Worship of the Triune God

We find then in the New Testament a reminder that worship is a response to the gracious divine initiative, and that it is enabled by God. But we find that the mediatory means of the Old Testament – the temple, the sacrificial system, the torah – are now made redundant by the new and singular focus and locus for worship, Jesus Christ himself. The theological reflection already beginning in the pages of the New Testament about the unity of Jesus Christ with the Father flowered into the new and distinctively Christian identification of God as triune. This naturally is of considerable importance for an understanding of the notion of Christian worship since it relates to who is the one being worshipped. The Christian answer would become: the one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In his book 1996 Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace, the Scottish theologian James Torrance very helpfully shows how worshipping the God who is triune makes a substantial difference to what worship actually is. The doctrine of the Trinity means that worship is ‘the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father’. Our union with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit is the basis for this sharing of God’s people together in the divine life of God. We stand to worship God by means of the mediatory ministry of Jesus before the Father, to which we are drawn by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. As our great high priest, he sanctifies us by his blood which he himself offered. This understanding of our relationship to the triune God was in part responsible for the Reformation’s rejection of the medieval concept of priesthood – since Christ is our supreme and exclusive mediator before God. As Torrance puts it, ‘the doctrine of the Trinity is the grammar of this participatory understanding of worship and prayer.’[1]

 

To the Trinitarian understanding of worship, Torrance contrasts two faulty alternatives. The first is that of nineteenth century Protestant liberalism, represented in Torrance’s account of the great historian of the church, Adolf von Harnack, and by the 20^th century theologian John Hick. Essentially, on this view, religion is about the each soul’s individual and immediate relationship to God. Jesus, like Israel, had a direct encounter with the divine which is the model for our encounter with God today. He does not mediate worship; he simply exemplifies it. He is certainly not the object of worship. 

Naturally, this view of worship is a direct attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, since it has no place (and no need) for a representative or substitionary act of atonement to reconcile human beings to God. It has no need to proclaim the church as a fellowship of the Spirit, since the emphasis is entirely on the individual’s dealings direct with the divine. It results, as Torrance shows, in a moralistic Christianity – noble in its aspiration for the human spirit, but doomed to fall on the barbed wire of no-man’s land in World War One. 

The second alternative view is called by Torrance the ‘existential, present-day experience model’. Torrance cites Rudolph Bultmann as the chief exponent of this view, although it has had its impact on Christianity at a popular level. The work of Christ for us is not denied; indeed, it is essential on this view. But it is connected to us through the event of faith arising in us, which becomes the emphasis. What Jesus did is more important than, or disconnected from who he was. The doctrine of the incarnation and of the Trinity fades in importance, and my religious experience surfaces. Much contemporary Christianity is fixated by the search for individual religious experience. The language of ‘personal relationship with God’ can be distorted in this direction, with talk about my conversion, my decision and my response. As Torrance complains, the reduction of Christian worship to this two-dimensional system – meaning that it is just about me and God here now – communicates simply that our response is what really matters. What it overlooks is that, in Christ, God has ‘provided for us that Response which alone is acceptable to him – the offering made for the whole human race in the life, obedience and passion of Jesus Christ’.[2]

 

The witness of the gospels is to a very different form of worship. Jesus is above all depicted as having a unique relationship with the Father – signaled at his baptism by his anointing by the Holy Spirit and the declaration of the divine favour (‘…this is my Son…’). This is the Spirit that is poured out on the people of God at Pentecost, so enabling them to share in the fellowship, or communion, between the Father and the Son. As John says ‘Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’ (1 John 1:13).

Communion with God the Father in Christ by the Holy Spirit is thus the fundamental – and only - basis for a doctrine of the church, and by extension, the only basis for an understanding of their corporate practices of worship. Like Israel, the church is constituted and given an identity on the basis of nothing other than the work of God. The church is the church of the Holy Trinity: called by the Father, purified by the Son and gathered together by the Holy Spirit. As Peter writes: ‘Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:10). Note the parallelism: the basis for the common identity of the church is the mercy that comes through the grace of God which is in Christ Jesus and his mercy-bringing death. Peter’s opening address to the scattered believers is illustrative of their Trinitarian constitution:

…chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood. (1 Peter 1:2)

If this is the theological architecture of the church, then what difference does it make for how it understands its acts of worship – or indeed, for how it decides what acts of worship in fact are? The people of God are still called, as of old, to ‘sing the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light’ (1 Peter 2:9). They meet on the basis of the Lordship of Christ articulated through his merciful sacrifice, and in the knowledge that he stands as a perfect mediator between them and God. They are enabled, then, to do draw near to God confident in the prior working of God in drawing near to them in Christ. They can view their adoration of the God as a sacrifice fully pleasing to him (Heb 13).

