“What enters your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.”[1]
The Central Axiom of Worship
True worship is founded upon the ontological distinction between Creator and creation. The creature is commanded to offer worship to the Creator precisely because he is the creature. The Creator is worthy to receive the worship of His creation precisely because He is Creator. It is that fundamental metaphysical distinction between the Infinite and the finite, the Absolute and the contingent, the Uncaused Cause and the effect that underscores the very nature and obligation of worship. Worship is not merely what we experience when we sing certain songs. Worship is not just an emotional response we have to musical stimuli. Nor is worship ultimately about us. How misguided of us to think that worship is some experience we are supposed to benefit from, and then complain when we do not receive the expected benefits.
True Worship
Positively, we can define worship as the celebration of God, often in song, that expresses the proper distinction and relationship between creature and Creator. That worship is often expressed in song is seen in the simple fact that the Book of Psalms repeatedly enjoins us to “sing” or “shout” our praises to and about God. Many great hymns similarly charge us:
All creatures of our God and King
Lift up your voice and with us sing Alleluia, Alleluia!
Let all things their Creator bless,
And worship Him in humbleness, Alleluia, Alleluia![2]
Another way we could define worship is the cognitive awe and reverence of a Holy God that focuses on Him. Worship is cognitive. That is, worship is an act that involves the mind (Matt. 22:37; John 4:24). Worship is not just emotive; it is intellectual and theological. Worship that does not heartily engage the mind is superficial and most likely, idolatrous. Worship also involves awe and reverence. Worship is not about cozying up to God. Too often the words to modern “worship” songs give no explicit indication that God is even the object of the devotion. Often there is little content that identifies it as an actual Christian worship song. Without cognitive content that moves the worshiper to reverence the Creator, a song probably should not be considered “worship.”
True worship also focuses on God, our Holy Creator. While not neglecting feelings and response, the focus is not on those as much as it is on God and Christ. We might even say that worship is a preoccupation with God in all of life. It is a preoccupation with loving the things God loves, which means we must know, through His Word, what He actually loves. Worship is also a preoccupation with ordering our lives in accordance with God’s will. The Creator has imposed an order on this world. The Creator has established certain human institutions, and expects us to worshipfully order our lives, our families, and our churches in a manner commensurate with His blueprints. Worship is also a preoccupation with joining God in His work. We worship when we are consumed in our lives to do the things God has called us to do. Worship is a preoccupation with the beauty of God’s creation. The Bible tells us to “worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth” (Ps. 96:9).
But above all, worship is a preoccupation with God Himself. In an age of utter self-fixation, a cognitively driven, purposeful preoccupation with God is probably not what most people are looking for in their church experience. However, according to Jesus, that is exactly what God is looking for: “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24).
Five Truths About God and Worship
Worship is at root the creature recognizing his own smallness and at the same time the infinite worth of the Creator. It is the ontological distinction between Creator and creature that fuels worship. This is clearly expressed in Psalm 33:
Let all the earth fear the Lord; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast (Ps. 33:8-9).
There are five truths that come out of a study of Genesis 1:1-2 that inform our view of God and worship.
1. God is Transcendent
God is above and beyond all creation. Creation doesn’t contain God. God is ontologically distinct from creation. God and creation are not the same being. King Solomon put it this way: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). God’s transcendence also implies his holiness. God is transcendentally separate from His creation. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us.[3] The prophet Isaiah had one of the most profound (and personally traumatic) encounters with the living God recorded in Scripture: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Isa. 6:1). God’s transcendence induced a spirit of awe and worship in Isaiah, who would later describe the transcendent God as “the high and lofty One” (Isa. 57:15). John Calvin thus remarked: “Away, then, with all gross conceptions of God; for his greatness far exceeds all creatures, so that heaven, and earth, and sea, and all that they contain, however vast may be their extent, yet in comparison of him are nothing.”[4]
2. God is Immanent
The latter part of Genesis 1:2 says: And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Conceptually, immanence is the opposite of transcendence. Literally, immanence means to be “within” or “near.” But to say that God is “within” is not to suggest that He is a part of the universe, but rather He is “within” as the Sustaining Cause of the universe.
