John 4:23-24
God is Spirit and Truth
23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.
John 3:1-17
Jesus Teaches Nicodemus about Being Reborn and the Spirit
1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
God is Spirit and God is Truth...And how we interpret this and who He is varies...God of the Old Testament maybe different for some how His Son, Jesus of the New Testament explains Him to us...How each of us see God is different...How we view His attributes and who He is, I believe, differs from one person to the next...So how one person views God maybe different how another one views Him...And it is very important how one personally views and sees and believes in God...But Jesus who is Truth and Grace viewed Him in the exact and proper way...
One atheist view is from Richard Dawkins...He said, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”...
Philosopher Criss Jami wrote, “If I were to believe in God enough to call Him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that He, as a Spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only He could do it righteously...For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the Spiritual Being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.”...
And C. S. Lewis says this about God of the Old Testament...“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self...Lose your life and you will save it...Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with ever fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life...Keep back nothing...Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours...Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead...Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay...But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”...