What does this Triune God look like? Is he as large as the universe, the size of a man, or as small as a mouse? What does he look like? Does he look like you and me, or is he different somehow?
Q: Who is God?
A: God is a Spirit, and does not have a body like men.
(John 4:24; 1 Timothy 1:17)
Physically speaking, God doesn’t “look” like anything at all. He has no physical form that we can look at. Instead, as the first of our passages John 4:24 affirms, God is not physical, but a Spirit. A being that is purely spirit is totally outside our natural experience. As we saw in our first study, God made man to be both body & soul, or physical & spiritual. But God, who made all that is physical, and every other spirit, is himself Spirit. As we will see in greater detail in future studies, this is not limiting, but amazing. We are by nature and can’t imagine what it would be like not to have a body. Even when we think on being in heaven, before the resurrection, we still imagine ourselves with bodies. We imagine looking through physical eyes at the wonders of a place that is not physical but spiritual. Physicality is by nature restricting. You and your body can only be in one place at one time. God is not constrained by a body. He is able to be present everywhere, always, in part because he is a Spirit.
The direct application that Jesus makes to the fact that God is spirit is that, “those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” That is, those who would worship God must do so as he really is and according to what he has revealed in his word about right worship (truth), and from the heart, and not only in outward religious practice (spirit). True worshipers will worship outwardly, but not all who worship outwardly are true worshipers.
The second, and last, of our passages today, 1 Timothy 1:17, is more explicit about the fact that God, as a spirit, is invisible. You can’t look at God because he is invisible. He isn’t nonexistent because you can’t see him. He is simply invisible. This flies in the face of every sort of idolatry that we see in the world, both in history and in the past.
You cannot make a visible representation of God (Exodus 20:4–6; Deuteronomy 5:8–10), because he is invisible. However magnificent the image, it would fall so utterly short of reality that it ought to disgust us. Now if you are reading this in the West, you may think, “Big deal, no one worships idols anymore.” Oh really? What about Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, and the numerous animistic & folk religions? Outside of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, virtually every other world religion uses physical idols for worship. Even among those who call themselves Christian, there are groups that have brought in the use of physical objects for worship, such as statues and painted images. Anyone that bows down before an image has sinned in one of two ways. The first possibility is, they are giving worship to an object or person, knowing that it is not God. God takes the worship of anyone other than himself pretty seriously (Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:7). The second possibility is that they have made an image of the invisible God for worship. This is a violation of the second commandment (Exodus 20:4–6; Deuteronomy 5:8–10).
Christ alone holds the honor of being the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). In Christ alone may we come to worship the invisible God. Any worship directed to God in any other way is blasphemous idolatry. Worshiping any other image of God (even one we have constructed in our minds and isn’t in keeping with what God has said about himself in his Word) is detestable idolatry. So, come. Come and worship God in spirit and truth through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yours in Christ,