The Trinity
God is Spirit
John 4:24
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship
in spirit and truth.
NKJV
This entire concept of the Trinity is made more complicated by the fact that Scripture tell us God is spirit.
Or, maybe, this makes it easier?!
One of the great impacts of
such a concept is that we are now free to worship
God anywhere! This is one of the points of the entire discussion Jesus
has with the Samaritan woman in John 4.
John 4:21-23 21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe
Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in
Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we
know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is
coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in
spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
NKJV
In this verse there is no article ("the") before the word "spirit" in the Greek texts. Jesus is not talking about the Holy Spirit. Jesus is declaring that God Himself is spirit. In other words, one of the key essence owned by God is spirit.
God is not, however, in our
terms, a ghost. We know from our study that God is a living Person. He
is the Living God.
Psalm 84:2 I long, yes, I faint with longing to
enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will
shout joyfully to the living God. NLT
But, God is invisible. We cannot see God the Father nor God the Holy Spirit. In fact, in this age, we cannot see God the Son either! But we do not see Jesus because He has chosen to return to Heaven.
We can, however, know God. We
can learn about Him through reading the Bible.
We can talk to God through our prayers.
God will talk back to us by means we do not understand. He talks back
to us through His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who dwells in every believer.
Because God is spirit, He may freely exercise many of the attributes
of His essence. Since God is spirit, He does not have a body. This allows
Him to accomplish things a body cannot accomplish.
Luke 24:39 Behold My hands and My feet, that it
is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones
as you see I have." NKJV
Scripture does, at times, speak of God as having a body, or at least, parts of a body. These are human form descriptions symbolic in nature designed to help us understand God and His intentions for us. Otherwise we would be unable to comprehend what God is intending for us.
The exception is, of course, Jesus. God the Son lowered Himself by moving from spirit to body. He did this to help us find God. He did this to die on the Cross as the ultimate sacrifice.
So, when we say that God is spirit, maybe this does help to better explain the Trinity. Maybe we can understand just a little better how God can be One and Three, all at the same time.
