Love Has a Name

In the book, Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider, Mr. Kreider makes the case for  worship of the Trinitarian God to be isolated only to those who have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. His argument, which I tend to agree with, is that an unrepentant heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26) simply cannot worship God.

Romans 5:10 in the New International Version, outlines that prior to our rescuing by Jesus we were “enemies of God.” So how then does an enemy of God worship Him? More-so, does an enemy of God want to worship Him?

Simply put, no. Put it this way, we all, rightly, detest Hitler and his atrocities. So then, would anyone identifying as Hitler’s enemy want to turn to him and worship him?

That would be atrocious!

This topic is of a similar vein and why I find myself on the same side as Mr. Kreider. The challenge I am tackling today is how the modern church’s meaning and vernacular of the word “worship” has taken over many streams of Christianity and how it influences what we do in the weekly gathering of the body of Christ; that is the saved souls who trust in Christ alone for His salvation. Simply put, we have made worship equal to music.

Briefly, our modern culture and society have welcomed unbelievers into times of worship as a result of wanting to reach out, evangelize and to demonstrate to them how Christians worship their God. Further, we hope these enemies of God will ask questions and eventually be converted. I would argue that is a wonderful proposition, if worship is understood and executed correctly, or dare I say, adhered more closely to biblical traditions. I could say more about the benefits of this and how even myself was converted from enemy to friend of God in this manner. In that conversation though, the idea is that God can do anything He wants through any method He chooses.

Leaving that topic aside, I want to rootle around with the idea of biblical worship and put forth some scriptures which hopefully show my mindset:

a) Where did I get this idea (the name of this post) from?

b) Where am I going with this?

c) Why is this even a big deal and worth writing about?

A) Where did this idea come from?

So where does this post come from? It’s not really from out of left field. I got this idea from several conversations in previous months as well as how I used the word worship, and have been corrected as well as watching videos online of both improper and proper worship. I’ll admit, this will be a longer post however I feel that it’s worth it and vital. There will be gaps but I’m open to conversation about it so please reach out if you want to chat further. This topic is quite vast and I want to whittle it down to worship as seen in the scriptures and how we have minimized it to mean music.

B) Where am I going with this?

I want to take this in a direction that helps to show, biblically, what is true worship and how the word is, at times, mistakenly used today. The idea of worship is so much deeper than what many followers of Jesus know, and I was one of them and still am. I am NOT the symbol or beacon of perfect worship of Jesus, nay, I am a pitiful worshiper when compared to the titans of the Christian faith from past years. I was corrected in my theology of worship and continue to be as I delve deeper into it. I hope to not impress upon any of my readers that I am good and you are bad. In fact, I hope you see the opposite, I am bad and I want to help you get better. Additionally, this is not a condemnation of all churches, denominations, or believers at large. Instead, this is intended to speak to those who are using the word worship instead of saying let’s sing or listen to music.

C) Why is this a big deal anyway, is it really worth writing about?

Yes, yes, forever, YES! We who follow Jesus are among the few who will be saved when He returns. All others will perish and be sent to a place of eternal suffering and separation from God, even those who proclaim universalism or say “we are all going up the same mountain just on a different path.” As payment for our salvation all we can rightly offer back to Christ is our worship… of Him. There is nothing we can give except our whole selves. He saves wholly and completely and thus we must return worship as wholly, holy, and completely as we can. It is incumbent upon us as believers in Jesus to strive to worship Him at all times.

So then, we go to our source of truth, His word. God himself tells us exactly what is worship.

Romans 12:1 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers,  by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

We see from this alone that true worship is to live sacrificially and presenting our bodies holy and acceptable to God.

Jesus himself says, in John 4, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Jesus here further clarifies that worship is not music, albeit, music may be part of worship, to say “let’s worship” today means to put on music with Christian lyrics, this is not what Jesus is telling us.

Amos 5:21-24 further demonstrates that music and parties are not necessarily worship. Paraphrasing, God says that he hates the music and parties and festivals of His people and demands, verse 23, that they stop playing music as he will not listen to the “noise” of their songs or instruments. WOW. Take a moment and imagine it. God’s people were “worshipping” however it was seen and heard as detestable. One version of this passage says “your songs are a stench to me”. A blip of a summary of Amos is this, God’s people had claimed that they were righteous and honorable, yet, they were putting down the poor and oppressing the vulnerable, and God was not happy with them.

Verse 24, as you read, is a call by God to facilitate justice and righteousness! Clearly we can see that God is less concerned with the music as compared to the posture of one’s heart and the actions that flow from it. If we speak piously yet act the opposite, we are hypocrites. Jesus himself condemns hypocrites during his ministry as well. Worship of God in Heaven can be seen through our actions of righteousness and facilitation of justice. Furthermore, choosing to do good and hate evil can be seen as worship as well as abstaining from the ways of the world and opting for the route of long-suffering and patient ferment.

If you have made it this far take minute to process and know that we are almost at the end.

In the Old Testament an extensive process was setup for worship. This is described in Exodus, among other passages. There are only certain rooms and spaces for certain people. Women, gentiles, God’s people, priests, the High Priest, all had separate places to approach God. I cannot recall anywhere in this description where music plays a primary part in their worship.

Stay with me here, music was not described in the setting up of the temple as a “part” of worship. We do however see all through the Psalms, Old Testament and New, that music is a way of honoring, respecting, and yes, worshipping God.

Be honest, how many times have you been part of this type of conversation.

“Hey do you want to host a worship night together?”
“Yes! I would love to.”
“Awesome, let’s meet Friday evening and worship together, bring some friends.”
“Sounds good, see you then!”

So, you show up, and as soon as everyone arrives, the music turns on and you worship God. Inherently, there is nothing wrong with that. How about just showing up instead of going to the bar, pub, nightclub? What about the food you bring and eat and the silent prayers you offer to the Lord and the laying of hands for your sick friends?

Acknowledging the fullness of His goodness can be more rich and life giving than a cerebral rush of endorphins from the power chords resulting in a good feeling. Again, this good feeling is not bad in and of itself, yet, to say that a worship night consists of only music would fall short of the great sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross.

Here is where I am wanting to end up. As believers in Jesus, with nothing to offer back to God except ourselves, as a living and holy sacrifice, Romans 12:1, we fall short of a deeper intimacy with Christ Jesus when we put our worship of him in a box labeled “music”. EVERYTHING we do, as we see from the scriptures, is to be worship. Certainly we can worship through the agency of music, however, that is incomplete.

To conclude, I want to encourage you to consider changing vocabulary from “let’s worship” meaning, “let’s listen to music”, and say something like, “let’s worship God through music”. It may sound small, but I believe it will help to mould your heart and mind in a new way to consider that your entire self and all your actions can worship God.

Furthermore, you can begin to think “I want to worship God through my service to the poor”, or “I want to worship today using art and journalling”.

I believe Jesus in John 4 is leading us toward that understanding. If we worship in spirit and in truth we don’t need to limit ourselves to a location and a singular expression of worship to the Lord and Creator of all, including the creator of worship.

My prayer is this. That you, my dear reader, through this simple, and admittedly incomplete, article begin to see as I have seen that true worship is almost incomprehensible. How can we possibly offer our entire selves as a sacrifice when our entire selves are sinful in nature and so easily corruptible? To this I say, worship Him in more modes than music and focus on and acknowledge always His power, His life lived, lost and resurrected, and His Spirit now at work in and through your broken, weak, clay vessel.