Allusion
“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:24 NASB
Spirit and truth – If you are familiar with the words of the Tanakh, you might hear this phrase differently. The combination of “truth” with another crucial Hebrew word is so common in the Hebrew Scriptures that you might expect to hear hesed v’emet. Truth and the powerful four-combined meanings of hesed are familiar territory. Of course, that helps us correct the potential misconception that Yeshua is speaking about “correctness.” ‘emet is not being correct. It is being reliable, steadfast, trustworthy. Having the right answers is not part of the Hebrew idea of truth. To worship God in truth is to act in such a way that your life is a steadfast, faithful example of His character. In other words, to worship Him in truth is to do what He says. That fits hesed v’emet. Hesed is also an action, an action directed toward another. Reciprocal, transitive, relational and active, hesed is the ultimate word about acting as God would act in the world. It seems entirely possible that Yeshua was drawing on this common connection with an allusion to the usual phrase.
But he changes it just a bit. In his words, it isn’t hesed v’emet. It is ruach v’emet. What does this change add to the usual hesed v emet? Did you think you know the meaning of ruach? We usually assume that ruach means breath, spirit or wind. But did you know that ruach is also associated with power, value, aggression, mental activity, angelic existence, conscience and life itself? When Yeshua uses the phrase ruach v’emet, he is alluding to the widest possible umbrella of actions, from ordinary breathing to cosmic creating. What does it mean to worship God in spirit? Perhaps the undertone of Yeshua’s comment connects hesed with ruach and suggests that all we do, all that anything does, all that creation exhibits is worship.
With this in mind, it’s difficult to explain the assertion of TWOT that “rûaḥ comes finally to denote the entire immaterial consciousness of man: ‘With my spirit within me I will seek you earnestly’ (Isa ’26:9); a wise man ‘rules his spirit’ (Prov 16:32; cf. Dan 5:20), and ‘in his spirit there is no guile’ (Ps 32:2). While the ot generally treats man as a whole (see nepeš ‘soul,’ often rendered simply as ‘self’), it also recognizes his essential dualism.”[1] And further, “At most points, however, context approves and the analogy of the nt strongly suggests that the rûaḥ YHWH is the Holy Spirit, ‘in the fullest Christian sense’ (A. F. Kirkpatrick, Cambridge Bible, Psalms, II, p. 293).” [2] What sense can be made of Yeshua’s assertion if ruach ultimately means the “immaterial” man or the Holy Spirit? Does the immaterial man worship? Does the “Holy Spirit” worship?
It seems perfectly rational to suggest that we worship in the fullness of who we are as embodied persons in the created world. The addition of Christian-Platonic dualism or the third person of the Trinity simply confuses the whole concept.
Topical Index: ruach, spirit, worship, truth, ’emet, hesed, John 4:24
[1] Payne, J. B. (1999). 2131 רִיַח. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke, Ed.) (electronic ed.) (836). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Ibid.
When the breath of life got breathed into us, and we became a living soul, metabolism fired up – that most mysterious of non-substances – and we became worship; reflection of our Creator. Himself mirrored back in the life of all to Himself, He was satisfied with the reflection. We do not live by our own breath, and we do not act by our own goodness; that much seems quite clear to me. If those two things do not humble us into the dust that we are without Him in us, then I think we are not alive in the full sense of the word!
When the Word tells me that in me there is no good thing, it is telling me that the goodness that is there is His. It is NOT telling me I am defective! Just that I am incomplete without Him. What’s so bad about that? Submission to Him IS how I open the door of my heart for Him to live in me, and if that is not the Holy Spirit, the Breath of Life, returned to full power in me, then I do not know what is. If worship is reflection, then all creation worships by returning Himself to Himself. Only the selfish heart of man desires to ‘keep’ that breath as attributed to himself, and pretend that somehow he (me!) is a Source, somehow, of goodness. I am not a source!
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the spirit.” When I am (re)born of the Spirit, that most mysterious of reunions, I am no longer powered by my own will, or by my own love (not that there is any such thing), but by His. How? When I do not go through life determining my own steps, every step is then by faith, as I literally do not ‘see’ where my foot is going to land until it is in the air, for faith carves the possibility as it goes, like the foot of the ark-bearing priests as they dipped into the Jordan; BUT, also like those priests, the material world, through our submission, then returns to full submission to Him, and wherever we go, order is returned to chaos, and the world is reset with us. Halleluah! Now, I am quite sure that is NOT something that is in any way powered by me! I tried long enough to ‘do good’ by myself(!) to realize that the stuff is in no way something that can be powered by me, for it is not just about me.
Goodness poured into the world through me comes from far beyond me, and has the power to set everything right around me. I can choose for it to, but I know that I am not the source of it. I may not understand what that is, but I know that’s not me, folks! If the Word tells me that it is Him, then how am I to know it really ‘isn’t’? G-d forbid! When I choose Him, He chooses the rest, and I just bought myself a ringside seat to a marvelous show being done through me, and NOT about me. What a marvelous rest for the ego. I think I will take one of those deep breaths right now!
To me it is significant that all action can be worship. Oh, that makes life much more “fun.”
“Having the right answers is not part of the Hebrew idea of truth. To worship God in truth is to act in such a way that your life is a steadfast, faithful example of His character.”
This seems like a contradiction. How can we know what is the right way to live if we don’t know the true was as opposed to the false way?
Right answers are cognitive statements in response to questions. How you live (following instructions) is not the same as giving right answers. I may know what to do with regard to actions I take between men and with God without being able to formulate any cognitive response to a question except, “But this is what God says to do.” Worshipping God “in truth” does not mean I can provide a statement of faith approved by theologians or prooftext for various doctrines. Worshipping “in truth” means that I do what God says without questioning why–and that is enough for me to demonstrate MY faithfulness. The wider view of Truth clearly involves cognition and action, but the Greek idea that truth is determined by correct referent is far short of this wider definition.
Does that help? BTW, nice to see you on the blog again.
If Jesus is the truth, and we know he is, then to worship in truth is to worship in jesus – according to who he is; following or expressing his chatacter.
Worshipping “in truth” means that I do what God says without questioning why–and that is enough for me to demonstrate MY faithfulness. Can not Islamic extremist make the same statement?
Yes, they can – epistemologically. That is to say, they have the same orientation to obedience. That means the measure of determination is not HOW they worship but WHO they worship. Allah is not a god of compassion. He is a god of demands, like all pagan deities, who rewards blind obedience and punishes resistance. YHVH usually acts with de jure authority, not de facto. He attracts by loving, not by threatening. There are exceptions, of course, AFTER long periods of consistent resistance. More to be said about this. But the fact that Islam LOOKS like the Hebrew way is a function of the Semitic paradigm which is true of all the Semite cultures.