Listen:  110.2

John 4:24 tells us that, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”  This teaches us that God is a Spirit.  He does not have a body made of flesh, bones, and blood.  He is a pure and perfect Spirit.  As such, He is free from all limitations of time and space.

However, with that being said, there are so many references to God in the Bible that use masculine words or terms.  Almost 200 times, the Lord is referred to as ‘Father’ in the Bible.  The Lord said of King David in Psalms 89:26, “He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.”  Of course, the Lord Jesus became a man when he came into the world as we read in Romans 5:15, “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.”  Let’s also read Mark 1:1, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  Here, of course, the Lord Jesus is called the Son.  He is called the Son of God.  The Greek word for God here is ‘theos’ which is a masculine noun.

Did the Lord Jesus take on the masculine gender when He was born, or was He known in the masculine gender before His birth, in His eternal state?  Let’s read that very familiar verse, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  We see here that God, (‘theos’ in the Greek), gave his only begotten son.  This shows the Lord Jesus existed as the Son of God before His incarnation, or birth.  God gave His Son.  He was the Son in past eternity.  This is in agreement with the thought in Isaiah 9:6, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…”  A child was born, but a son was given.  We get a glimpse of that truth in the book of Daniel when the three young men would not bow to the king’s idol.  Daniel 3:23-25 says, “And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.  He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.”

We might logically ask: How can God be known in the masculine sense when He is a spirit?  He surely does not have the body and reproductive parts of a man.  The Lord identifies Himself in the masculine gender because it is more fitting to His nature as the One who is over all.  We read in 1 Corinthians 11:3, “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”  God, or ‘theos’, is the head of all.  He refers to Himself in the masculine, He is repeatedly called Father, His name is in the masculine form.  So, we do well to acknowledge the Lord in the masculine to be in agreement with His holy Word.  (110.2)