What Is Worship? | Crossway

A Broader View of Worship

If you had asked me to tell you about the ocean before I had ever flown overseas, I would have described the white sandy beaches of Southwest Florida. On a clear day, it’s hard to tell where the water ends and the sky begins, as the horizon stretches into a single cyan oblivion. I would have described the coast of the Pacific Northwest and how the icy waters pierce your toes as water forms in pools between patches of beachgrass. I would have told you about the smell of seaweed on the rocky coast of Maine and how the waves slam into jagged cliffs with a loud crash and then gently recede.

I thought I knew about the ocean, but it wasn’t until I sat on a flight from Chicago to London that I more fully understood. Sometime in the sixth hour of looking out my tiny airplane window and seeing nothing but water in every direction, my comprehension of the word ocean grew. The ocean was bigger and more all-encompassing than I had ever imagined. And the same is true for our understanding of the word worship.

Ask a Christian woman how she worships, and there’s a good chance she’ll mention her favorite Spotify playlist. She might tell you that listening to worship music gives her a sense of calm as her sneakers crunch the gravel of her favorite walking trail. For others, the word worship might bring to mind gathering with other Christians on Sunday morning to sing, pray, take communion, and listen to preaching from the word of God.

While these pictures and ideas describe elements of worship, we need to zoom out and broaden our view, like seeing the span of the ocean from the sky. Because whether or not we’re aware of it, we are women who worship—all day, every day. We are worshipers by nature, and we are constantly giving our hearts and lives over to something or someone we hope will make good on his or her promises and give us the fulfillment we desire.

What Is Worship?

Biblical worship, in short, is our response to who God is and what he has done. The white-speckled peaks of a mountain range cause us to gasp in awe; the first bite of a warm cinnamon roll makes us groan with enjoyment—we’re creatures who respond. And just as we can’t help but grin at the giggle of a three-month-old baby, we’re hardwired to respond when we see and encounter God.

A response to God should be different from a response to a mountain peak or a baby’s smile, because God is infinitely good, unfathomably beautiful, perfectly holy, incomprehensibly wise, and full of steadfast love. The only appropriate response is complete devotion to him. That’s why when people encounter God in up close and personal ways in Scripture, they often fall on their faces (Gen. 17:3; Ezek. 1:28; Rev. 1:17). Tim Keller describes our complete devotion in response to God as “worth-ship,”¹ the origin of the English word worship, saying, “Worship is seeing what God is worth and giving him what he’s worth.”²

Perhaps you can begin to grasp that if worship is giving God what he’s worth, then it’s more than merely listening to worship music or going to church on Sundays. Worship is more than saying a few words of praise to God now and again or giving a portion of our income to the church. It is both something we do and something that we are. Worshiping God is the lifelong, all-encompassing response of dying to self and living every moment unto him (Luke 9:23; 14:33; Col. 3:3). Worship requires that we surrender all we have to God and become his willing and adoring servants all our days (1 Cor. 3:9; Eph. 2:10; Col. 3:23–24). Worship is a continual posture of our hearts as we consistently react and respond to him and his work all around us (Ps. 71:8; Heb. 13:15).

Misplaced Worship

If that sounds as if it’s an impossibly difficult calling, that’s because it is. Though mankind was created by God as his image bearers with a reflex to respond to their Creator, the ability to rightly worship God has been broken and distorted.

In the beginning, God put Adam and Eve in the garden to be fruitful and multiply and to have dominion over every living thing on the earth, subduing creation according to God’s command (Gen. 1:28). Adam and Eve’s offering of worship to God—their response to their Creator—was to obediently carry out the work he’d given them to do. And while we don’t have details, it’s likely that they responded to him in other ways too—through words of praise and gratitude. But instead of wholly obeying only the voice of God, they listened to the voice of the serpent, who twisted and contradicted God’s clear limitations about eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:1–5). As Eve listened to the serpent and took its words to heart, she disobeyed God for the promise of good things apart from him (Gen. 3:6). Adam also partook and disobeyed God. In an instant, worship changed.

If we direct our worship toward what fulfills our needs and is worthy of our praise, then worshiping God makes perfect sense because only God is able to wholly provide for us, love us, and give us truly good things. But as with Adam and Eve after the fall, we’re easily confused by who and what can give us the things our hearts deeply desire. Like the serpent distorting the truth, we can start to think that even good, God-created things are worthy of our worship (Rom. 1:25). We put people, things, ideas, dreams, relationships, and more in the place of God as idols and respond to them with the expression of love that only he deserves.

