John 4.24: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. (ESV)
No one can explain God’s being and His existence. If we could travel backwards in time all the way to infinity past, God would be there in His pre-existence. And so He is beyond our comprehension. Nor can we fully explain the expression Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman in verse 24, “God is spirit”. But there are some things we can know. God is not a physical being in the nature we are. The essence of God’s being is not comprised of atoms and matter. He transcends material composition, and I believe this is the essential meaning of what Jesus is saying here.
So I believe the application for us as we live our lives, is to know that there is absolutely no object, no icon, no tangible construct of any image that is God, or is a part of God. Nor does any such image even make a representation of God. These objects are all idols and they are an offense to God. In Exodus 20.4-5A, the second commandment, God says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (5) You shall not bow down to them or serve them,” (ESV). God goes on in the remainder of verse 5 to show the extent of his opposition to such idols, but He finishes this commandment in verse six with the assurance and promise that He shows His “steadfast love to to the thousandth generation* of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (ESV) *alternate reading