Worship in Spirit and Truth

8 July 2011, 3:46 pm

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Once, the Devil was walking along with one of his cohorts. They saw a man ahead of them pick up something shiny. “What did he find?” asked the cohort.

“A piece of the truth,” the Devil replied.

“Doesn’t it bother you that he found a piece of the truth?” asked the cohort.

“No,” said the Devil, “I will see to it that he makes a religion out of it.”

Klyne Snodgrass, Between Two Truths – Living with Biblical Tensions, 1990, Zondervan Publishing House, p. 35.

The passage that we picked up from john 4 speaks of worshipping “in spirit and truth.” What does it mean to worship that way? The passage gives us some hints that I would like to dig out in this section.

The first thing that is mentioned is that God is spirit. This means that the substance that is God is not made of the same stuff that makes up the universe, as we can see it with our physical senses. The fact that he passage says that we are to worship in spirit implies that there is a part or facility within the human has the ability to touch the reality that is spirit and that we have willful control over that facility.

Now let’s focus on the truth aspect of this passage. There are many elements of truth that need to be considered for there to be true worship. We have briefly considered the spiritual aspect. Let us consider a few others.

Consider who God is: This is the question of what God are you ascribing worth to. At the end of the day, there is only one true God. Anything less is not God and probably was create by the one true God. The one true God existed before time was and will still be here after time is ended. He is self-sufficient. He needs nothing that we can offer. He is self-contained. He needs nothing of this universe. He is all powerful. There is nothing that He cannot do, if He so chooses.

Consider who we are: We are the created. Apart from God sustaining us, we would simple wink out of existence. We are flawed. Apart from the grace of God, we would be destroyed.

Consider our state of being: True worship is honest about where we are. When we slap a “Jesus smile” on and play church; that is not true worship. We rob ourselves of the chance for God to meet us where we are. We rob others of the opportunity of worshipping God with their gifts and skills of healing the hurt.

True spiritual worship requires that we know the truth in several areas and at many levels.

Next, we will begin to look at some different ways that we can worship.