Theological Digression: God is a Spirit

This morning I was reading an article online and noticed that its author made a very peculiar comment. He stated that when Genesis 1:26 says we were made in the image of God, what that means is that God looks just like we do – that He has a head, two arms, and two legs. “God doesn’t look like a puppy,” he explained. “He looks like us.”

What was especially appalling is that this person was a Bible scholar. He had actually written a wildly popular book in an attempt to correct people’s misconceptions about the Bible. What’s even worse is that people actually believed him. They thought what he was teaching made a lot of sense.

I think that just goes to show how many Christians are illiterate when it comes to the Bible. The ignorance is just appalling. We’re not talking about predestination here, folks. The idea that God is a spirit and doesn’t have a body is an extremely simple and basic concept. This is something everyone should have learned in Sunday School.

First of all, God is a Spirit:

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

Second, spirits do not have bodies. We know this because Jesus told us this after He was raised from the dead:

Luke 24:39: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

It’s really a pretty open-and-shut case. God is a spirit and spirits do not have bodies. He, therefore, does not have a head, arms, legs, bones, blood vessels, and all the rest. How could God have said it any more clearly? When God said “Let us make man in our image” He wasn’t talking about the physical body. He was focused on the spiritual side. We are made in the likeness of God spiritually, not physically. People are unique in that they have a spiritual component and are capable of having a relationship with God. We can experience God in a way that no other creature can.

If Jesus was already a physical being then there was nothing particularly special about His becoming a man, for He would have been a man all along. But if He was a Spirit, and if the boundless, eternal Presence (which the universe itself could not contain!) descended and entered human form, then that truly was a remarkable thing. Jesus became something He was not before – a physical being. A human. A creature with flesh and bones and skin and appetites and hair.

Paul points out that God is actually invisible:

I Timothy 1:17: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Solomon went on to explain that the entire universe is too small a thing to contain the presence of God:

1 Kings 8:27: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?”

God Himself echoed that very thought through the prophet Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 23:23: “Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?
24 Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.”

So God is a Spirit – eternal, immortal, and invisible; He is so vast that the universe itself cannot contain him, and He fills Heaven and Earth. He does not have a head, arms, and legs.

Now, there is one side-note to all of this. The Trinity is composed of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In the beginning all three were spirit (Genesis 1:1-2). However, about two thousand years ago something astounding happened: God the Son became a man. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, lived, and was executed for our sins. When He died His physical body was buried, and three days later it came back to life. Jesus then ascended bodily into Heaven as the God-Man – fully God and yet fully Man. Jesus does have a physical body, and to the best of my knowledge He will always have it. But He did not have it when He uttered the words “Let us make man in our image” in Genesis 1. Only Jesus became a man; God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are still spirits.

That brings up another point. The Holy Spirit is definitely a spirit; very few people would dispute that. Ask yourself this: does it have a body? Does the Holy Spirit (which each Christian has living inside them!) have a head, arms, and legs? The author of the article I was reading claimed that the God-spirits still look like people; they just have bodies made out of “spirit stuff”, with heads and legs and all the rest. Does that match any description of the Holy Spirit found in the Bible? Does it even make sense?

I rest my case.