*** it-1 p. 348 Body ***
Spiritual Bodies. While there are physical bodies, visible and palpable, there are also spiritual bodies, invisible to human eyes and entirely beyond human senses. (1Co 15:44) The bodies of spirit persons (God, Christ, the angels) are glorious. “At no time has anyone beheld God.” (1Jo 4:12) Man cannot see God and live. (Ex 33:20)
*** g79 7/22 p. 27 Transition or Resurrection—Which? ***Jehovah God, Christ Jesus and the angels all have spirit bodies, and those who go to heaven receive similar spirit bodies.
*** w04 5/15 p. 7 You Can Make God Rejoice ***
Why Does the Bible Describe God in Human Terms?
Since “God is a Spirit,” we cannot see him with our physical eyes. (John 4:24) The Bible therefore uses figures of speech, such as similes, metaphors, and anthropomorphisms to help us comprehend God’s might, majesty, and activities. Anthropomorphism (Greek, “man-form”) is the attributing of human characteristics to a nonhuman subject. So even though we do not know what God’s spirit body looks like, the Bible speaks of God as having eyes, ears, hands, arms, fingers, feet, and a heart.—Genesis 8:21; Exodus 3:20; 31:18; Job 40:9; Psalm 18:9; 34:15.
Such descriptive language does not mean that God’s spirit body has the same kind of members that human bodies have. Anthropomorphisms are not to be taken literally. They merely help humans to have a better understanding of God. Without such figures of speech, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for any description of God to be comprehensible to mere humans. However, that does not mean that Jehovah God’s personality has been fabricated by humans. The Bible clearly explains that man was created in God’s image—not God in man’s image. (Genesis 1:27) Because Bible writers were “inspired of God,” their depiction of God’s personality is in reality his own description of his personal qualities—the very qualities that he has implanted to varying degrees in his human creation. (2 Timothy 3:16, 17) Rather than being man’s qualities in God, they are really God’s qualities in man.
*** w81 2/15 p. 6 How Real Is God to You? ***Does He Have a Body?
Actually, by teaching that God is omnipresent Christendom has confused matters and made it more difficult for God to be real to his worshipers. How could God be present everywhere at the same time? God is a spirit Person, which means that he does not have a material body, but a spiritual one. A spirit has a body? Yes, for we read, “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one.” (1 Cor. 15:44; John 4:24) God being an individual, a Person with a spirit body, has a place where he resides, and so he could not be at any other place at the same time. Thus we read at 1 Kings 8:43 that the heavens are God’s “established place of dwelling.” Also, we are told at Hebrews 9:24 that “Christ entered . . . into heaven itself, now to appear before the person of God for us.”
Moreover, the disciple Stephen and the apostle John had visions of heaven in which they saw both God and Jesus Christ. So Jehovah God must be just as much a person, an individual, as Jesus Christ is. (Acts 7:56; Rev. 5:1, 9) Those Christians who have a hope of eventually living in heaven are assured that they will see God and also be like him, showing that Jehovah God truly is a person and has a body as well as a certain location.—1 John 3:2.