Genesis 1:2 says that the Spirit of God was “hovering” over the waters. In Deuteronomy 32:11, God is likened to an eagle that “hovers” or “flutters” over its young. This is a picture of a mother’s protective care of her young. The passage describes God’s care and provision for His people in the midst of a wasteland (Sinai wilderness) that could not by itself support life. Similarly, in Genesis 1:2, the same word describes God’s care and provision for the earth that could not yet provide habitation for man without divine intervention. Apart from God’s loving “construction,” the earth would not be suitable for human habitation. Thus, the Spirit of God “hovered” over the face of the deep.
We must understand God’s transcendence and immanence in their proper balance. If God were only immanent, He would be indistinguishable from creation. In such a case, there would be no reason not to worship the creation, nor a compelling reason to worship God as Creator, because in such a scenario God and creation would be ontologically indistinguishable. On the other hand, if God were only transcendent, He would be remote and foreign. He would be the God of the deists, in which no basis for relationship between God and man exists. We might hold such a Being in rationalistic awe, but we would not love or worship Him. But God is both transcendent and immanent.
These twin truths are evident within the first two verses of the Bible. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God is infinitely over and above creation; He is therefore worthy of worship. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. God is also intimately involved in every detail of creation. He feeds the birds of the air, He clothes the grass of the field, and He knows all our cares and needs. He hovers as a mother eagle protecting her young. God is both transcendent and immanent, and therefore worthy of our worship.
3. God is Responsible for the Origin of the World
Genesis 1:1 speaks of God’s act of creation as a past event: “in the beginning God created.”He is responsible for creation’s origin. That makes Him worthy of worship. The word for “create” is used six times in the creation account (1:1; 1:21; three times in 1:27; 2:3). The six uses describe three significant creation events: the creation of matter, the creation of living things, and the creation of man.
God is always the subject of the verb “to create.”[5] God or humans can “make” something. God alone can “create” something out of nothing (ex nihilo). He alone calls into existence things that do not exist (Rom. 4:17). The very fact that God is the cause of the origin of the world means that the world was created for a purpose. Genesis 1:1 was written with an eschatological purpose in view. The beginning of creation already has an “end” in view. Physicist Paul Davies made this startling admission: “I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama. Our involvement is too intimate…. We are truly meant to be here.”[6] He is correct. The world began with an end already in view. Paul wrote that eternal life itself was promised before the ages (Titus 1:2), and that the saints in Christ were chosen before the foundation of world (Eph. 1:4). Human beings were created with purpose. We were created to glorify the Creator (Isa. 43:7), and to enjoy God’s creation (1 Tim. 6:17). The fact that there was a beginning implies that there is a purpose, or an “end” to creation. God, who alone is responsible for the origin of the world, is therefore worthy of our worship.
4. God is Responsible for the Operation of the World [7]
He did not just bring the world into existence. Rather, He sustains the world’s existence, upholding it by the word of His power (Heb. 1:3). God – specifically Jesus Christ – holds the world together (Col. 1:17). God wills the world’s continued existence (Rev. 4:11). And He produces life in the world.
I find this verse laden with meaning: “You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate” (Ps. 104:14). God causes the grass to grow. Now there are two really big mistakes we can make here. One error goes like this: “God causes the grass to grow. Therefore, other factors such as agriculture, water fertilizer, photosynthesis are relatively unimportant. It’s really all God.” The other error is the spirit of our age: reject the First Cause as superfluous because we know now about the “real” causes: “Since we have discovered the roles of soil, water, fertilizer, and the sun, we no longer need to invoke some divine cause for events that are simply and purely natural.”
