Is God male or female?

"God is a spirit." He is the Being Who is spirit in essence. It is not merely that this is His character, as would be expressed if the phrase were "God is spirit." But God is a spirit. It refers to His being, to the Person. He has no bodily shape. He is not circumscribed like ourselves, and He is an omnipresent spirit, and therefore though in heaven, He is here, and we being spirit are in His presence.

We shall hear yet more when we come to a fresh revelation, not of man's creation as its head simply, but of the moral relations in which he is shown to have been set; but here there is ample evidence of the dignity conferred on the race. "Let us make men in our image, after our likeness." Nothing is more opposed to the Bible than the anthropomorphism of Greek and Roman mythology, which degraded their deities to fallen males and females with like passions and lusts, and gave the sanction of religion to the basest immorality. And what philosophers of Greece or Rome ever ventured to claim so noble a prototype? Here Moses was inspired to give it as the holy declaration of the Creator. How far from the brute at length evolving man, a theory suggested by Satan to brutalise the race! It is the simple yet wondrous truth: not God brought down to the human level, but men alone created after a divine pattern.

A frequent question is raised as to the force of the terms and their precise shade of difference; for those are not to be heard who hide their ignorance under the assumption that both mean the same thing. The usage throughout the O. and N. Testaments seems to indicate that "image" represents, and "likeness" resembles. Thus the "image" of the world-power in Nebuchadnezzar's dream represented the succession of Gentile empires from first to last: likeness could not be the point. So it is "image" in the plain of Dura (Dan. 3), the proportions of which exclude a human figure, or the resemblance of any living creature. Whatever it might not be like, it definitely represented what the monarch commanded to be an object of worship. Again, in the N. T. the denarius our Lord asked for had on its face the image and superscription of Caesar. It might have been a faulty likeness, but was an indisputable image of the Roman imperator. It expressed his authority and represented his claim over the Jews because of their departure from God, ill as they liked to own either.

It has been remarked that truth as to unknown objects may reach us either by resemblance or by analogies. Now man was originally made in the likeness of God, but this likeness has been sadly marred by the fall, and the true knowledge of God lost. As a consequence men have groped after God and sought to attain some knowledge of Him by resemblances or likenesses, and that to their undoing. Hence we are warned against the attempt to liken God to anything in such Scriptures as Isaiah 40:18, 25; 46:5-7. On the other hand, the names “Father” and “Son,” as applied to the Godhead, are used in an analogical way; that is, their meaning would have been lost upon us had we not known something of the analogy of fatherhood and sonship in relationships of this life.

But every analogy has limits which must not be exceeded. To reason back from the human to the Divine, so as to impose upon the Godhead limitations, which govern the human, is a gross fallacy; a piece of false reasoning which vitiates the teaching we have before us.

Fatherly authority in the church should be coupled with motherly tenderness, as was the case with the apostle. He not only exhorted the Thessalonians as his children; he also knew how to comfort them. He wrote to them, "We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children." Are not perfect power and perfect tenderness united in our God? His hand is as tender as it is mighty. It will cast the unbelieving into the lake of fire and wipe for heaven all tears from the faces of His beloved children.

Wisdom is personified in these verses, and perhaps strangely, as "she." In fact, 1 Corinthians 1:24 speaks of "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”, and Christ is not female. But the answer to this is provided in 1 Corinthians 1:30, "Of Him (God) you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God." This is the truth of "Christ in you the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). Thus, "in Christ" believers have wisdom from God, but this is wisdom subjectively, which accounts for the female gender being used. Christ Himself is wisdom objectively, but He uses believers to declare His truth, For instance, in Proverbs 8 the first 11 verses are the female voice, that is, Christ in believers declaring the truth, but the rest of Chapter 8 (vv. 12-36) is very clearly the voice of the Lord Jesus himself as (objectively) the wisdom of God.

This is the voice of divine wisdom which calleth to us daily. That the one who calls is a female need not stumble us; whenever a female is used in the types it is to set forth divine principles in their subjective character. No honest mind taught of God can have any doubts that it is Christ who is set before us in this chapter. It has been asserted that we cannot apply abstract principles to Divine Persons, but this is clearly disproved by Luke 11:49. "Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles." Here we have a divine Person speaking, and we can be assured that the voice which speaks in female character in our passage in Proverbs is the same voice which speaks in Luke 11. Divine wisdom has been made available to us in Christ as we read, "But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who has been made to us wisdom from God." 1 Cor. 1:30.

"Spread thy skirt (wing) over thy handmaid" is to be understood not literally but figuratively. Ruth desired his protection. When danger threatens the defenceless brood, the hen gathers her chickens under her wings (Matt. 23:37). When David was fleeing from Saul, he took refuge in the shadow of the wings of his God (Ps. 57:1; see also Ps. 36:7; Ps. 61:4; Ps. 91:4). It may also be recalled that in the harvest field, Boaz had used this very metaphor in welcoming Ruth as a gleaner, saying, "Jehovah recompense thy work, and let thy reward be full from Jehovah the God of Israel, under Whose wings thou art come to take refuge" (2:12). Did Ruth allude especially to these words of Boaz, when she pleaded, "Spread thy wing over thy handmaid"? It might well have been so, for the words of her lips expressed the faith of her heart that the "wing" of Boaz might be the agent of the sheltering "wings" of Jehovah.

But the dear Philippian saints not only needed encouragement, they needed comfort also: so he continues, "If" there is in Christ "any comfort of love." I think the words "there is … in Christ", (inserted above), are understood in this case. The exact word translated comfort here, is only found in this place in the New Testament, but words formed from the same root occur several times, as for example, in John 11:19 & 31, where friends came to comfort Martha and Mary. How sweet to remember that we may find the very same comfort in Christ, in His love: and there is no comfort like the "comfort of love." The Scripture says: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." That is, I suppose, the highest earthly picture of the "comfort of love." When a little child (and often, a big child) needs comfort, he goes to his mother, where he knows he will find in very truth the comfort of love. That is what we find in Christ, in how much greater a degree!

(1) God, a Spirit. Of the nature and attributes of God as thus revealed in the Trinity, the four Gospels furnish us with abundant material. "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24); "No man hath seen God at any time" (John 1:18). These and other scriptures declare the spirituality of God as contrasted with man His creature, or the universe His creation.

It is only fair and reasonable that we should be consistent and not have one rule for the words of Scripture and another for the words of men. When we read in Scripture of the "eyes of the Lord;" "the right hand of the Lord;" "the soles of His feet," etc., do we say, that cannot be true, God is a Spirit, and has no eyes, or hands or feet? We do not reason in that way. Such words convey to us the idea that God can see, that He has power, and that all things are subject to Him. Not the words, but the idea, is what concerns us. Then why not do the same when we read, "Begotten of the Father before all worlds?" Where is the difference between this and the words of Prov. 8:23, "I was set up from everlasting?" Even if this is taken as impersonal, applying to Wisdom, are we to conclude from these words that there was a time when God began to have wisdom or to exercise it? Such statements are repeated again and again in this passage, "When there were no depths I was brought forth;" "Then I was by Him as one brought up with him." (The force of these last words is, we believe, nursling.) "From the beginning," certainly might convey to our minds a commencement, but as applied to God and Christ we do not take it in that way.