“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24).
Not worshiping in a particular place
Jesus spoke these words to the Samaritan woman at the well. The woman remarked that the Samaritans worshiped at the mountain and the Jews in Jerusalem. Jesus responded that the time would come that she would worship in neither place. We may think likewise, that we should worship in special places or services or at particular days. However, Jesus was not talking about Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. He was talking about an every-moment-of-every-day way of life. Every moment “to live IS Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Thát is church.
Serving Him in spirit
God is spirit and we have a spirit: “God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who He is, and we know who we are: Father and children” (Rom. 8:16 MSG).
When we are born again, we become one spirit with God’s Spirit, and we become partakers of the divine nature: “But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him” (1 Corinthians 6:17). The word ‘joined” is a translation of a Greek verb which is related to the word kolla which means ‘glue’. So God’s Spirit and my spirit are ‘glued’ like two sheets of paper. We are one, yet to be distinguished. We live in two-oneness. Christ is the light of the world and so are we (John 8:12; Matthew 5:14). To serve in spirit is to serve Him in the knowledge that the believer and Christ are organically one as the branch and the Vine (John 15:5). Are you in search for yourself, who you really are? You will only find it in two-oneness with Christ. He is our Life and we fellowship from Spirit to spirit. That’s also the way we read the Bible, not of the letter but in spirit: “Lord, touch my heart through Your words!” We worship Him in spirit, knowing that in spirit He speaks to us. We don’t worship God in temples made by hands (Acts 7:48), or in any other material way. God is a pure spirit and we meet Him “in spirit”.
Serving Him in truth
We can only worship and serve in truth, out of the reality of our spiritual condition. This brings us to our daily life, to live by faith from who we are in spirit. Jesus gave the key when He said: “I am way, the TRUTH and the Life” (John 14:6).
Pilate posed the question, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Is truth a “what” (a thing)? Of course not. Jesus Christ is the truth! Truth is a Person. Christ as the truth became the light of the world to us. So we are both, He and I, the light of the world. He also “BECAME to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). We worship Him in truth, in the practice of everything that He became to us. To be practical, can He be rich and I be poor? Isn’t my situation His situation too? Isn’t He in all of our problems? When we suffer He suffers, because we are a part of Him.
Spirit and truth belong together, for the Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of truth” (John 16:13). There are not two ways to worship or to serve. We serve in spirit and see who we are, “not I, but Christ…” (Galatians 2:20). We also serve in truth and here faith comes in. It is “… the life I now live … I live by faith …” (Galatians 2:20), when daily situations meet us and we say: “Lord I know who I am in spirit, and You are my truth and my daily miracle in all the pressing situations of life!” As in everything, we serve and worship “by faith”, for the just shall live by faith.
So praise God, we walk in truth because we are truth in spirit!
“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4).