I grew up in the Baptist tradition and remember the monument sign in front of the church building listing the key events of the week. The 11:00 a.m. Sunday event was called worship. Later in life I noted that other churches—for example, Bible churches, denominational churches, and charismatic churches—used the same terminology for their main weekend events.

As a child, I understood worship to be a weekly scripted event—a ritual. It lasted about one hour on Sunday mornings. The order of service was generally the same every week. It included the doxology, a couple of hymns, a pastoral prayer, a sermon, and an altar call. Sometimes there were formal creeds, responsive readings, and sacraments, for example, the Lord’s Supper or baptisms. And sometimes there was special music. When the worship event was over, worship was over—or so I thought.

Even in my early adult life, to me worship was a ritual event that happened in a specific place and time each week. Unbeknown to me at the time, this supported my belief that God was impersonal. This meant that I did not really know him, and he really did not know me. Consequently, we didn’t really care much about each other. And I lived accordingly. I did not understand the personal nature of God until later in life.

Since I grew up under Bible teaching, I assumed that I was taught biblical truth about worship and was slow to ask questions about what the Bible revealed about worship. However, through events in life, my view of Christianity was challenged. I needed help and, by the grace of God, I turned to Scripture. I learned that according to the Bible, the earliest example of worship was in the pre-fallen, sinless state—what the redoubtable Abraham Kuyper called the “normal condition.”^[1] This was how the God of Creation intended man to relate to him. Worship was tilling the garden (work)^[2] and daily fellowship with the personal God of creation.^[3] In other words, the first expression of worship was not a weekly event but a lifestyle of daily relating to God through work and taking an evening walk to fellowship with him.

The fall of man did not change the need for worship, but sin challenges man’s heart about worship. Fallen mankind does want to worship some aspect of creation, but not the Creator. This is called idolatry. Therefore, for sinful mankind to relate to the personal Creator of the universe properly through worship requires transformation of the heart through Scripture.

The apostle Paul encountered Christ and connected his understanding of Christian worship to his Jewish lineage. Paul said:

. . . I worship [λατρεύω] the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets. (Acts 24:14 ESV)

The Greek word translated worship is λατρεύω. Vine’s Dictionary states that the word means “to work for hire.” When used in reference to God, this word intimates submission to God displayed by external acts of service.

Clearly, Paul was committed to his Jewish heritage and recognized the continuity between the Old Testament and New Testament. The connecting truth was the resurrected Jesus who is both Lord and Christ.^[4] Because Paul was highly biblically literate, the transition from Judaism to Christianity was not difficult. He could readily understand how Jesus fulfilled all the Old Testament typology and prophecies about the coming Messiah (Christ).

Furthermore, the apostle Paul reinforced the idea of work as a form of worship in his epistle to the Colossians. Below is the command he gave to slaves who were workers during the first century:

Slaves, obey your human masters in everything. Don't work only while being watched, as people-pleasers, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. (3:22 CSB)

The phrase fearing the Lord was an Old Testament concept that referred to the heart attitude of worship toward God that was to be expressed through work.

And, undoubtedly, Paul knew Jesus’ most cogent statement on worship given in a conversation with a Samaritan woman. He said that worship is to be done in Spirit and in truth. This intimates that worship is rooted in internal spiritual reality, aligned with the Holy Spirit, and tangibly expressed in external actions congruent with truth. Furthermore, Jesus stated that worship is not contained in one place. This implies that worship should be in every place. Here is the interchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman:

The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." (John 4:19–26 ESV)

Jesus explained that the essence of worship was not in a physical location but in spirit and in truth. Another way to understand this is that worship is not a ritualistic event at a certain time and place but is to be manifested all the time, in every circumstance, and in every place. Furthermore, worship is focused on the personal God revealed in Scripture. God knows who his people are, and they can know him.

For Christians, true worship is rooted and grounded in the Holy Spirit and the truth of Scripture. Worship is to be done in spirit meaning in and through the power of the Holy Spirit and in truth meaning consistent with the character and nature of God as revealed in Scripture. Furthermore, worship is not necessarily a music event, as is commonly presumed today, but rather a genuine heart attitude of devotion to God holistically expressed daily. This reality is best conveyed by a lifestyle of obedience to God’s will, executed according to God’s ways, in God’s timing, and for God’s glory.

True Christian worship is quite different from my early understanding. Instead of worshipping at a weekly ritualistic event, Christians are to live a daily holistic lifestyle aligned with God’s will, God’s ways, God’s timing, and God’s glory. This means living everywhere, in every circumstance, and all the time in relationship with the personal God of Creation who is revealed through his Son, Jesus. This is Christian worship in spirit and in truth. May all who call on the name of Jesus have the grace to submit to a lifestyle of worship in spirit and in truth.