Intimacy with Jesus: Spirit and Truth
Intimacy with Jesus is the foundation of our Christianity. If you want to have a fruitful Christian life, then pursue intimacy with Jesus; if you want to have a religious life then go through the motions of Christianity.
John 4:19-24, “The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
The discussion the woman was having with Jesus was about the true location to worship God, and Jesus completely turned the conversation.
v.22, “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.”
Know – eidō: to perceive with the eyes, to perceive by any of the senses, to perceive, notice, discern, discover. This ‘know’ is not knowing someone intimately, it is knowing them at the soulish or flesh level. The Samaritans were worshipping God, but it was at the wrong place. The Jews were worshipping God, but there was no relationship. That is why in verse 23, Jesus says true worshippers.
v.23, “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.”
The Father is seeking true worshippers. He longs for intimacy. Verse 24 repeats what He is saying here in verse 23, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”” We are spirit beings as well. We are a spirit being, we have a soul (mind, will, and emotions), and we live in this physical body. Fake worship is when we worship out of the flesh. True worship is when we worship out of the spirit. In this story, Jesus is challenging the woman’s tradition. He is telling her do not worship Me out of tradition but worship Me out of intimacy. The same applies to us today, a lot of us approach our relationship with Jesus out of tradition.
Traditions are great, they tell us what has been done in the past; but we need to let Jesus tell us what He wants in the future. What Jesus is telling the woman and what He is telling us today, we must worship and be intimate with Him in Spirit and Truth. In Spirit because we must be born again. Our Spirits must be alive to God so that we can engage Him. In Truth because we must know His revealed knowledge to us through the scriptures. Those two are the parameters that Jesus laid out for us in our journey of intimacy with Him.
Spirit:
I have said this repeatedly, but I will say it again, we are a spirit being, we have a soul, and we live in this physical body. For anyone in this world who wants to engage God in anything their spirits must be reborn. This is what happens at salvation. If you try to engage God with unrenewed spirit, it would be like some people trying to have a close relationship with a dog. As much as dogs are good companions, they fail way short of human intimacy because they are of a different kind. In creation God created everything with its own kind.
Genesis 1:20-22, “Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
The goal of this was so that those creatures had their own companion.
Genesis 2:18, “And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
Adam was the only one of his own kind and it was not good for him to be alone. We all know this to be true, a lot of you go to young adult groups because you are looking for friends and a community. For some of you this might not be your community and for others this is your community. You need to be where God wants you to be.
Genesis 1:26-27, “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
God created us to be similar to Him so that we can be intimate with Him; that is why in Genesis 3 we see God walking in the Garden of Eden. When the fall happened, our spirits died or were separated from God, and we could never engage Him the same anymore.
Ephesians 2:12-13, “…that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
These verses capture our state before and after our salvation. The day you get saved you are brought near to God the Father by the Blood of Jesus. Our redemption does not stop there, but God the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us.
John 14:16-17, “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.”
Our journey into intimacy with Jesus starts with Holy Spirit. God Holy Spirit is in all of us, and He is the one responsible for revealing Jesus to you and me.
1 Corinthians 2:10-12, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”
For us to be intimate with Jesus we need to engage Him through our spirit; and for that we have God Holy Spirit to help us.
Truth:
The other foundation for us being intimate with Jesus is truth. I want to make a distinction between knowledge and truth. Knowledge is information that we know. Knowledge is knowing facts, dates, historical context, cultural context etc. Truth is revealed knowledge.
Ephesians 1:17, “…that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him…”
We know facts about Jesus, but it’s not until God Holy Spirit reveals it does it become truth.
John 8:31-32, “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Know – ginōskō– Intimately know someone. You shall intimately know the truth and that truth shall set you free. The only way you can intimately know the truth is when God Holy Spirit reveals it to you. This is why last month we talked about how to study the Bible, because it is through studying the Bible that we acquire knowledge that Holy Spirit reveals to us, and it becomes life changing truths.
Spirit and truth are the perfect balance that we need to grow in the Lord. Sometimes we are too spiritual that we go beyond scriptures and sometimes we are too bible that we neglect the reality of the spiritual. We need both because of John 4:24. This is our key verse in this series.
John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
For us to be intimate with Jesus we need to engage Him through our spirit; and for that we have God Holy Spirit to help us. For us to know the truth, we must study the Bible, and let God Holy Spirit reveal it to us.
