becoming before believing

True believers truly worship.

Now, I believe a worship service can be a very emotional experience and should involve our emotions. We are not automatons, after all! We are human beings created in the image of our Creator-God who has endowed us with an entire spectrum of emotions, many of which are very healthy to express in a worship service.

But the phrase Jesus uses here in John 4:23-24 is not about emotions. Rather, Jesus describes something much more profound: a new identity defined by His Spirit. He offers the woman at the well a drink of living water. She responds as any of us would, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.” She’s thinking of the physical, not wishing to be thirsty anymore, but Jesus is talking about a spiritual reality, a new kind of God-like ontology.

John 4:24 begins, “God is spirit….” [pause]

Jesus is referencing God’s being, His essence. In a conversation by a well in Samaria, we’re met with the idea that God exists in a state of existence that is rather foreign to us physical types. On top of that, for humanity to truly commune with God in worship, we will need to join Him in His essence. For us to be able to do that we need to somehow become as He is, share in His being. Sound crazy? Too mystical? Get ready for this!

Did you know that you are not merely a physical being? Did you know that you are comprised of both a material part and an immaterial part? And did you know that your immaterial part is dead without faith in Christ? (Read Ephesians 2 and then Genesis 3 sometime.) Our whole selves have been infected by sin in the fall of mankind, but more specifically the part of us that is immaterial (our spirit) is described in the Bible as being “dead in sin”(Ephesians 2:1).

The Bible says:

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned.” [Romans 5:12]

“In their case, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” [2 Corinthians 4:4]

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in sins. You are saved by grace!” [Ephesians 2:4-5]

Something to synthesize:

God is Spirit; humanity –created in God’s image– has a spirit but is dead apart from Christ. To truly worship Him I need a spirit that is alive, but I can’t revive my own spirit in my own power. Instead, I need God’s Spirit to awaken my dead spirit in order to become Spirit-filled (aka, spiritual) so I can worship Him in spirit ….and truth!

“This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world’s Savior. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in Him and He in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in Him.” [1 John 4:13-16]