Can you Worship God and not Love your Brother?

TROWEL & SWORD

Can you Worship God and not Love your Brother?
or ‘What are we thinking when we go to Church?’

Rev. James Poland

As you walk into Church on a Sunday morning, what are you thinking about? You may be thinking about the chaos you’ve just left behind as you rushed the kids to get out the door in time, or how you have to catch up the pastor about next week’s meeting (or was it Aunty Joke about that apple cake recipe?). Perhaps all you’re thinking about is “How long this will go for?”, because you’ve got lots to do before lunchtime!

Even if you’ve paused to get focussed on what will happen over the next few hours, and even to pray, what is it that you’ve got in your mind? For most people the answer would be “Worship” -we’ve come here for some time focussed on God, together with his people.

Sunday’s services play such a central role in our Christian life. Yet what are they about? Have we actually understood what Christ has done for us, and how this affects the purpose of our meeting together? What follows is a challenge to our generally accepted views. It is intended as a thought provoker, and to help us develop an often-overlooked purpose of our gathering together.

Worship in the Old Testament
We love the stories of Exodus, of the plagues & Red Sea, and how God rescues the Israelites & establishes them as His people. But we tend to stop at Chapter 20, for the 2nd half of Exodus is full of instructions for this new Israel to follow if they are to serve the living God. While they start with the 10 commandments, most of these instructions are not about how to live, but on how to worship God. Pages of instructions are given, down to the minute detail, on how to make the Ark, the Tabernacle & all the related things that went with it. Even the clothes the priests are to wear are prescribed. This is followed by Leviticus, which details the offerings necessary for the Israelites to approach God and receive his forgiveness, along with a series of Feasts, which remind them of their relationship with God.

Israel worshipped God around the tabernacle –where God was present. When they settled in the Land they were to worship God only in the place that God would choose. “You are not to do as we do here today, everyone as he sees fit… You must not worship the Lord your God in their way” (Deut 12:8 & 31). This place was Jerusalem, and settled Israel was to worship God in the Temple built to replace the Tabernacle. It was there that you could approach God, and it was there that you could receive forgiveness through sacrifice. While it was recognised that God was everywhere, and could be prayed to anywhere (1Kings 20:27-30, Jer 29:12-14), God himself regulated that he was to be worshipped only in one place, and in one way – at His Temple, and through His sacrifices and His priests.

This gives rise to what we call the “Regulative Principle” –that we can only worship God in the way God defines. Aaron’s disobedience with the Golden Calf (Ex 32) was trying to get Israel to worship God, but not in the way He had said to. The ongoing problem in the time of the Judges was that “everyone did as he saw fit” (21:25). Then when Israel split after Solomon, the northern tribes are condemned for setting up their own system of worship, and their own places of worship (1Kings 12)

Worship in the New Testament
Worship of God is totally changed by the coming of Christ. It is well recognised that Jesus fulfils the Old Testament and its requirements of worship.
-The sacrificial system is fulfilled in the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. (Rom 3:25, 1John 2:2, Heb 10)
-The priesthood is fulfilled by his priestly role in bringing us to God (Heb 7)
-The Temple itself is fulfilled in his body (John 2:19-21)

Most Christians are familiar with these ideas. The trouble is most Christians are not familiar with the idea that Jesus has fulfilled the requirement to worship. He and he only fulfilled the ‘Regulative Principle’ – He and he only has been able to worship God in the way God requires, and this is because he is the only one who obeyed God fully.

Worship and Obedience
The problem with our understanding of “Worship” is that we use the word in a more restricted sense than the Bible does. We tend to use “Worship” to mean “that which we do on Sunday in our Church services”. We have “times of worship” or “worship services” in “places of worship”, with “worship leaders”, as if Worship is a particular activity in a time and place. But worship is a much broader term than this –it is the giving to God his worth. It will include acts of homage and praise, but the New Testament clearly indicates that our Worship is the whole of Life.
Romans 12:1-2 is the clearest passage on this, where the “spiritual act of worship” that we offer to God is not religious actions, but is to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices”, not conforming to the pattern of this world, but having our lives transformed to do his will. However this is not just a one off passage. The idea that our worship of God involves our whole lives is common throughout the Scriptures: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” James 2:27; Heb 13:15-16 and Phil 2:17 & 4:18 talk of acts of service to others being “worship”; Jesus condemns the Pharisees for having a religion that is not lived out in life (eg Matt 6, 23). Jesus and the apostolic writers have much to say about how to honour God throughout our lives, but very little on what activity to do when we meet together.

In fact this is not just a New Testament view –God has always wanted a whole of life submission to him, and the primary condemnation the prophets brought to Israel was that they thought they could “worship God” without obeying him (1Sam 13, 15:22; Ps 40:6, 51:16-17; Isaiah 1:11-17, 66:2; Jer 7:2-10,22-23; Amos 5:21f, Micah 6:6-8).

