What does this mean

[Jenniferdiana]

Why does people say God is a spirit? And what do they mean by spirit?

 

[Radagast]

Why does people say God is a spirit?

Spirit means "not material."

"Not made of atoms," if you like.

 

[Jenniferdiana]

Ok

 

[mukk_in]

Why does people say God is a spirit? And what do they mean by spirit?

Spirit is a person's being or essence Jennifer. Much like one's personality, emotions, thoughts, feelings are put together. Jesus is the physical form of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the complete essence of the Father. God bless .

 

[Jenniferdiana]

Yeah i know..

 

[Radagast]

Jesus is the physical form of God the Father

No, that's a heresy (also, per the rules, only Trinitarian Christians are allowed to post in this forum).

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all spiritual, they are all different, but they form one God.

God the Son took human form, and we call Him Jesus.

 

[mukk_in]

No, that's a heresy (also, per the rules, only Trinitarian Christians are allowed to post in this forum).

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all spiritual, they are all different, but they form one God.

God the Son took human form, and we call Him Jesus.

All three forms of God are coequal and co-existent.

 

[God bless Joshua]

We are also spirit bound in flesh.

Jesus was a spirit so he manifested in flesh that people may see God.

 

[ViaCrucis]

We are also spirit bound in flesh.

We are not spirits bound in flesh, we are human beings comprised of flesh, blood, mind, soul, will, emotion, etc. The idea that we are spirits imprisoned in flesh is a Gnostic doctrine, and is heretical.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

All three forms of God are coequal and co-existent.

All three Persons are coequal and co-existent. And Jesus is the Son, the eternal Son, begotten of the Father before all ages.

From the Nicene Creed:
"[We believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
begotten from the Father before all ages,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made;
of the same Being as the Father."

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

Why does people say God is a spirit? And what do they mean by spirit?

Jesus says this in the context of a debate that existed between Jews and Samaritans. Jews had always regarded the temple in Jerusalem to be the sacred location of God's presence on earth. The Samaritans, who also practiced Israelite religion, believed that Mt. Gerizim was sacred and had their own temple there. Jesus, talking to a Samaritan woman, says that there will come a day when it doesn't matter which mountain, because the true worshipers of God will worship Him in spirit and in truth, because God is spirit. By this Jesus means that we can't restrict God to one place, God isn't found over here but not over there; God is unbound, unrestricted, limitless, everywhere. After Christ's resurrection and ascension the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost (recorded in Acts ch. 2) and the Gospel went out first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, and also Samaria--both Jews and Samaritans were the earliest Christians, and was the first major bridge crossed. Then that same message went out to the Gentiles (non-Jews). Whether Jew, Samaritan, or Gentile God united people together in His one Church, brought together by their common faith in Jesus the Messiah and the unity of the Holy Spirit under the Fatherhood of God the Father. A fraternal organization of all tribes, tongues, and nations united by God together as a new people in Jesus Christ.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Radagast]

We are not spirits bound in flesh, we are human beings comprised of flesh, blood, mind, soul, will, emotion, etc. The idea that we are spirits imprisoned in flesh is a Gnostic doctrine, and is heretical.

Indeed. As Christians, we believe in the resurrection of the body.

 

[com7fy8]

Why does people say God is a spirit?

Possibly they say this because Jesus says >

"'God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.'" (John 4:24)

I think Jesus says this so we can know that God is spiritual, and therefore worship is spiritual, not only outward religious gestures. We worship Him by being pleasing to Him, the way His gentle and quiet love has us being >

"rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God." (1 peter 3:4)

God is spiritual; so this is included in how to worship Him, by spiritually being the way which is pleasing to Him.

 

[Monksailor]

REMINDER OP #1:

Why does people say God is a spirit? And what do they mean by spirit?

I do not think that the OP is asking for deep or long and complex theological input or debates. I believe that she is simply asking our opinion on what the essence of the Spirit is in relation to God and why God is referred to as "spirit." I would add that she might be wondering how we Christians can be filled with the Holy Spirit (derived from her previous post.)

 

[God bless Joshua]

We are not spirits bound in flesh, we are human beings comprised of flesh, blood, mind, soul, will, emotion, etc. The idea that we are spirits imprisoned in flesh is a Gnostic doctrine, and is heretical.

Where did you buy that Heretical STAMP ?

 

[Radagast]

Where did you buy that Heretical STAMP ?

It comes with the book version of the Nicene Creed.

 

[God bless Joshua]

It comes with the book version of the Nicene Creed.

I hope i wont get terminated

 

[ViaCrucis]

Where did you buy that Heretical STAMP ?

It's simply a matter of what Scripture and Christianity has always taught. Isaiah 26:19 says the dead will rise bodily, Daniel 12:2 says those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Jesus says in John 6 that those who trust in Him shall be raised up on the last day, St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that if the dead do not rise then Christ is not risen and we are still lost in our sins, the same Apostle says in Philippians 3:21 that we shall be glorified in the body the same as Christ was, in Romans 8 he says that we look forward to the redemption of our bodies and that if the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead dwells also in us then He who raised Christ from the dead will give life also to our mortal bodies.

The Apostles' Creed says "We believe ... in the resurrection of the body." and the Nicene Creed says "We look forward to the resurrection of the dead."

It was Plato who taught that human beings are souls encased in houses of flesh, having fallen from a primordial first estate as per his Theory of Forms. The Gnostics took this idea and ran with it, teaching that the true god dwelt in a realm of pure spirit and produced a series of emanations known as aeons, and that one of these emanations, Sophia or Wisdom, fell by producing her own emanation known as Ialdaboath (probably a corruption of YHVH Sabaoth), also known as Saklas ("fool") or the Demiurge ("public craftsman" aka the creator of the material world); the Demiurge was foolish, ignorant, and evil and thought himself the one and only god and then decided to create the material universe and in so doing trapped a number of the divine aeons into prisons of flesh (Adam and Eve) and also created loyal servants, the archons ("rulers") identified with the biblical angels who serve God, who are just as corrupt as the Demiurge. The serpent, in Gnostic myth, was a liberator who sought to undo the work of the Demiurge, and ultimately the Christ aeon came to liberate Sophia and human kind by teaching the hidden knowledge (gnosis) about all these things--but that such knowledge was only accessible by the few because the vast majority of human beings are too ignorant in their material flesh to receive the truth--and to these only is salvation which is interpreted to mean the liberation of the soul from the body and to return to the realm of pure spirit and rejoin the pleroma of spiritual beings.

So, yes. The idea that we are "spirits housed in flesh" is heretical. Objectively so. On the basis of Scripture and two thousand years of unanimous Christian teaching on this subject.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

I hope i wont get terminated

This isn't the 41st millennium and no one is going to come at you with a chainsaw sword.

But we are going to explain the elementary articles of faith which are fundamentally central to the Christian religion. Everything stands or falls, in Christianity, on the resurrection.

"If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that He raised Christ--whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." - 1 Corinthians 15:13-19

Or as Jaroslav Pelikan says,

"If Christ is risen - then nothing else matters.
And if Christ is not risen - then nothing else matters."

Christianity stands or falls on this one central truth: Either Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, or else He has not. If He has, then our religion is true; if He has not, then our religion is worthless fodder. All else pails in comparison, nothing else matters by comparison--it either is or it isn't. If it is, then we bear the truth of God; if it is not, then we are fools of the greatest magnitude.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Jenniferdiana]

Yet again another dumb question by me....i just got confused..sorry guys lol