God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
God says, “just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9) The book of Job says, “Touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out.” (Job 37:23, AMP) But God tells Jeremiah, “Don’t let the wise brag of their wisdom… If you brag, brag of this and this only: That you understand and know me. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)
God wants to be known and understood! To have faith is to understand things about Him. We “must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6) God’s unity—in diversity—is one of the most important things to know about Him. To hold this truth we must know three other things:
We Cannot Bring Him Down To Our Level
Although Christ humbled Himself by “sharing in human nature,” (Philippians 2:7) God is not just a man. (Numbers 23:19) Imagining He’s just like us is a mistake. Jesus warned the Woman at the Well: “You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews.” (John 4:22).
Humility in Worship
We may not be able to fully know God’s nature. But worshipers must accept what God says about Himself. “Those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth,” Jesus goes on to say in John 4:24. Worship is a humble admission that there is no one and nothing like Him.
Beyond Comparison
Do comparisons help explain the Trinity? Water, Ice and Steam? The nature of light? God says, “To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike?” (Isaiah 46:5) Any time we use something, saying, “God is like this,” it’s bound to fall short. We use the word “Trinity”—which isn’t found in the Bible—to stand for all these truths we DO find in the Bible.
“Trinity,” (meaning, literally, three-in-one), stands for all the teachings of Scripture on God’s three-in-one nature. It is our humble admission that the God Who has revealed Himself in Scripture is “transcendent,” beyond the limit of our understanding. At the same time, “he is not far from any one of us.” (Acts 17:27) Do you know Him today?
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