What is Christian Worship?

Worship is honoring God. It is the proper response of mankind to God in every area of life, through Jesus Christ, empowered by the Spirit, based on who He is and what He does as revealed in His Word. It is the soul’s humble response in all of life to the love of God in Christ. It is always God-centered, not self-focused.

These definitions, put together, point to the fact that the only true worship, this side of the Cross, is Christian worship. What are the characteristics of Christian worship?

New covenant worship is…

God-honoring. It is an end in and of itself, not a means to getting something else. There are many benefits that believers enjoy as a result of a life and corporate experience that is God-centered, but we do not worship primarily to get but to give to God. He blesses us as a result but we don’t do it to get a blessing, we do it to bless God.

Gospel-inspired. The good news of what Jesus has done inspires us to worship. The gospel ought to affect everything in the Christian life. Knowing that we were more sinful and lost than we ever imagines, but more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope impels us to respond to God in praise and adoration, offering our lives to Him.

Christ-centered. We come to God through Him and continually are to offer up a sacrifice of praise to God (Heb. 13:15). Jesus is the only Savior and only Mediator between God and man. We come to God only through Jesus, who is the "way, and the truth and the life." (John 14:6)

Cross-focused. The cross shows us not just our unworthiness but our inability to do anything apart from Jesus, as He said in John 15:5, "apart from Me you can do nothing." Jesus went to the cross for us, due to our total depravity and when we come to faith in Christ our response is to worship Him.

Word-saturated. The Bible is our authoritative and sufficient standard for everything relating to life and doctrine. Our interactions with the written Word of God lead us to worship, both individually and corporately. God's Word is to have a primary place among His people: 1 Tim. 4:13 Until I come give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and to teaching. The God of the Bible is to be the focus. Is. 42:8 I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another.

Spirit-enabled. You can’t worship God apart from the Holy Spirit who only indwells believers. You must be a born-again believer in Jesus Christ to truly worship God. When you have been born again to a living hope through faith in Christ you are regenerated by God. You experience a change in your life – the triune God take the place of all false gods you previously served; you are new, transformed at the deepest level of your existence, enabled and empowered by God to live a new life; you have a new identity, no longer defined by the old one. You have a new mind that enables you to hunger for God’s word and follow His truth and reject the lies you once believed. Your emotions are different, now you love God and other people you once hated. You have new desires for living a life that pleases God – the appetite for what is wrong no longer controls. You become a part of a new family, the household of God, the Body of Christ, the Church. You live by the power of God and are enabled to follow the Holy Spirit’s prompting. All this equals up to a life that worships the God of the Bible rather than false gods. Worship is magnifying God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as you live in His presence for His glory. Only a believer can do that. This side of the Cross Christian worship is the only true worship – the holy activity of believers who know how absolutely dependent on God they are.

Which leads us to the reason for worship. Why do we worship? We'll address that tomorrow!