It is God the Father of whom the Lord speaks to the Samaritan woman–the One who is God in nature and Father in relationship. The name Father seldom occurs in the Old Testament and is never there in the New Testament sense. As used in the Old Testament, The Triune God is spoken of as a “Father,” Jehovah’s relationship to the nation of Israel as their Head (see Deut. 32:6; Isa. 63:16; Jer. 31:9). In our Lord’s words to the Samaritan woman, He is speaking of God as the Fountainhead of all created things in heaven and in earth–the Father of all spirits, the Source of all humanity, the God of the spirits of all men, the great God our Creator.
When our Lord says that “God is a Spirit,” He does not mean some cold, distant abstraction–a mere assemblage of divine attributes–but a God of life and love with the heart of a father and with all a father’s resources and rights. True, men have broken that relationship and strayed like a prodigal into a far country, but that does not change God’s nature, though it does alter man’s relation to Him and the treatment man receives from His hands. He put the fatherly heart in all men and did so after the likeness of His own. It is that fatherly heart which yearns over wayward creatures.
The Father Seeks
The word “seeketh” means more than appears. God the Father is in search of something which to Him is very precious and valuable, something which He cannot bear to lose. Great as God is, there are some things He cannot think of letting go. It is the very greatness of God which manifests itself in His loyalty to His creatures and His longing for a loving relationship with the ones He has created.
So when anything of man is lost to Him, He searches for it. He would not part with it. God is no cruel tyrant who says: “I have lost a certain thing in man, but I can do without it.” Others may overlook something they lose, but not God. “Can a woman forget her sucking child?…Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee” (Isa. 49:15). God cannot forget man. He seeks the lost.
We must not dilute this expression and say God will have us back if we will come, that He will accept our worship if we care to give it. That is far short of the meaning of Scripture. We might ask, But what can God want? Yet we read that He seeks, He seeks something here on earth and from His creatures. What He seeks is the worship which has been lost to Him and which has impoverished man who no longer worships God.
The Father Seeks Worshippers
God is in search of many things lost to Him by man’s default: affection, allegiance, reverence, and obedience, but primarily worship. This is what He especially claims. From man, whom God has created, there should arise without ceasing the fragrance of holy worship. As the Lord even answered Satan: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”
It grieves God that man through sin has been ruined so that he cannot engage in this best of all exercises. But He seeks to have it restored. Does it seem a small thing to you that God should lose the worship of men when He has the worship of myriads of angels? Then you are wrong! God misses every person alienated from Him.
This concerns God; it should concern us. Everything we do concerns God, but most of all He is concerned about our worship. And is not His desire enough to provoke us to come to Him with our adoration, since He has made a way back to Himself through the cross of His dear Son? His search is worldwide; His call is universal.
The shepherd misses a lost sheep more than the sheep misses the shepherd. The shepherd does the seeking, not the sheep. The woman loses her coin. It does not miss her, but she cannot afford to be without it, so she seeks it. The father loses a son. He is troubled. The prodigal may not miss his father, but it is the father who runs to meet his son on the road home.
He is Worthy
God is in earnest. The One who seeks worshippers is worthy to be worshiped. He desires worship from men here on earth, as well as from angels in heaven. But the worship He seeks is spiritual worship. The outward man is nothing. He wants the inner man of the heart–the innermost shrine. Worship must arise from the depths of a man’s soul, but it can rise only through redemption. Forms, robes, gestures, and ornaments are not worship, nor do they help worship. If anything, they hinder it. God wants our hearts.
It is the blood of Christ which can purge sin from us, remove the guilt, and free our soul from dreading God, so that man, through such grace, can give to God true worship. The blood of Christ satisfies God’s righteousness and the sinner’s conscience. The Spirit of God renews the penitent man in truth. In this way we may give to God what He is seeking–the true worship due to His holy Name.