We know that God is Spirit because Scripture reveals it generally and Christ asserted it specifically in John 4, when He declared God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. But this is still a mind-bending concept, isn’t it? Consider, spirit does not occupy time and space. In eternity, there is no matter, no substance, and no time, nor is there any need for such. All we can say of the eternal spirit is what Isaiah stated in his 57th that God inhabits eternity. Eternity is a state rather than a time or place, so now we have a God who is Spirit existing in a state called eternity devoid of both time and space. And this Spirit God did not exist there for thousands of years or even millions of years, because both of those are time, and His existence is both timeless and spaceless.
Then, out of His eternal habitation, God (Elohim), plurality of persons as in Genesis 1:1, created the heavens and the earth. Out of what did He make them? He made them out of nothing, because nothing existed from which to make them, remember? No time, no space, no matter. God created matter when there was nothing with which to make it. The Latin expresses it as “ex nihilo”, out of nothing. Out of nothing…a non-physical being brought physical substance into being in the form of heaven and earth along with space and time in which heaven and earth would dwell. This means that non-materiality preceded and created materiality. This requires non-matter creating matter. This also means that non-material Spirit is superior to the material, or Spirit is predominant over matter.
Among other implications, this refutes the concept of pantheism, a primary belief of eastern mysticism that says that all is God and God is all… the trees, the mountains, people, animals… all are God and God is all. But Scripture makes it very clear that God is not part of His creation, nor is creation a part of God. He is separate from all He has made. God exists outside His creation, not entwined within it. Out of His habitation in eternity, He created from nothing the heavens and the earth, as well as time and space with them in which the heavens and earth would dwell. It was also from out of eternity that the pre-existent, eternal Son came when He stepped into the world of time and space. He had already crafted heaven and earth out of nothing in concert with His eternal Father and Holy Spirit.
It is the physical that is so much with us, but it is the spiritual that precedes and takes precedence over all that is physical. God is Spirit. Christ said so… John 4.
Published by