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[1] Ibid., p. 9.

[2] Ibid., p. 18.

Jesus Christ the Worshipper

In this brief sketch of the Old Testament account of worship, we have been able to see something of the distinctive pattern of the worship of Yhwh that made it distinct from the idol worship of other nations. In particular, I have noted the pattern of response to the divine initiative in specific acts and in the whole of life that characterizes the worship of God’s people. The problem with my account thus far has been that I have abstracted it from the history of Israel. The strong critiques of false worship with which we began should alert us to the fact that something is still incomplete in the account of worship given in the Hebrew Scriptures. Despite everything, Israel’s life of worship became corrupted and diminished by the failure of the people to attend to the distinctive characteristics of the pattern of life they had been given. The final exile of Judah to Babylon was surrounded by a flurry of prophetic activity in which Israel’s worship was subjected to judgment and also promised a renewal. The most terrible disaster of all was the utter destruction of the temple at this time, which meant the end to the God-ordained worship at that spot. What would worship look like without the temple and its ritual practices? This was a crisis of worship. Ezekiel, for one, spoke of an extraordinary new temple with supernatural dimensions – one that would, somehow, replace the one destroyed by the Babylonians (Ez 40-48). The word ‘somehow’ is deliberately chosen: for while the prophets foretold an intervention by God himself to restore the worshipping community of his people and to judge his enemies, they were not specific on the details. Isaiah spoke with poetic vigour about the ‘Servant of the Lord’ who would suffer for the iniquities of the people (Is 40-66); and many prophecies recalled the commitment of the covenant with David, that his line would be everlasting (2 Sam 7; see, for example, Jeremiah’s emphasis on Davidic kingship).   

Even given the divine initiative in engaging with people and the clarity of the pattern of response he demands – homage, service, reverence – the human response is inadequate. This is the point at which the New Testament claim is that in Jesus of Nazareth the history of Israel finds its fulfillment. Jesus is, of all human beings, the one who worships the God of Israel, the creator of heaven and earth, as he demands to be worshipped – in purity and holiness. As the one human being who represents not simply Israel but all of humankind to the Father, he in himself enables a renovation of human worship. There is, following Christ, a significant continuity but a substantial discontinuity with Old Testament worship.

The notion of Jesus as the true worshipper is reflected across the New Testament, but finds itself refracted in particular through the imagery of the New Temple and the declaration of a New Covenant. In the light of these, the New Testament authors felt able still to speak of the Christian life, individually and corporately, in terms that echoed the ‘worship’ language of the Old Testament. 

The disruption that Jesus’ ministry caused, which apparently led to his death, was chiefly caused because he operated from within the temple as a strong critic of the contemporary temple life. In Matthew, Mark and in John he is heard prophesying the destruction of the temple and claiming that he can rebuild it in three days. John in particular picks up the language of God’s presence and his glory, which is so indicative of what the Israelites expected from the tabernacle and the Temple: ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.’ (John 1:14) Jesus takes the prophetic vision of the new temple and, extraordinarily, shows how he himself realizes that hope in his life, death, resurrection and ascension. The temple as the location for the encounter between God and his people is, in Jesus, relocated. In him, the need for sacrifice to prepare the people for meeting God is obviated. The source for the renewal and restoration of Israel and by extension ‘all the families of the earth’ is now Jesus himself – which is the prompt for the inclusion of the Gentiles. Engaging with God is now mediated to human beings in the person and work of Jesus Christ; which in turn shows that the temple was merely of foretaste of what has now appeared in human history. 

