God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:24
After the Assyrians overthrew the northern tribes, they brought in settlers from various pagan nations to ensure the discontinuance of that rebellious nation (2 Kings 17:24). These heathen people intermarried with the residue from Ephraim and Manasseh in the land. At the appointment of the king of Assyria, this mixed multitude was taught by an apostate priest from the northern tribes (2 Kings 17:26-28). As a result, the Samaritans practiced a mixture of pagan idolatry and apostate Hebraic religion. The Bible record states of the Samaritans: ‘They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence’ (2 Kings 17:33).
During the discourse in which Jesus revealed His Messiahship to the woman of Samaria, He made no allusions regarding the sham-religion of her people, saying to her: ‘Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews’ (John 14:22). Pagan idolaters generally claimed that their idols were representations of a spirit or a force of nature. The Samaritans claimed their idols represented the God of Abraham. Yet to worship God contrary to the truth of His Word is not to worship God at all. It is the devil who reaps in all false worship such as that conducted in the Samaritan temple at Mt. Gerazim.
The crucial statement that Jesus delivered to this erring seeker of truth was: ‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth’ (John 4:24). Which is to say, do not be deceived that God will receive your worship to Him while you conduct it contrary to the truth of His Word. Do not think that while you manifest a spirit of rebellion, by sinning against Him, that God will be pleased with your outward acts of devotion.
God is a spirit, and all hearts are naked before Him. It is not to be understood by this that Jesus was teaching that God is purely an immaterial spirit, as trinitarian theologians misapply this verse to support their own species of idolatry. It is also said that ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8), and that ‘our God is a consuming fire’ (Hebrews 12:29). What was being conveyed by the Lord to the woman of Samaria was that unlike the dumb idols she worshipped, ‘which see not, nor hear, nor know’, the omniscience that God has through His Spirit enables Him to read the virtue or iniquity in His professed worshippers as an open book. Not only this, it is only through His Spirit that we may hold communion with Him, as we are instructed to be ‘praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit’ (Ephesians 6:8).
As Jesus revealed to this woman, it is heartfelt devotion offered according to truth which God desires from His created intelligences. Any less is a lame offering.
Christopher Sparks