirit is entirely different from the substance of created spirit. And again, God Spirit is Father and not yet the Holy Spirit.
Thus, God is invisible means that God, the Father, cannot be detected by any created form of detection. Detection requires measurement and boundaries; God is formless, no boundaries in space, no cessation by time. God is undetectable by any created form.
A Definite Form
Nothing can exist except it be inside of God. Nothing can exist except that God fills every particle of its existence – All Here Now. Yet this total and absolute immediacy of God is always undetectable by any created existence. This invisibility is important for us to grasp.
To detect is to distinguish one thing from another. When something is detected, its outline has been determined. Where the thing ends and something else begins has been found. When something is detected, it has taken on a definitive form; we can point to a space where it exists and to a space where it does not exist.
An Appearance
When we say detected, we can be speaking of detecting by sound waves or by ultra-violet light or by x-rays or even by gravitational influence; we are not limited to visible light. And we are including all angelic detection capacities in the realms of heaven as well. This detected, now “visible,” thing, has an appearance of some sort. When we see that appearance, we now say, “Oh, there is that thing.”
Do you see what has happened to God if God is “detected?” Three massive, universe-shattering, life-shattering things have just taken place.
An Idol
If God is detected, He has just become finite and is no longer God. If God ends, then we have space where God is not. A detected “god” must be a part of creation and not infinite.
Second, because humans are made to be filled with God, we are all religious. Thus if God is detected, we will make that appearance our “God” and worship it as an idol.
But the third life-shattering result of a detected God is the worst. God is no longer inside of us; we cannot, now, share Heart with God; we cannot know God by heart.
God All in All
The words in Revelation 1, the beginning and the end, are poorly translated. They don’t mean, “I start here and end there.” Rather, those words in the Greek are, I am the source and the consummation of all things, the place where all things arrive. In other words, John’s “the beginning and the end” means exactly the same thing as Paul’s “God all in all.”
Now, there is in the Christian experience a “detection” of God that is a sense of spiritual “Presence.” Thus, when people feel “the Presence,” they believe that God is “with them,” and when they feel a corresponding “absence,” they believe that God is departed, or not yet arrived. Thus they plead with God to “come.”
A Spirit Knowing
We must understand what is happening. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
We do know God by Spirit; thus those who dismiss “Presence” as human emotions only are completely wrong. We do possess a Spirit knowing of God inside our spirits and that Spirit knowing is translated into a “feeling” inside of us. But that Spirit knowing is part of how we know God, not a detection of whether God is “present” or “absent” as if He is finite, as if He “comes” and “goes.”
Far more important is that we know God by faith.
Faith Knows God
Faith is our primary connection with an infinite and eternal God-Spirit, that is, a God ALL HERE NOW and invisible. And faith knows God by Word, by knowing that what God says is true. Look at your fingertip. All that is God is found fully at that point. Look at the center of your palm. All that is God is found fully at that point.
There is no point in creation, either all the spiritual heavens or all the physical galaxies, where you would not find all that is God, all here now. That reality of God is a fact. We either know it or we do not know it.
Do We Know?
Believing that God is NOT all here now cannot remove God; the only thing missing is the knowledge of God. The absence of the knowledge of God is called vanity.
That you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Those who KNOW that they are filled with all the fullness of God, know what IS already true. Those who do not believe that they are filled with all the fullness of God live in a fictional mind-game of make-believe and death, telling stories about themselves that cannot be true.
God-Spirit fills all things and all things exist only inside of God-Spirit. The question is entirely one of knowing.
Worship
Now, Jesus’ words were spoken inside a very specific discussion regarding where and how we humans are to know God. The Jews were commanded by God to know Him only in His temple in Jerusalem for the simple reason that if people were allowed to know God elsewhere, they would worship every exalted object as if it were “God.”
Jesus said in verse 23, True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. The Greek word for “worship,” proskuneo, means to kiss towards.
Where God Dwells
May I suggest that “worship” means to respond to the knowledge of God with love. Worship and knowing a Father who fills us with all that He is are the same thing. We worship Father IN Spirit and IN Truth.
“Where God dwells” is the single most significant factor presented in the Old Testament regarding worship. Christ dwells in your hearts by faith. And Father inside of Jesus. In other words, there is ONE WAY ONLY by which we worship, that is, by which we know God.
Only by Heart
We worship God, we know God, only by HEART. We worship God, we know God, by love.
Thus here is our conclusion regarding knowing anything at all about an infinite, eternal, and invisible Spirit-God. We know NOTHING about this God outside of our own hearts. We worship only the God who dwells inside of Jesus inside of our hearts.
Any knowledge of God outside of our own hearts can be one thing only – idolatry, that is, utterly false. God fills the tree in my back yard with all that He is; I do not know or worship the tree. God fills you; I do not worship you.
Knowing God-Spirit by Heart
To know an infinite and eternal God is to know my own heart. To know my own heart is to know an infinite and eternal God. I know that it is true BECAUSE God says, not because I “feel” anything.
I know God by Word first, with knowing God by Spirit always following after. When people who do not know God by heart speak of an “eternal and infinite” God, they imagine a Thing utterly separate from themselves and far away. They worship an idol.
We know eternal and infinite God-Spirit only by heart, only by knowing ANOTHER Person who fills our hearts.