At the same time as he is the means through which people are to come to worship God ‘in spirit and in truth’ (John 4) it is also the case Jesus has become himself the worthy object of homage. I hinted previously that this is, in many ways, the most difficult theological problem that the New Testament authors have to face. How is it that a strict monotheism such as Judaic faith can give birth to, or be held to pave the way for, a faith in which veneration is offered to (apparently) more than one divine person? And yet, the heart of the New Testament gospel is the declaration ‘Jesus is Lord’, a statement of homage that ascribes an authority to him that only a divine person deserves (Romans 10:9, 1 Cor 12:3). The New Testament answer is to speak about Jesus’ unity with the Father (Eph 4:4-7, 1 Cor 8:6). 

Jesus also portrayed himself and was portrayed as the inheritor and fulfillment of the pattern of covenantal relationship with God, which stretches back to Abraham. As with the temple, the ministry of Jesus was felt to be a critique of the law by his opponents, and they took great offence. Yet a more careful reading of his words and actions show him to be a skilled interpreter and advocate of the law. He was not rejecting it; he was rather meeting its requirements and transcending it. He was, he claimed, inaugurating a new covenant (something promised in Jeremiah’s prophecy – Jer 31:31-4). At the Last Supper, he made explicit the link between his sacrificial death and the notion of a new covenant (language picked up in Heb 9:14-5) – pointing thereby to what worship would now mean: namely, that he would make true worship of God possible by means of his atoning blood, and that he would thereby by the focus of the homage of the new covenant people.  

Why singing in church is worship - a sketch

NB - a train of thought. I will deny all if pressed.

1. I don't much like it when singing is called 'worship' in church circles, since this reduces the concept of worship to JUST this, and is suggestive of a theology of worship by which we seek to impress God by our devotion. That and the music and words of 'Here I am to worship' make me want to gag they are so banal.

2. BUT - the word 'worship', which is an English term note, in its usual dictionary definition sense means 'to pay homage to'. This reflects the Greek and Hebrew terms which both indicate a physical gesture of submission (bowing or prostrating oneself) and also (as a metaphor) the behaviours and acts and the attitudes which are in line with the physical gestures.

3. Undoubtedly, a biblical theology of worship ought to include the observation that true worship includes not simply the words of adoration or the ritual acts commanded by God, but also the righteous life that is in line with this. However, the English word 'worship'  has been stretched to include ' latreuein' (usually translated 'service'), which confuses the concept rather. 

4. This is especially evident in the lynchpin verse in Rom 12:1-2, where the concept of service is mentioned but not 'worship' in the homage sense. So to say that this verse represents a shift from worship as homage to worship as service (as if one obviated the other) is, well, shifty. 

5. The 'Sydney' view of worship contains two insights. One is that a) worship is not what we do for God, but what God enables us to do in response to his mighty saving acts. The other is that b) worship ought to be all of life, but most especially our behaviours, and not at all what we do in church. Well, of course we do worship in church, but that's not why we meet and we should reject the language of worship to describe our meeting together and the things we do in it.

6. In many cases, the two insights become confused, or perhaps b) is insisted upon in order to protect a). Yet the simple case is that worship is the best English word to translate the 'homage' concept, and is confusing when it is used to translate the 'service' concept, and is just plain wrong when the homage concept is all but rejected in favour of the service concept of worship. The best English word to describe the activity that the psalms commend and that we find on the lips of Jesus and the apostles and in the book of Revelation is 'worship': they say and sing adoration to God, paying homage to him - which of course is empty if it is not accompanied by a life to match.

7. Insight a) is a genuine biblical and theological insight about the nature of our engagement with God. But insight b) is far more shaky, and is really only a pragmatic choice about the use of an English word.

8. A good deal is lost by not continuing to call what we do in church and as we come before God 'worship' - we lose the sense that finding words to praise God is an extraordinary and beautiful thing which is, because of the work of Jesus, pleases him. If we understand worship properly, we need not worry about calling our singing praises to God 'worship', since that is what it actually is.
 

Engaging with God on God’s terms

What the attacks on false worship reveal is that, in Biblical terms at least, worship of the God of Israel is very much on his term exclusively. As the Anglican scholar David Peterson says:

…worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with him on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible.[1]

This is not simply a observation about the demands of the jealous God; it is also a statement about the human condition. True worship is not possible unless God himself enables it, because human beings are unable to truly worship him without his enabling. 

