6.6.4 God Is Spirit
Commentators generally agree that this statement is not a philosphical proposition but a message about God in his relation to people. Two similar sentences about God in 1 John bear a similar sense: God is light (1:5) and God is love (4:8). It is also generally agreed that ‘Spirit’ here captures the Old Testament nuances of רוח as the life-giving creative power of God. The decisive issue for John is summed up in the stated purpose of the Gospel: ‘These things are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you might have life through his name’ (20:31). The goal is life (ζωή), and it is God the Spirit who gives life (6:63). This life is traced back to being born of the πνεῦμα, the life-Giver (3:5). In some way this life is bound up with knowing—knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (17:3)—that is, knowing the truth.
Given this statement—πνεῦμα ὁ θεός—we must interpret ἐν πνεύματι in the light of it. It cannot refer to any spirit, but only to the Spirit that is God. While the primary emphasis of ἐν πνεύματι is on the life-giving and creative power of the worship, there is also a secondary significance intimated by 3:8 where πνεῦμα is the unconfined, uncontrolled and uncomprehended wind/Spirit that blows where it wills. The presence of God who is πνεῦμα is not to be confined to Jerusalem or Gerizim. The true worshipper should therefore not be confined by spatial limitations.
On the other hand, for John the Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. This emerges most clearly in the pronouncement about the Johannine Paraclete, who extends and communicates the presence of Jesus while Jesus is away. So in Jn 14:18 Jesus can say, ‘I am coming to you,’ and refer directly to the Spirit Paraclete in the previous verses (14:16, 17). C.F.D. Moule succinctly comments on how Christology dominated pneumatology in early pneumatic experience, a comment that aptly sums up the entwinment of the Spirit and Jesus in John: ‘The Spirit is Christified; Christ is Spiritualized.’ So given Johannine pneumatology it would be in order to say that worshipping ‘in Spirit’ would be partially equivalent to worshipping ‘in Jesus’. (Kerr, A. (2002). The Temple of Jesus’ Body: The Temple Theme in the Gospel of John (Vol. 220, pp. 192–194). New York, NY: Sheffield Academic Press.)
