What is worship?

What the Bible says

Worship is what happens when someone sees who God is. One of Scripture's clearest scenes is Isaiah's vision in the temple.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted; and the train of His robe filled the temple.

Isa 6:1

The seraphim cry to one another, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory" (Isa 6:3). Isaiah's first response is not a song but dread.

Then I said: "Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts."

Isa 6:5

The pattern of worship is already here: God's holiness is seen, sin is recognised, forgiveness is given, and the worshipper is sent. Worship is not a matter of working up feeling. It is standing before someone who is real.

Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that the question is not where worship happens but how.

God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

John 4:24

In the previous verse he says that "the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him" (John 4:23). In worship it is God who moves first; he looks for worshippers. Worship is no longer tied to one mountain or one temple. It can be offered anywhere, by the Spirit and through Christ, who is the truth.

Yet it does not end with a Sunday hour. Paul writes:

Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Rom 12:1

To offer one's body is to offer one's whole life at work, at home and among others. This worship is not a ritual separate from daily life; it is daily life given to God.

Scripture is equally clear about worship together. The first church devoted itself to "the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" (Acts 2:42). Hebrews says, "Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit" (Heb 10:25), and Colossians pictures believers teaching and singing together as the word of Christ dwells richly in them (Col 3:16). Private devotion and gathered worship need each other.

The church's witness

We glimpse early Christian worship in scattered evidence. Pliny the Younger, writing to the emperor Trajan around AD 112, reports that Christians met on a fixed day before dawn and sang to Christ as to a god Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96. Acts tells of believers gathering "on the first day of the week" to break bread (Acts 20:7).

Why Sunday? The Gospels record that Jesus rose on the first day of the week (John 20:1) and appeared to the gathered disciples that evening (John 20:19). John writes that he was "in the Spirit" on "the Lord's day" (Rev 1:10), which many scholars take to mean Sunday. Christians understand the day differently, however. The Reformed and Puritan traditions tend to treat the Lord's Day as the Sabbath commandment renewed. Lutherans and others see it as a free day of gathering to remember the resurrection, not a transferred Sabbath. Some churches, such as Seventh-day Adventists, keep Saturday. Paul asks believers not to judge one another over days (Rom 14:5).

Forms of worship differ too. Anglican, Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran churches follow ancient liturgies, with set prayers, readings and the Lord's Supper at the centre. They point to Israel singing set psalms together and hold that it is humble to lean on words the church has prayed for centuries. Baptist and Pentecostal churches, and many other Protestant ones, worship more freely, with preaching, spontaneous prayer and song, pointing to Paul's picture of "everyone" contributing to the gathering (1 Cor 14:26) and stressing the Spirit's freedom and the heart's own response. Both share the same frame of word, prayer, praise and response to Christ, and each faces a danger: form that goes hollow, or freedom that loses shape.

Matthew Henry, on Acts 2:42, says that Christianity, when received in power, "will dispose the soul to communion with God in all those ways wherein he has appointed us to meet him, and has promised to meet us" Matthew Henry. On Isaiah 6 he writes, "We are undone if there is not a Mediator between us and this holy God" Matthew Henry. That Christians come before a holy God only through Christ is the church's constant confession.

In the original languages

The New Testament word most often rendered "worship" is proskuneo (προσκυνέω). Like the Hebrew shachah (שָׁחָה), it points to a bodily act: bowing down. "Let us worship and bow down," says Psalm 95:6 (Ps 95:6). Worship has a posture.

Another word is latreuo (λατρεύω), "to serve." The "worship" of Romans 12:1 is the noun form of this word. That worship and service share one word suggests that Scripture does not think of worship only as a set of songs but as a life of service given to God.

Common objections

"If God is self-sufficient, isn't it egotistical for him to want our praise?" This is a serious objection, since we think a person who demands compliments is vain. Scripture says that God does not need our worship. In Psalm 50 he says, "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and the fullness thereof" (Ps 50:12). Worship does not fill a lack in God. The church's answer is that admiring what is greater and better than ourselves is the most human response there is; before a great mountain or piece of music, we feel something is missing if we cannot say so, and the more so before one who is supremely good. This reply will not persuade everyone, and it rests on first believing that God is as Scripture says.

"Isn't worship empty ritual with no connection to life?" Scripture agrees before it disagrees. God says through Amos:

"I hate, I despise your feasts! I cannot stand the stench of your solemn assemblies."

Amos 5:21

The reason is that worship was not followed by justice: "let justice roll on like a river" (Amos 5:24). Worship cut off from life is worship God rejects. But that does not make worship unnecessary. The Bible describes one movement from worship to life and from life back to worship.

"Can't I worship alone in nature?" "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Ps 19:1), and meeting God outdoors is real. Worship alone is biblical. But Scripture also calls believers one body (1 Cor 12:12) and urges them to meet, because we were made to hold up one another's faith. Nothing here condemns those who cannot attend because of illness or persecution, or who have been hurt by a church.

Going further

Worship is not first my duty to God but his invitation to me, since he is the one who seeks worshippers. Its weight rests less on how well I do it than on whom I stand before. Isaiah, an imperfect man, was forgiven and sent.

You might ask: Is worship for me an obligation or an encounter? How does the rest of my week connect with the "living sacrifice" I offer? What might I learn from worship in a tradition other than my own?

To read further, see Why do we need the church?, What are baptism and the Lord's Supper? and How should I pray? Reading Psalms 95 and 100 aloud is a good place to begin.