An English word which we use for a number of biblical concepts and words, ‘worship’ thus names a kind of relationship of response to the divine initiative: it is a way of describing activity that ascribes to it a significance in relation to a particular person. In his magisterial work Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship, David Peterson explains how this relationship of divine initiative leading to human response works:

…acceptable worship in Old Testament terms involves homage, service and reverence, demonstrated in the whole of life. A common factor in these three ways of describing Israel’s response to God is the assumption that he had acted towards them in revelation and redemption, to make it possible for them to engage with him acceptably’.[2]

Yhwh is the God who reveals himself to his people and in revealing himself redeems them. In redeeming them he enables them to relate to him - something that was not previously possible.

God initiated a relationship with Abraham, almost as it were out of the blue, calling him to leave his homeland on the basis of the great threefold promise: a great nation, in a great place, with a great blessing. The trajectory of this promise was from the outset global, for ‘in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ (Gen 12:3) This God reveals himself to be a covenant-making God – a deity seeking to be in an ongoing communication with humanity. The word of God comes to Abraham in the midst of many things which contradict it (including the great age of his body), so that it is a struggle for him to believe it. And yet, this word is not simply about the present, but about the future that God will bring to pass. Abraham, and his descendants, are taught the theological lesson that God is the God who creates and redeems out of the nothing; and thus, they are depend on him absolutely.

The Abraham narrative is the prelude for the main movement, which is the encounter of the people of Israel with God in the Exodus. In the Exodus, Yhwh both reveals his name and redeems his people – his acts of redemption and revelation are intertwined with one another. He brings them under the leadership of the aged Moses to the ‘mountain of God’, Mt Sinai. At Sinai, God told Moses:

"Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites." (Ex 19:3-6)

They are the witnesses of his mighty act in defeating the Egyptians, and of its extraordinary consequence: that he has ‘brought you to myself’. What then follows is a description of the ongoing terms of the relationship with Yhwh with all its stipulations and patterns. The context for an acceptable response of worship to the Almighty God is laid out for the people by God himself – a pattern of life that would distinguish them as his, but that would begin with them acknowledging him as lord and redeemer. At Sinai, God made himself known to Israel, and in doing so revealed his intention to be a special presence among them. They were to be known as the people among whom God himself dwelt. His special character of holiness was to become a character that they shared, and to which they gave expression in their manner of life. 

They were to be ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’. What this signified was that the whole of Israel’s existence would be shaped by this relationship with Yhwh. This would not be occasional matter of observance; it would be a distinctive, identifying mark of this people. They were in this way to be separated from the nations which surrounded them. But the notion of priesthood is significant here, if we recall that the promise to Abraham was for the blessing of all the families on the earth: they were to be the people who demonstrated to all peoples what it was like to belong to Yhwh, the Lord of heaven and earth. His character was to be embodied in their community life.

This then is the background to the giving of the torah, or ‘the law'. The law is not simply ‘moral’, nor simply ‘ritual’. Both are outlined as a matter of delimiting the boundaries for life together with God. Note that there is no sense of opposition between the notion of a divinely-given word and the indescribable majesty and holiness of God’s character. As at the mountain, so in the tabernacle and in the sacrificial system: God is both hidden and revealed, both near and present, and concealed and other. What do I mean here? The people are to approach the mountain (or the Tent of Meeting), and encounter the real and present God. But to encounter him is in no way to diminish his majesty or to reduce him to simply containable categories. He is not in this encounter revealed to be manipulable or domesticated (in contrast to the idols of the other nations). And so, to meet God at Sinai was to hear the thunder and see the lightning at the top of the mountain, and to hear his words through the mediation of Moses.  

The entire system of torah taught this lesson: that God was revealed to Israel but not contained by her. The Decalogue is itself a demonstration of this theological reality. They are all about worship: in fact worship is the key to understanding what they are really about. The first set of laws, which direct Israel’s attention to the singularity and uniqueness of God and his demand for exclusive devotion – and devotion not by a manner that takes his name ‘in vain’, but as he directs. The hinge is the Sabbath command. It is the institution in the midst of the people’s common life which recalls the divine work in the days of the creation – themselves a reminder of the saving acts of God. 

