Chapter 1

To Know...

The Eternal Living God

While the incarnation had not occurred before the creation of the universe, it was planned. The person, who is God, existed in eternity past. The nature of this being is mysterious and incomprehensible. But the Bible does give some glimmerings of information.

GOD IS INVISIBLE

Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. 1 Tim 1:17

The most difficult element of God's character is the fact that He is invisible. We all would love to be able to see Him. But seeing him is not God's will. As Jesus said unto Thomas, "because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed" (John 20:29). God doesn't want us to see Him for two reasons. First, as stated earlier, to see Him in His glory is to bring death upon us. But, one would think, now that he has a human body this should not be an issue. It is still an issue because his human body has been glorified (Rev. 1:10-17). Indeed, when Jesus returns, "And then shall the Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming" (2 Thes. 2:8). To see Him in our sinful state is to realize the fullness of our sins, which kills us. It is the second reason, however, that matters to believers. He wants to encourage our faith in Him, in order that we might have hope in the trials that will come. As Paul said, "For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" (Rom. 2:24). Moses shared this hope. "Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible" (Heb. 11:26a & 27). Faith without hope is an empty faith. Jesus came to save our souls (Matt. 10:28), and hope is in the soul.

What makes Him invisible? Our own blindness. One must have eyes to see daylight. All things are invisible to the blind. So, too, we need spiritual eyesight, which is partially restored when born again. But like the blind man of Bethsaida, our spiritual sight is only partial, and we see God by faith as a shadow, just as he saw "men as trees, walking" (Mark 8:24). And even after the rebirth, self interest takes our eyes off Jesus, which creates another blindness that renders God invisible.

GOD IS A SPIRIT

God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:24.

No one knows what that means. We know that the spirit world exists and we construct mental models for our understanding, but until we are on the other side of life we will not fully know. The Bible provides metaphors to help our mental models. When Jesus spoke to Nicodemus He compared the Spirit to "the wind" (John 3:8) and called It "living water [or running water]" (John 4:10). The writer of Hebrews says "our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:29). All these metaphors suggest a flowing entity. Even though we are also spirit beings, our perception is almost completely physical which makes comprehending the spirit vague and difficult. It is by intuition and the experience of feeling His presence that we perceive the spirit. Because the metaphors suggest a fluid entity, it is usually assumed that He has no body as we have. Perhaps this is so, but I am not convinced. Nonetheless, God is a Spirit, which is a substantive entity, and has existed before the physical world was created. It is logical, then, to presume that the spirit world is greater than the physical world, and therefore the greater reality.

Our English word, "spirit," means wind, which alludes to the metaphor of the wind seen in Scripture. Spirit in English is from the Latin, spiritus, which means, "breath." The air we breathe is an immediate life source. The Holy Spirit in Hebrew is the Ruwach Ha Qodesh , which literally translates into, "the Holy Wind." Likewise in Greek he is called the Pneuma , which means the "Wind." Our English word, spirit, is related to the word "respiratory" which refers to breathing.

It is the spirit that quickeneth [gives life]; the flesh profiteth nothing (John 6:63).

James said, "For as the body without the spirit is dead" (James 2:26), meaning that the human spirit is the source of human life [17], likewise God as a spirit is the source of all life. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14.6). All of God is life. When He speaks, life is imparted. This is one test of hearing God's voice: a word from God stimulates, invigorates, and motivates a person to righteous action, because life is imparted with His words.

The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63).

Speaking words are the processes of forming sounds, via air passing over our vocal chords to create pitch, then blocked with our tongue to create rhythm. What makes his words spirit? The mechanical process of creating words doesn't make them words, only sounds. In order for sounds to be words, two elements are required: meaning has to be ascribed to the sounds, and meaning has to be in agreement between speaker and listener for communication to succeed. I suggest, then, that God as a spirit means that God is the meaning of life. Or, in other words, the intelligence of life. He is not like our conscience thoughts, because our conscience thinking is based upon learned words. Rather, He is the like the essence of our thoughts that are ineffable, usually called our sub conscience, which words communicate. It is that essence which I call "the meaning." Likewise, He has given us a human spirit which is the meaning of our lives, and is a part of our sub conscience thinking. The plan of who we are is in our spirits. Furthermore, when God communicates with us, He speaks to our spirits. He can say a single word, yet it may be packed with abundant meaning, which our spirit apprehends intuitively, and our soul provides the additional words.

Meaning by itself can have any form, which is why the metaphors of wind, water, and fire are used at different times. This is why the Bible is considered the "Living Word." The content of the Bible is specifically God's choice, therefore His Spirit can speak to a reader's heart, hence be the "Living Word." The Bible becomes another form of God. The Bible is not God, for it is merely paper and ink. But it is another form that the meaning of God's communication can take. Likewise, Paul says of believers, "Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God" (2 Cor. 3:3). Believers become another form of God, even though they are not God. For the meaning of God's life is demonstrated and communicated through them, although, often only in part. This is what God meant when He said to Moses, "I have made thee a god to Pharaoh" (Ex. 7:1).

Consider these secular expressions of the spirit:

Now consider some biblical expressions of the spirit:

All these expressions show some characteristic that is rooted in the type of spirit. Or, in other words, the spirit is the meaning of the expression. Consider what Paul said, "Our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6). If one lives unto God according to the letter, then one misunderstands God. But living by the spirit is to live by the real meaning of God. This is why He is called the Truth (John 15:26) and is the reality. When Jesus rebuked the Pharisees he called them whited sepulchers clean on the outside and corrupt on the inside (Matt. 23:27). They tithed mint and anise, but missed the weightier matters of the law (Matt. 23:23). They lived by the letter and not the spirit. Or, in other words, they understood the form of the word, but missed the real meaning.