Who is God?

Buck Braswell

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Question # 9 Who is God?

This question is one of the most important questions we as Christians, as human beings, men, women, boys and girls must be prepared to answer. We must know who God is in order to fully understand the other catechism questions you have been learning.

If God made you and all things, who is this being that was the cause of creation?

If God made all things for his glory, why does he deserve this glory and why should you and I glorify him?

If God is three in personhood and one in essence, why have we only seen the Son?

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Here is another way to ask this question, Who is this Triune God who created all things for His own glory?

Answer: God is Spirit, and does not have a body like men.

I know what you are thinking. How do we know God is a Spirit? What is a spirit? Why can’t I see him?

We know that our primary, sufficient, and authoritative source of who God is is what? The Bible, the Scriptures, the Word of God reveals or shows us who God is and that is where we are headed.

But first, since we are studying the Baptist Catechisms I think there is another place we can look to see what we as Baptist have believed about God for 100’s of years. We find this in the Baptist Confession of Faith. This is where men of the past, pastors and theologians of church history have taken the Scriptures and summarized these doctrines we believe in order to help us know who God is and what he has done for us.

The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith says of God:

The Lord our God is but one only living and true God; whose subsistence is in and of Himself, infinite in being and perfection; whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but Himself; a most pure spirit,4 invisible, without body, parts, or passions, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, and withal most just and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

Now is that not a lot to learn about our God? There are some big words in there that are important to understand, but tonight we are going to focus on just one attribute of God, his invisibility as Spirit. In other words, we want to look and see what the Scriptures say about who God is as Spirit who we cannot see or approach!

If we are going to know God, worship God, and be faithful witness about God we must rightly understand who He is. People often create in their mind a god of their own liking. They think of an old grandfather god who is just there to support them and tell them everything they wan to hear. They think of God as just being a better person, someone that is a little better than we are. But that is not how Scripture describes Him. That is not how we are to understand him.

Let’s look at probably the most well known statement of who God is in all the Bible.

John 4:24 ESV

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Now, who can tell me what is going on in this verse in John chapter 4? What narrative or event is being described in this verse?

Jesus’ encounter with the women at the well. In this story Jesus meets a Samaritan women who is living in adultery and sin. She does not have a full understanding of who God is. She knows some things about God, but she doesn’t know God. One of the ways this is revealed is the fact that she begins talking about where the samaritan’s worship and where the Jew’s worship.

Jesus tells her,

John 4:22 ESV

You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

He goes on to tell here a time is coming when all true-worshippers of God will worship God in spirit and truth. He tells her that God is looking for those who will worship Him.

Then Jesus makes this statement of truth about God,

John 4:24 ESV

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Jesus is telling this Samaritan women first of all who God is. He is answering our question Who is God?

Jesus says, “God is spirit.”

This leads us to ask what does this mean that God is spirit?

J.C. Ryle gives a great explanation, “God is an immaterial being, that He dwelleth not in temples made with hands, and that He is not, like ourselves, therefore, absent from one place when He is present at another.” These things are all true, but how little we can realize them!

Ryle, J. C. (1879). Expository Thoughts on John (Vol. 1, p. 225). New York: Robert Carter & Brothers.

John MacArthur writes, “The phrase God is spirit is the classic definition of the nature of God. Despite the heretical teaching of false cults, God is not an exalted man (Num. 23:19), “for a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39). He is “the invisible God” (Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17; Heb 11:27), who dwells in an unapproachable light (Ps 104:2)., whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16; Ex 33:20: John 1:18; 6:46) Had he not revealed Himself in Scripture and in Jesus Christ, God would be utter incomprehensible.”

In other words God being immaterial means he does not have flesh and bones like we have. He does not have a visible body like we do.

The word spirit here teaches us that God is an independent non-corporeal being, in contrast to a being that can be perceived by the physical sense. (BDG).

We can know God but we cannot see God, because he does not have a body. This is one of the ways he is separate from us, other than us and apart from us.

For example, .........one of you stay in this room and go into the youth room at the same time. What do you mean you can’t? Your body binds you to one place a one time. The fact that God is spirit enables him to be omnipresent in all places at all times.

Here is another, way God as Spirit is different from us......somebody tell me what Pastor Josh just said in the other room??? What do you mean? You can’t know all things happening at one time? God as spirit hears what we are saying in this room and knows every word that Pastor Josh is preaching in the other room. Because he is spirit, he is also omniscience, “all knowing.”

Think about the women at the well, in this account, Jesus who is God tells here all of her sins she was committing with these men she was in relationships with. Had he ever been there? Had he ever met her before? Because God is spirit he is in all places at all times and knows all things even our sins.

Not only is Jesus teaching the samaritan women and us that to know God we must know he is spirit. He is also teaching her that we are saved by God who is Spirit. Jesus is at the well essentially witnessing to this lost lady. He is telling her that he is the living water and that whoever drinks of him will never thirst again. This is when he brings up the right worship of the one True God. Then Jesus introduces himself as the one sent from God as Messiah and Savior. This means our salvation is tied directly to God as Spirit.

Notice what 2 Corinthians 3:17 says,

2 Corinthians 3:17 ESV

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

What is Paul saying here? He is saying that the Spirit of the Lord is the one whom saves us from the penalty and power of sin. God is separate from us as Spirit, also saves us by his Spirit. He without us seeing him physically, opens our blinded eyes spiritually!

We go from not even recognizing our sin against God, not knowing who God is to all of the sudden seeing that we have sinned against God, broken God’s law and are under God’s judgment and wrath.

God by his Holy Spirt without us seeing him physically, without him laying physical hands on us then regenerates our heart spiritually. He takes our heart of stone that is dead to God and makes it alive to see the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus!

God does all of this work of freeing us from sins power and his own judgement and you never see his body, you never feel his hands, because he is spirit.

Think about the women at the well for a minute. She went to the well that day, leaving a life of sin to get a drink of water. She got there and Jesus met her, told her of her sin, told her God was spirit who was to be worshipped in Spirit and truth. Jesus told her that he was the one prophesied Messiah that was to be worshipped and God opened her eyes and her heart to the truth of the gospel. And she became a witness for Christ!

John 4:28–29 ESV

So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

So knowing God as Spirit, helps us to know God, we are brought to saving faith by the Spirit of God. Finally it is important we understand we are to understand knowing God as spirit informs our worship.

John 4:24 ESV

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Because God is spirit we must worship him in spirit and truth. This means we must worship him with redeemed hearts, with the right knowledge of who he is and what he has done for us. We must worship him out of what we know as true of him.

Our theology (what we know about God) fuels our doxology (our worship of God)!

Remember what Pastor Matt has taught us?

Worship is a rhythm of revelation and response.

Tonight, it has been revealed to us that God is spirit.

Because we have learned who God is we then respond in worship, praise and adoration to God. We have another powerful example of this in the Scriptures, this next verse is call a doxology.

1 Timothy 1:17 ESV

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.