This idea is well accepted within Reformed thinking, as we should bring every area of our life under the Lordship of Christ.

Worship in Christ
If worship is expressed in obedience –how can we worship God? We can’t -we keep failing! We are not able to worship God any more than the Israelite were. But the message of the gospel is that there is someone who has -Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Hebrews 7-10 describes in detail how Jesus has fulfilled the Old Testament requirements of worship. He has fulfilled the priesthood (Ch7), Temple approach (Ch9) and sacrifice (Ch9-10), which gain forgiveness. It is not that he has done away with these, so that we have “easier” requirements, but that he has fulfilled them. Jesus becomes our priest, our Temple and our sacrifice.

But the argument continues in Heb10:1-10 with the explanation that Jesus is the one who has “come to do your will, O God ”(v7). Jesus is the one who comes to fulfil what is the real requirement of God –obedience. Sacrifices and offerings do not please God (v8), only obedience does, and Jesus is the only one who has given that obedience.

And because of that we have been made holy” (v10). It is not priests, Temple and sacrifices that make us holy –it is Jesus’ willing obedience.

This totally changes the nature of worship. Worship is not found in an activity to do at a particular time and place. Jesus doesn’t just take the place of priests, Temple & sacrifice, but leave us with a set of other requirements. Its easy to think that since God regulates our worship, we need to find what regulations there are, and we go hunting through the New Testament for the few references there are to activities in Christian meetings, and make regulations from these (such as we must sing a Psalm). Christians have had a habit through the centuries of making rules that just aren’t in the Bible as to how we should “worship God”. The implication is that if you follow those regulations (and only if you follow them) you can approach God. But the New Testament doesn’t regulate “worship” like that. You approach God in Christ, and worship him in Christ. Thus when Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman in John 4 she wants to know whether worship should happen in Samaria or Jerusalem, and Jesus says true worshippers will not worship in a way regulated by time and place, but “in spirit and in truth”, and this is intricately tied to him being the Messiah.

The Regulative Principle still applies –we can only worship God in the way God defines. But now God defines the way to worship him is by being in Christ. This is the only way to worship him, because no other way satisfies God’s righteous demands, but it is also a sufficient way to worship him, because Christ has fulfilled the requirement of God for true worship –by coming to do his will. (Heb 10:7-10).

Worship and Church
If worship is found in Christ, and is to be lived out in response in a life of obedience, what is the relationship of worship and Church? Firstly the Church is not the Temple –Christ is. We don’t go to Church to worship God, as if that is the only, or even the particular place we can do it. We can, and should, worship everywhere, whether alone or together. Furthermore worship is not an activity (such as singing and praying), but is a whole of life obedience under the Lordship of Christ. That is what gives him honour.

So what is Church? Well certainly it is a place that, together with God’s people, we can corporately praise God. We are not saved as individuals, but brought into his people, and we are called to praise him as his people (eg 1Pet 3:9). Thus whenever we get together we will want to praise God for his salvation in Christ. However the praises that we are to declare are not limited to a set of activities we do in Church.

The New Testament does, however, give us a very clear reason for meeting together. Surprisingly, the reason the Scriptures give is not “worship” at all –but edification. “Worship” (as in prayer and praise) is one of the things we will do when we get together, but it is not actually the prime reason for coming together. The prime reason the Scriptures give is for edification, or the building up of the body.

“Worship” implies the primary activity is something we are doing –that we are coming together to give something to God. What God wants us to give is a life of obedience lived in faith in Christ (Rom 12:1). We can’t make any offering or sacrifices to him, except lips that confess his name and serving each other (Hebrews 13:16). Giving money is not an offering because it is done in Church, but because its done to serve the needs of others.

Instead the primary activity of Church is not what we do, but what God does –building us up. We implicitly know this as we uphold that the central activity of Church is the preaching of God’s Word. While this may be an honourable “act of worship” by the preacher, for the rest of us we are recipients. Thus the central activity in Church is not an act of worship by us to God, but an act of edification by God to us through his Word. True worship is to respond rightly to that, not primarily in praising him in the song following, but to live in faith and obedience to the Word we hear.

This also shapes what we do –the Scriptures call us to meet together not because that is where we worship God, but because that is where we can encourage one another. The most familiar verse about Church is Hebrews 10:25 –immediately after the section we considered earlier. Since we have confidence to come to God (ie since we can already worship God) in the blood of Christ, we ought to meet with each other to encourage each other to hold on to this and keep doing it, and to spur one another on to love and obedience. In Ephesians 4 every part of the body has a role in building up the body. Each one of us needs to be trained (v12) and active (v16) in this task. We can only do that by meeting together! Then in 1 Cor 12 the importance of each one of us in the body is expanded on, but the argument goes on that the way to do that is through love (Ch 13), and the desire to build each other up (14:1-12). Thus ‘Church’ is not just a place to worship God, but a place to edify each other.

