Theological Term of the Week: Worship
Thursday, September 5, 2019 at 3:30AM 
worship
To give God honor, glory, and obedience as the proper response to his character and actions; also used more specifically to refer to a church’s public activity of glorifying God together by means of instruction, confession, prayer, singing, and participation in the Lord’s Supper.
- From scripture:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Roman 12:1-2 ESV)
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24 ESV)
- From A Puritan Catechism, Questions 42-46:
Q42: Which is the first commandment?
A42: The first commandment is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”Q43: What is required in the first commandment?
A43: The first commandment requires us to know and acknowledge God to be the only true God, and our God, and to worship and glorify him accordingly.Q44: Which is the second commandment?
A44: The second commandment is, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”Q45: What is required in the second commandment?
A45: The second commandment requires the receiving, observing,and keeping pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinances as God has appointed in his Word.Q46: What is forbidden in the second commandment?
A46: The second commandment forbids the worshipping of God by images,or any other way not appointed in his Word.
- From Worship Under the Word by Don Carson:
Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so. This side of the Fall, human worship of God properly responds to the redemptive provisions that God has gra- ciously made. While all true worship is God-centered, Christian wor- ship is no less Christ-centered. Empowered by the Spirit and in line with the stipulations of the new covenant, it manifests itself in all our living, finding its impulse in the gospel, which restores our relationship with our Redeemer-God and therefore also with our fellow image- bearers, our co-worshipers. Such worship therefore manifests itself both in adoration and in action, both in the individual believer and incorporate worship, which is worship offered up in the context of the body of believers, who strive to align all the forms of their devout ascription of all worth to God with the panoply of new covenant man- dates and examples that bring to fulfillment the glories of antecedent revelation and anticipate the consummation.
Learn more:
- John A. Broadus: Worship
- D. A. Carson: Worship Under the Word
- Kyle Borg: Disciples Worship God
- Fred Zaspel: Gazing on His Beauty
- R. C. Sproul: How Should We Then Worship?
- Kevin DeYoung: A Theology of Worship
- Brian Croft: Five Essential Reasons for Christians to Gather in Public Worship
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