In a nutshell: God is full of joy and love. God delights in himself! Our worship of God is a reflection of this delight. Our worship is no more and no less than a participation in Christ’s own perfect worship of the Father, empowered by the Holy Spirit. As we worship we are drawn into the very heart of who God is and what he does. We need to experience the Spirit’s power at work in us so that we can enter into the place of true worship.
We need to understand God as Trinity, although it is impossible to understand! Even though we can never fully grasp how God is One and Three we should accept it; stand in the good of it; and be shaped by it. If we are to understand what it is to worship we must start with an understanding of God’s self-delight and worthiness of worship.
What is True Worship?
It is right to worship what is worthy of worship. All of us are worshippers – we like to bring attention to the things we consider praise-worthy; and God is ultimately worthy. God delights in himself and is right to do so! True worship is joining in with this activity of God’s.
The Sin Problem
How can sinful people offer worship to a perfect God? God requires worship from us but we, because of our sin, are unable to offer it. How can this problem be overcome.
Hebrews 9:1-14
How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
God provides for us, in our High Priest Jesus, the very worship we could not offer. Sinners can now offer worship to a perfect God because their sin is atoned for. The response God required has been made by Christ – Christ worships God on our behalf! God is not simply the one who is worshipped but also the one who worships.
There is a Greek word that has been used to try and describe God’s Trinitarian worship since the earliest centuries of the church: Perichoresis. Our English words perimeter and choreography help explain what this word represents – that God exists in a dance-like relationship, in which there is the diversity of the persons, but such a unity of movement that the three look like one, and the one like three. In worship God pulls us into this dance.
Christian worship is our participation through the Spirit in the Son’s communion with the Father. It is God’s self-action that allows us to serve – worship – him. As The Message expresses it: Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.
How Should We Worship?
We are inclined to view worship as what we do, but, it is first and foremost something the triune God does. Christ is the one true worshipper and our worship is a participation in his. Worship is not our act, but God’s gift. The Spirit gifts us to respond to God. This means it is not dependent on how we feel, instead, the Spirit gifts us to respond to God. Something like this happens when my children buy me a birthday present – the gift is from them, but as all the money they have is money that I give them, I am actually the one who pays for it!
We shouldn’t ‘sing it as if we really mean it’ but surrender to the Spirit and allow him to conform our worship to Christ’s.
What then is true Spirit-led worship?
1. True worship is a response to God’s own worship
Our response to God is a participation (enabled by God) in God’s own response to God. We worship because it is good! Worship does us good. As we worship we are coming to Almighty God – we are coming to power – and this leads to fruitfulness. In worship we enter into fellowship with God.
We come into God’s presence through thanksgiving. Worship is our primary calling and as we thank God we worship him and come into his presence. This means we need to grow in our appreciation of God, because we only praise what we appreciate.
2. True worship joins in Christ’s intercession
True worship joins with Christ’s high priestly prayer, when we pray, by the Spirit’s power, for unity and for love.
John 17:26
I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.
True worship prays these Trinitarian prayers! God invites and encourages us to pray. God chooses us to be askers – he loves us to come to him and ask, to ask him for his Spirit’s power and presence to be with us.
3. True worship is not about merit
True worship is not something we offer to God in order to gain merit. It is by grace that we are saved! Worship isn’t something we do in order to gain favour with God; instead worship is a gifted response.
How Does an Appreciation of the Trinity Helps Us to Worship?
1. Coming to Father
Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father.” God is not a distant, cold being but our heavenly Father who loves us and cares about us. We are not God’s employees but his children.
2. Seeing Jesus as Servant, Sacrifice and King
God has given himself to us. In worship we consider Jesus’ life on this earth, his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, his ascension to glory and his rule over the universe.
3. A Spirit empowered people
God the Spirit dwells within us and empowers us. God himself comes to us by the Spirit. The Spirit sanctifies us, making us more like Jesus.
Christian worship is our participation through the Spirit in the Son’s communion with the Father, and this is a gifted response.
Application Questions
• How is understanding worship as a ‘gifted response’ different from how you may previously have thought of it?
• Why and how should our worship be Trinitarian?
• In what ways does it help you to know that Jesus is the one true worshipper?
2 comments:
hi Mat
this is excitng me!!
Christ the High Priest who goes into the vary prescence of God, yes.
Christ the Priest who offers up the sacrifice, yes.
Christ the Priest intercessor, yes.
God delighting in God, yes.
But Christ who offers up Worship? I have not come across the concept of Christ worshiping God in his Priestly role. But it's not just a priestly role,is it ? what your saying is this is a part of his living inter relationship with the father... that this is always occuring because to delight in something is to worship it. thanks Mat, good hearty food!
from 'chewing Derek'.
as I'm thinking...It's a bit like the bit about wisdom delighting in his presence all day long Pr 8. 30
Thanks Derek - it is a great concept to grasp!
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