This edification is not just friendly encouragement of each other, but is to build each other up as we learn from and encourage each other to live in response to God’s Word.

Church and Loving our Brothers
Hence my title “Can you Worship God and not Love your Brother?” Obviously we want to say “No!” Throughout Scriptures we are told we cannot say we love God yet hate our brother (1 John 3-4; James 2:14-17). But how does this shape what we do in Church? We seem to make a distinction between Church and other times we meet. Social activities, small groups, youth groups, prayer times are for building each other up, yet Church is for “Worship”. The Bible doesn’t make any such distinction. It never defines the activity that we call “Church”. In fact the recent growth in small groups etc is largely due to the fact that “Church” does not meet these clear needs –it does not, in many cases, do much “building up”. Yet this is precisely the reason why we should meet together.

But shouldn’t we worship God when we come together? Yes –but not to the detriment of my brother. Yet so often our definition of what it means to “worship” God gets in the way of us effectively loving our brother. I’ve been in plenty of discussions where people are raising the question of whether what we do in Church is effective in encouraging and building up those who attend (or would be if we did it a bit differently), and the answer has been given “but that’s not how to worship God”. How on earth can we be the ones to define how you can and can’t worship God! The Bible doesn’t give us that definition –it already has given us the definition that we need –we worship God by trusting in Jesus, the one and only one who worships God in the way God requires –obedience to His will. As soon as we create another “way of worshipping God” we actually undermine the centrality of Christ in our worship, even if the “way” is meant to point us to Christ. Instead our services should be designed to build us into Christ & build us up in him. That’s why we meet together.

The Corinthian tongue speakers in 1Cor 14 thought that tongues were an excellent way to praise God. They were using a heavenly language to speak to our heavenly God (v2). They were praying and singing to God himself! (v15-16) But Paul condemns them –not for speaking in tongues, but for doing so in Church. What they are doing prays, sings & praises God, but it does not edify. It does not build up the others around (v17-18). It is not done out of love (Ch 13:1). Thus, in the end, it doesn’t worship God!

So what about our Church services? We may well not speak in tongues, but if that is all we learn from 1Cor 14 we have missed the point. Instead we should love our brothers & sisters, and make sure that everything we do when we meet together is done to edify and build up each other. We need to make sure that what we do is intelligible and understandable to others (v18-25). Just because we want something to be done doesn’t mean it should be done (v26), but only that which strengthens the Church.

Is it just a question of balance? Is it that there are 2 aspects of Church: worship and edification? If so, we have to strike a balance between the two –the “vertical” and the “horizontal”. While this may be a helpful way of working things out in practice, it has 2 problems. Firstly most people will argue that because God is more important, then the God-focussed “worship” will always win out over “man-focussed” edification, and the later will be relegated to 2nd-class, despite its priority in Scripture. Secondly it separates the 2 activities -edification does worship God because it is what he wants us to do when we meet together! Furthermore, according to passages such as Col 3:16, the things we normally call “worship” are intended to build each other up, so there are not two separate activities.

Where to from here?
We tend to get very defensive when things that we are used to, and things we hold dear to our hearts, are challenged. But we need to open ourselves to God’s Word, and the priorities He gives us. Unfortunately throughout Christianity there is this idea that Church is about worship, and each Church or Denomination makes up its mind how God wants to be worshiped.

Our Reformed tradition is better at shaping how we do this by the Scriptures, rather than tradition or human thinking, however it is easy to think this means we have it right. Instead the Biblical focus challenges that we are not worshipping God in Church unless we edify our brothers & sisters. Of course our traditional elements in a service may well be very encouraging and edifying, so I’m not arguing that we should just throw them out. But we should at least ask the following questions:

1) Is what we do in our Church actually building others up? Is it effective in actually doing this –do we see the fruit of change in people’s lives?
2) Do we really want to worship God? If so are we prepared to worship him in the way he wants –by being obedient to him, and by doing whatever we can to love and build up our brothers and sisters in Christ? All too easily we justify ourselves by thinking we’ve got it right.
3) When we walk in the door on Sunday morning (or any other meeting), is our intention to minister to others, to build them up and strengthen them in our lives, or are we there only to do something “for God”? If we really want to do something “for God” –do it for those he has brought us together with.
4) Are we open to more effective ways to edify each other? Do we think there is only 1 way to do “Church”? If Church is for building the body of Christ, are we prepared to be flexible about our own views and tolerate others’ views on liturgy even if they challenge what we have accepted? Lets make sure the priorities in the Scriptural are our priorities!

All reports of problems and comments concerning this site: webmaster@trowelandsword.org.au

Privacy