The Tabernacle and the Levitical Code, with its system of priests and bloody sacrifices became in time the remarkable sermon in stone at the heart of the nation’s life, the temple of Jerusalem. The notion of sacrifice and ritual is not unique to Israel of course. Pagan cults of sacrifice abounded. It was in a sense a familiar religious concept adapted for the expression of the particular theology of ancient Israel. To the pagan mind (illustrated amply by ancient literature, for example in Homer’s Illiad), sacrifice was the way by which the goodwill of the various gods was secured. Indeed, security is the underlying theme. Sacrifice was (to generalize) an act of taking out insurance against the contingencies of life in an uncertain world. 

For Israel, sacrifice would be described as something else again. It was marked by a pattern of grace and gratitude: the pattern of rituals and festivals ensured that the narrative of the great acts of God for his people was not forgotten by them; and it enabled a response of thanksgiving for the blessings brought about by those acts. In addition, the sacrifices were a graphic illustration to Israel of the ebbing away of human life under the impact of sin. Being in the presence of God was not simply established by God moving closer; there was also the need for the atonement of sin. The shedding of blood for sin on the annual ‘day of atonement’ was to purify the tabernacle and the people (Leviticus 16). Peterson explains:

The life of an animal, represented by its blood splashed over the altar, is the ransom at the price of a life. Animal blood atones for human sin, not because of some magical quality or life-power in it but simply because God chose and prescribed it for this purpose.[3]

Israel’s response to God is on the basis of his revelation of himself and his redemption of them. But what were Israel given to do? They were to do homage to God; they were to serve him, and they were to revere him. These three biblical concepts are all contained within our English word ‘worship’. 

First, they were to do homage to God. To ‘do homage’ to another person is often indicated by a physical gesture such as bowing or curtsying. The Old Testament vocabulary contains the sense of ‘bending over at the waist’. But of course, the outward gestures are expressions of an inner reality which can be expressed in all kinds of ways. The idea of the nations ‘bowing down before Yhwh’ (Psalm 22:27, 29) is a great vision of all the nations recognizing his kingly rule and authority. Thus the concept of worship as ‘doing homage’ is not simply one of observing a physical gesture in a great display of submission to the rule of God, but of actually enacting that rule as the reality in which one really believes. Nevertheless, this kind of worship communicates. It is bears witness to a kind of relationship with God – to God and to others. It is an act, or a word, which speaks of God’s rule. 

Second, they were to serve him. A word frequently translated as ‘worship’ is the Greek word latruein, which has the connotation of ‘serve’. The people of Israel were released from bondage to Pharaoh and called into the service of God (Ex 3:12). The switch between these two kinds of bond-service is made clear in Deuteronomy 6:12-13:

…take care that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. The LORD your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.

This form of devotion to God involved the worshipper in an absolute sense:

O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. (Deut 10:12-13)

Every aspect of the community’s and the individual’s life was to be marked by whole-hearted and affectionate service of God by means of observing his commands. God is a great king, who demands faithful obedience from his people. When this notion of worship as service was extrapolated in relation to the rituals and ceremonies of ancient Israel, it did not lose the sense in which it was an observance of the true and just rule of God the King. 

 

In the notion of homage and of service as the Bible treats them we see a pattern developing – namely, that the worship of God includes the whole of the worshipper’s life, but also specific acts and words of adoration. The one does not exclude the other, as if a life lived in a certain way is sufficient to embody true worship of Israel’s God. Partly this is because worship is, as we have already noted above, communicative. It does not merely do things at God’s behest: it says things to him and about him. 

Third, the people were to revere or respect God. The Hebrew notion of ‘the fear of the Lord’ is included under this heading. It indicates not simply the performance of a particular set of gestures, but an attitude of heart. This disposition opens up the individual to the voice of the Lord (1 Sam 12:14; Hg 1:12), so as to do his will and to walk in his ways. In particular, the fear of the Lord is ‘the beginning of wisdom’ (Prov 9:10; see also 1:7) – that is, the proper attitude to God, which respects his judgment on all people, inevitably leads to the wise human life.

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[1] Ibid., p. 20.

[2] Ibid., p. 73.

[3] Ibid., p. 41.