THE KING’S BUSINESS
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is incorporeal, invisible reality. To say “ God is spirit” is to say God is in corporeal and invisible, not limited to places like Gerizim and Jerusalem, or any other places. Spirit is invisible but none the less real. The word translated “ spirit” means primarily “wind.” “ Wind” is absolutely invisi ble ; we see its effects but not' the wind itself (cf. notes on John 3:8). But none the less it is real; indeed, spirit is reality in a deeper sense than matter is. There are three great phrases in the Bible describing the nature of God; “ God is light” (1 John 1 :5 ); “ God is love” (1 John 4:8) ; “ God is spirit.” These are three of the greatest statements ever writ ten. They are all found in the writ ings of John, one in John’s record of what the Lord Himself said, the other two his own statements sum ming up the teaching of our Lord. This great truth that God is essen tially spirit is implied in the old Tes tament revelation of God (Deut. 4:15- 18; Isa. 31:3). But here is the first full and specific declaration of this truth. This majestic utterance of our Lord is another proof positive of the genuineness of the record here. Neither John nor any one else in that day could have made up such an ut terance as this and put it into the lips o f our Lord, if He Himself had not said it. Indeed, no one of any day could have said it, if they had not first learned it from the Lord. Some one has well said, “ For' four thousand years all the sages of earth could not evolve this one simple but sublime truth * * * all their learning and thought must pale be fore the humble Teacher of a female outcast at a solitary well in Samaria. * * * This wondrous dialogue be gins with a cup of water, and ends with the most sublime revelation of the nature of G od and His worship .” While God is essentially spirit and
therefore in His essential nature in visible (Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17; Heb. 11:27; 1 Tim. 6;.16), nevertheless God manifests Himself in a visible form (Exod. 24:9, 10). The supreme manifestation of God in visible form was in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:9). The nature of God’s worship must be determined by God’s own nature; as He is spirit, “ they that worship Him must wor ship in spirit and truth.” It must be a matter, not of times, places ana forms, but of inward reality.' It must manifest itself, not merely in types and symbols but in moral and spiritual realities. Worship in the depths oi a man’s own inner life is the wot- ship God desires and demands. It is the only worship that fits such a God as our Lord Jesus reveals in His words and in His person. We not only may so worship Him, we “must” so worship Him. V. 25. “ The woman saith unto (rather, to) Him, I know that Mes- sias cometh, which is ( rather, he that is) called Christ: when he is come, he will tell, us (rather, declare to us) all things.” Apparently the woman was not al together satisfied with our Lord’s re ply and determines that she will wait until Messiah comes to settle the question. There may have been a growing suggestion in the woman’s thought that He who talked with her was the Messiah, and she may have wished to draw Him out into a spe cific declaration of the fact. Certain ly, shortly after she expressed to the men of the city the thought that He might be the Christ (v. 29). She had already acknowledged the Lord as a prophet (v. 19) but such a truth as He had just declared needed, not only a prophet but one who was more than a prophet, the Messiah Himself, to affirm it if it was to be believed.
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