How Can We Worship in Spirit and in Reality?
What Do You Worship?
Everybody on the earth worships one thing. From probably the most non secular to probably the most secular, all individuals worth one thing excessive sufficient to construct their lives round it. It could be God, or it might be cash. However what makes it worship is the driving energy of some cherished treasure that shapes our feelings and can and thought and habits. Into this common expertise of worship Jesus commanded, “Worship [God] in spirit and reality” (John 4:24). In different phrases, deliver your expertise of worship into conformity with what’s true about God, and let your spirit be authentically woke up and moved by that reality.
The Hour Is Coming and Is Now Right here
When he stated this, he was speaking to a Samaritan lady close to her hometown. She had challenged him in regards to the distinction between locations the place Samaritans and Jews worship. She stated, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, however you say that in Jerusalem is the place the place individuals must worship” (John 4:20). Jesus responded by turning her consideration away from geography to one thing astonishing that was taking place in her very presence. He stated, “Lady, consider me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. . . . The hour is coming, and is now right here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and reality” (John 4:21, 23). This can be a radical assertion—to say that the hour is now right here when worship in Jerusalem would stop! What did he imply?
Jesus made the breathtaking declare to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. The girl stated to him, “I do know that Messiah is coming (he who is named Christ). When he comes, he’ll inform us all issues.” Jesus responded, “I who communicate to you am he” (John 4:25–26). So when Jesus says that the time “is now right here” once we will now not worship in Jerusalem, he meant that the dominion of the Messiah has dawned and there may be going to be a radical break in the best way individuals worship.
On this repackaged version of What Jesus Calls for from the World, John Piper walks via Jesus’s instructions, explaining their context and which means to assist readers perceive Christ’s imaginative and prescient of the Christian life and what he nonetheless requires at present.
“Destroy This Temple, and in Three Days I Will Increase It Up”
The reason being that Jesus supposed to take the place of the temple himself. In different phrases, the “place” the place worship would occur—the “place” the place individuals would meet God to any extent further—could be Jesus, not the temple in Jerusalem. He communicated this in a number of methods. For instance, he stood within the temple and stated, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I’ll elevate it up” (John 2:19). The individuals had been astonished and stated, “It has taken forty-six years to construct this temple, and can you elevate it up in three days?” However the Gospel author defined, “He was talking in regards to the temple of his physique” (John 2:21). In different phrases, Jesus meant that when he was raised from the lifeless, he could be the brand new “temple”—the brand new assembly place with God.
Jesus stated one thing nearly as startling when he was criticized for letting his disciples decide grain and eat it on the Sabbath. Jesus’s response to this criticism was to level out that David, the king of Israel, had fed his band of males with the bread of God’s home that was solely designed for the clergymen to eat. He made the reference to himself and his band of males by saying, “I inform you, one thing higher than the temple is right here” (Matt. 12:6). In different phrases, “The Messiah, the son of David, is right here, and he himself goes to take the place of the temple.”
Not in This Mountain or in Jerusalem, however in Spirit and in Reality
So when Jesus stated to the Samaritan lady, “The hour is coming, and is now right here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and reality,” he meant that an entire new strategy to God in worship had include the approaching of the Messiah himself. Not would geography be related: “Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” As an alternative, what takes the place of exterior geographic considerations are inside religious considerations: “Those that worship him should worship in spirit and reality.” The exterior locations of Samaria and Jerusalem are changed with the religious realities of “spirit and reality.” What issues now just isn’t the place you worship however whether or not you worship God in accordance with the reality and whether or not your spirit is authentically woke up and moved by that reality.
All Worship Ought to Be via Jesus and of Jesus
The important thing new reality is that worship now occurs via Jesus. He’s the temple the place we encounter God. That is true first as a result of he poured out his blood “for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28) and “gave his life as a ransom for a lot of” (Mark 10:45) and opened the best way via his personal crucified and risen physique for us to be reconciled with God (John 3:16, 36). There is no such thing as a approach that sinners might supply acceptable worship to God with out having Jesus’s blood as a go-between with God. It’s true that worship now occurs via Jesus as a result of he himself is God. He’s not merely the mediator of worship between us and the Father; he’s additionally the one to be worshiped. He made this declare not directly and immediately. He forgave sins, which solely God can do (Mark 2:5–11). He accepted worship from his disciples (Matt. 14:33; 28:9). He claimed everlasting preexistence with God: “Really, really, I say to you, earlier than Abraham was, I’m” (John 8:58). He stated he was one with the Father: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). So all ought to “honor the Son, simply as they honor the Father” (John 5:23). Due to this fact, all worship “in fact” will probably be worship of Jesus and thru Jesus. For “whoever doesn’t honor the Son doesn’t honor the Father who despatched him” (John 5:23).