But God won’t tolerate the misplaced worship of his people. He highlighted this by making the issue of worship the very first of the Ten Commandments. Instead of starting with other things he hates, such as murder or envy, he started with the problem at the root of it all: who or what his people love and center their lives around. God established himself as the one who freed his people from slavery in Egypt (not Moses, not Aaron, not Pharaoh, not another deity of the day) and then said, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3).

Interestingly, God did not deny that other gods could usurp his place in his people’s hearts. Instead, he acknowledged the temptation for his people to let false objects of worship take his place, and he detailed what it looks like to disobey this command (Ex. 20:4–6). In short, they were not to “bow down” or respond with submission, devotion, or sacrifices to anything or anyone other than God himself.

In the first commandment, God shows us that the object of our worship determines who or what we obey, how we spend our time, what we think and talk about, what we put our resources toward, and what we share with others. It’s what we figuratively “bow down” to.

Biblical worship, in short, is our response to who God is and what he has done.

Right Worship

Even though it is marred, distorted, and imperfect, worship is done rightly when done in spirit and truth (John 4:24). There are many examples in Scripture of times when God’s people individually and corporately responded to him and gave him the praise and devotion that he is worthy of.

Some of the most extensive of these examples are in the Psalms, as the authors not only model beautiful worship through poetic praises to God, but they demonstrate what it means to respond to God in a whole-hearted way. In the Psalms, we see that right worship comes from people whose heart posture is lowly, contrite, and humble before God (Pss. 51:17; 95:6; 131:1). It comes from those who know their deep, irreplaceable need for God (Pss. 16:1; 63:1; 86:1).

True worshipers are so amazed by who God is and what he has done that they sing and shout praises (Pss. 66:1–4; 71:23; 100:1). People worship rightly when they acknowledge God as the Maker, sustainer, and sovereign Lord of all (Pss. 33:8–9; 66:16–19; 104). They are so moved by God that they tell others about him (Pss. 78:1–4; 108:3; 117:1–2), and they devote their lives to knowing, serving, and praising him (Pss. 1; 71:8; 119:20).

The ultimate example of worship in Scripture is Christ himself. In his life, we see what a right response to God’s character, work, and authority looks like in everyday life.

Jesus used his words to worship. He showed his devotion to the Father through prayer and thanksgiving (Mark 6:41; Luke 5:16; John 17), bearing witness to his character and ways (Matt. 7:11; Luke 13:18–21; John 15).

Jesus also used his works to worship. He perfectly obeyed God’s law and commands as he went about his work (Matt. 12:1–14). His “food” was to do his Father’s will and accomplish his work (John 4:34). Through both public ministry and his private mundane moments, Jesus’s works glorified God (Matt. 15:30–31; Luke 7:44–50).

Jesus worshiped through his “why.” He was always focused on the Father, not on selfish ambitions or personal fulfillment, even as he enjoyed the blessings of the world such as attending weddings (John 2:1–12) and sharing good food and drink with different people (Luke 7:34, 36; Luke 9:16–17; Luke 10:38–42; 14; Luke 24:41–42).

Knowing Christ Transforms Our Worship

If worship is our response to God, then we must see God rightly before we can properly respond to him. Mankind has been given a measure of common grace to see God’s character and works in creation, but apart from the illuminating work of the Spirit through the grace of Christ, we’re blind to his ultimate goodness and holiness (Rom. 1:19–20). We consider the things of God foolish or unworthy of praise. We view God as someone to roll our eyes at or reject instead of someone to kneel before in worship (1 Cor. 2:14). We also fail to see Christ as the solution to our problem of sin (2 Cor. 4:4). Just as I needed to see the ocean from high above to begin comprehending its overwhelming vastness, we need to see God for who he is if we’re going to be compelled to worship rightly.

The good news is that if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, then you’ve received the gracious gift of spiritual sight. You have Christ’s perfect record of worship on your behalf (cf. Rom. 5:17–19). Your new spirit is compelled toward God to find deep joy in worshiping him (Ezek. 36:26) even though you wrestle with things such as idolatry and pride. The aim for us as believers is to keep our gaze continually fixed on Jesus so that we would not forget our ultimate Lord and Savior. This requires removing distractions from our lives, regularly meditating on God’s word, and putting ourselves in situations where we can dwell on God’s character and creation in awe.

This article is adapted from Worship by Emily Jensen.

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