The truth is, God causes the grass to grow, but He does so through natural agents. Natural agents or causes do not exist in their own right. Peter Kreeft put it this way: “Everything except God needs a cause of its existence. God needs no cause of His existence because [His existence] is His essence – as a triangle needs no cause of its three-sidedness because that is its essence.”[8] God is the Cause of the origin of the world (its coming to be) as well as the operation of the world (its continuing to be). God has not retreated and allowed “nature” to completely take over. Thus each one of us is truly God’s creature; we each owe Him the worship that the creature owes the Creator.
5. God is Responsible for the Order of the World
Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey make a salient point: “If God created all finite reality, then every aspect of that reality must be subject to him and his truth. Everything finds its meaning and interpretation in relation to God…. Both friends and foes of Christianity realize that everything stands or falls on the doctrine of creation.”[9] Because God is Sovereign Creator, every aspect of reality (which includes our lives) is subject to God and His truth. And here it is that we find the ultimate test of our worship. Chuck Swindoll wrote: “Worship is a human response to divine revelation.”[10] And divine revelation includes an order the Creator has imposed upon His creation. The true quality of our worship is measured in large degree by our willing and joyful subordination to the Creator’s blueprint for human life. That blueprint includes the following.
The exalted place of mankind within creation. Under God the Creator, man the creature has an exalted place within God’s creation. Man was created to “resemble” God in His moral and intellectual characteristics. Moreover, man was created to “represent” God on the and partner with Him in executing His dominion over the earth (Gen. 1:28; Ps. 8:6-8).
The sanctity of marriage. When Jesus was questioned on His views on divorce, he went back to creation itself to establish the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matt. 19:4-6). Failing to treat marriage as sacred is a failure of worship.
The burden of male leadership in the church. The Apostle Paul grounded his reasoning in Genesis 1-3: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Tim. 2:12-14). God created Adam before He created Eve. God gave a command to the man before He even created the woman. And God held Adam, more so than Eve, responsible for violating that command.
The burden of male leadership in the home. This teaching is made explicit in 1 Corinthians 11:3: “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wifeis her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” That this order is grounded in creation is made clear further down in 11:7-9: “For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” The model New Covenant home is in many respects a recovery of what humanity lost in Eden.
Ultimately, we are duty bound to worship our Creator. While we indeed have the choice to refuse the Creator His due, we cannot evade the consequences of such refusal that are built into the very order of things. R.C. Sproul puts it this way:
God does not have to enter into a voluntary covenant with us, in which we agree to certain terms, before we are obligated to give him his due. By the nature of his perfection and holiness, I already owe him everything. I have an inherent obligation to obey, worship, honor, and glorify God because exultation from the lips of the creature is his due.[11]
At the heart of worship is the conscious, preoccupied recognition of God’s greatness, overtly displayed in God’s creative power and might. But worship is also the conscious, preoccupied recognition of God’s goodness, “for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:4-5). Indeed, God is the First Being. And as His creatures, our first duty is to render unto Him the worship He is due.
[1] A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 1.
[2] “All Creatures of our God and King,” words by Francis of Assisi, paraphrased by William H. Draper.
[3] R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Minneapolis: Grason, 1985), 55.
[4] Calvin, John, and William Pringle. Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010.
[5] “The striking feature of the word is that its subject is always God. It therefore conveys the idea of a special activity accomplished only by deity that results in newness or a renewing.” Mathews, K. A. Genesis 1-11:26. Vol. 1A. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996.
[6] Paul Davies, The Mind of God (London: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 232.
[7] Geisler, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 500-517.
[8] Peter Kreeft, ed., The Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Edited and Explained for Beginners (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990), 79.
[9] Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1999), 95.
[10] Swindoll, 395.
[11] R.C. Sproul, Truths We Confess: A Layman’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, vol. 1, (Phillipsburg, NJ: R&R Publishing, 2006), 65-66.