Worship in Spirit
What in regards to the phrase “in spirit”? “The hour is coming, and is now right here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit” (John 4:23). Some interpreters take this to seek advice from God’s Holy Spirit. I’ve taken it to seek advice from our spirit. However most likely these two interpretations aren’t far aside in Jesus’s thoughts. In John 3:6 Jesus connects God’s Spirit and our spirit in a exceptional approach. He says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In different phrases, till the Holy Spirit quickens our spirit with the beginning of recent life, our spirit is so lifeless and unresponsive, it doesn’t even qualify as spirit. Solely that which is born of the Spirit is (a residing) spirit. So when Jesus says that true worshipers worship the Father “in spirit,” he signifies that true worship comes solely from spirits made alive and delicate by the quickening of the Spirit of God.1
The essence of worship lies in our thoughts’s true imaginative and prescient of God and our spirit’s genuine affections for God.
This “spirit” is crucial in worship. In any other case worship is lifeless. Or to make use of Jesus’s phrase, it’s “in useless.” “This individuals honors me with their lips, however their coronary heart is much from me; in useless do they worship me” (Matt. 15:8–9). A coronary heart (and spirit) alive and engaged with God is crucial. Jesus is contrasting genuine worship in spirit and reality with exterior worship that focuses on Samaria and Jerusalem. What makes it genuine just isn’t solely that the worshiping thoughts grasps the reality of Jesus, but additionally that the worshiping spirit experiences awakening and is moved by the reality that the thoughts is aware of. An individual who has no affections for God woke up by the reality of Jesus just isn’t worshiping “in spirit and reality.”2 And an individual with nice affections constructed on false views of God just isn’t worshiping “in spirit and reality.” Jesus instructions each: worship in spirit and in fact.
All of Life Is Worship
One implication of this imaginative and prescient of worship is that it applies to all of life in addition to to companies of company worship. The essence of worship lies in our thoughts’s true imaginative and prescient of God and our spirit’s genuine affections for God. Which means every time we show the price of God by phrases or actions that circulate from a spirit that treasures him as he actually is, we’re worshiping in spirit and in fact. We could also be at work or at residence or at church. It doesn’t matter. What issues is that we see the glory of God in Jesus (reality), and we treasure him above all else (spirit), after which we overflow by treating others with self-sacrificing love for his or her good. Few issues show the great thing about God extra. For followers of Jesus, due to this fact, all of life ought to be this type of worship.
That is powerfully illustrated by the connection Jesus makes between worshiping God and serving God. When Devil tempted Jesus to worship him, Jesus responded, “Be gone, Devil! For it’s written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him solely shall you serve’” (Matt. 4:10). Serving was typically connected to worshiping as an outward expression of non secular ministry within the temple. However now the temple is Jesus. How is the “service” of worship reworked?
You Can’t Serve God and Cash
We get a shocking glimpse of what service3 to God means for Jesus in Matthew 6:24. He stated, “Nobody can serve two masters, for both he’ll hate the one and love the opposite, or he will probably be dedicated to the one and despise the opposite. You can not serve God and cash.” The shocking factor right here is that serving God is in comparison with serving cash. However how do you serve cash? Not by serving to cash or assembly cash’s wants. You serve cash by treasuring it a lot that you simply form your entire life to profit from what cash can do for you.
So it’s with God in the best way Jesus sees the service of worship. We don’t assist God or meet God’s wants (“The Son of Man got here to not be served,” Mark 10:45). Slightly we serve God by treasuring him a lot that we form our entire life in order to profit from what he can do for us. And, in contrast to cash, what God can do for us above all different treasures is be for us every part we have now ever longed for.
The Infinite Value of God in Jesus
Due to this fact, all of life is service to God. That’s, all of life is formed by our ardour to maximise our expertise of the supreme price of God in Jesus. So we finish the place we started. All of the world worships one thing. From probably the most non secular to probably the most secular, all individuals worth one thing excessive sufficient to construct their lives round it—even when unconsciously. Jesus instructions that each individual on the earth construct his life across the infinite price of God in Jesus. Think about what you might be worshiping. Then ask Jesus to open your eyes to the reality of God’s supreme price and to awaken your spirit to treasure him above all.
Notes:
- This paragraph is tailored from John Piper, Needing God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, revised and expanded version (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2003), 82.
- See chapter 3, “Worship: The Feast of Christian Hedonism” in Needing God for a fuller protection of this assertion and the way it suits with the truth that our emotions are unstable, generally excessive and generally low.
- The phrase for “serve” in Matthew 6:24 (δουλεύω) just isn’t the identical because the phrase for “serve” in Matthew 4:10 (λατρεύω). The latter often refers back to the non secular exercise within the temple. The previous often refers to what a slave does for a grasp. My level is that it’s exactly the novelty of Jesus’s state of affairs that makes plain how even the “slave” sort of service is worship in a brand new approach.
This text is tailored from All That Jesus Commanded: The Christian Life based on the Gospels by John Piper.
