Balance Point

Jesus speaking to the woman at the well:

You worship what you do not know, we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is a spirit, and they who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. (Joh 4:22-24)

These verses indicate that worship of God has something to do with spirit and truth. This does not tell us what that worship is. It does give up a target to aim for. Let’s see what a dictionary can offer us.

OK. So now we need to work out a definition on what worship is. We need this to understand how we are to worship God.

Dictionary.com gives the following definitions:

–noun

1. 1. reverent honor and homage paid to god or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.
2. 2. formal or ceremonious rendering of such honor and homage: They attended worship this morning.
3. 3. adoring reverence or regard: excessive worship of business success.
4. 4. the object of adoring reverence or regard.
5. 5. ( initial capital letter ) British . a title of honor used in addressing or mentioning certain magistrates and others of high rank or station (usually preceded by Your, His,  or Her ).

–verb (used with object)

1. 6. to render religious reverence and homage to.
2. 7. to feel an adoring reverence or regard for (any person or thing).
3. –verb (used without object)
4. 8. to render religious reverence and homage, as to a deity.
5. 9. to attend services of divine worship.
6. 10. to feel an adoring reverence or regard.

worship. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/worship (accessed: June 04, 2011).

That is a lot to get our heads around. I think that we can simplify this. We can eliminate the fifth definition, for the purpose of today’s discussion. We will be covering forms of worship in later lesson. That means that we can set aside items two and nine.  Most of the definitions that are left are variations on the theme. For our purposes, I believe that the third definition renders the idea of worship the best: “adoring reverence or regard”. Let’s use this as our basis to build up to our target of the passage in John.

Using this definition of worship, we can see that there are components needed for there to be worship:

1. 1. Actor- worship is carried on by thinking, feeling beings. (ok, I know that creation declares God’s glory, and by the definition that I am using, that is worship. Give me a chance to finish and you will see where I am headed.)
2. 2. Catalyst- Something will provoke the actor to the point of adoration or reverence toward the object of that reverence.
3. 3. Target- this is the person, deity, thing that is being worshiped.

When these three elements come together, there will follow an activity that we can recognize as worship. What this means is worship is not so much what is happening on the outside, as what has happened on the inside.

All that being said, we can see that humans can form worship relationship toward many things, including themselves. We are, now in a better position to get at what is means to worship in spirit and truth. That will be for our next section.

Related articles

• Worship (hologrambible.info)
• The Meaning and Purpose of Worship (inaccord.wordpress.com)
• The Essence of Worship (pastorkevincag.wordpress.com)