The Worship Lifestyle [Pt. 1]

As a worship leader, one of the passages which I've spent a lot of time studying is John 4, the gospel account of Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman at the village of Sychar. There are a lot of important components within this passage, but the most notable is Jesus' statement of what defines true worship. In verse 23, John records Jesus' words:

“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.”

It wasn't until this morning that I finally took notice of the immediate context of Jesus' statement, which contains an often overlooked implication for modern-day believers.

There are some differing perspectives on this verse, like many passages of Scripture. Some people think that when Jesus describes true worshipers as worshiping “in spirit,” He is referring to the coming of the Holy Spirit, and that the worship of a true follower of God is confirmed or made genuine by the unique spiritual communion with the Father which the Holy Spirit makes possible. This isn't necessarily a wrong interpretation, because we do worship with the guidance of the Spirit, but that reading of this particular passage is slightly off-base. Remember, Jesus said in verse 23 that “the hour is coming, and is now here,” but the giving of the Holy Spirit would not take place until the Day of Pentecost, after His ascension to heaven. The word for “spirit” used in this passage is the Greek word “pneuma,” which is used throughout Scripture to define both “rational soul, vital principle, and mental disposition” and “God, Christ's spirit, the Holy Spirit” (compare John 4.23 with 2 Cor 3.17, and Phil 3.3). However, the term typically used for the Holy Spirit in describing His divine office (the comforter, helper) is the word “parakletos,” literally “come beside,” which may be translated as “comforter” or “advocate” (see John 14.15-17; 14.25-26; 16.7). John 4, however, uses the primary definition of pneuma to denote the “vital principle and mental disposition” of the worshiper – in other words, the state of his or her heart.

But although the heart or spirit is crucial to this passage, it is not the immediate context.

When worship leaders discuss this passage, we talk about the appropriate approach to worship services, picking songs that are grounded in biblical truth, inspiring within the congregation attitudes of reverence, celebration, thanksgiving. And while these things are all bundled into the description of worshiping “in spirit” and certainly defining of true worship, there is another qualifier that is missing.

What Jesus is talking about deals specifically with location. The dividing issue between the Samaritans and Jews (blood heritage aside) was the place of worship: the Jews called Jerusalem the place of worship, and the Samaritans considered Mount Gerizim the sacred location. That is why the woman, abruptly changing the subject away from her adulterous lifestyle, says to Jesus, “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” (4.19-20). This, in turn, prompts Jesus' warm reply: “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” (4.21-24). Jesus says that neither Gerizim nor Jerusalem would be the singular location of true worship.

So the obvious question which follows is, “Where is the appropriate place of worship for us as believers?”

MacArthur's study Bible contains the following footnote for this passage: “Jesus' point is that in light of His coming as Messiah and Savior, worshipers will be identified, not by a particular shrine or location, but by their worship of the Father through the Son. With Christ's coming, previous distinctions between true and false worshipers based on locations disappeared. True worshipers are all those everywhere who worship god through the Son, from the heart.”

Therefore, the (hopefully) obvious answer is, “Anywhere and everywhere.”

We can't consider worship just singing any more than we can consider it restricted to one particular locale: Jesus negated both Mount Gerizim and Jerusalem as the “appropriate” place of worship. He said, simply, that true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth. This implies a lack of specific location, or an all-inclusive one. What Jesus is saying is that worship is no longer tied to the physical realm, no longer solely an act of obeying the law and making sacrifices at the temple. It now primarily incorporates the spiritual realm.

In other words, worship takes place in the heart.

Unfortunately, there are people who take this idea that worship shouldn't be restricted to a church building and begin to run too far in the opposite direction. Their idea is that worship services should be socially relative and accessible to the common man, so they meet in bars, coffee houses, and libraries instead of pews and sanctuaries. This Emergent Church movement, which may begin with great intentions, suffers from the domino effect: they misinterpret one of the three pillars of true worship (spirit, truth, location – or lack thereof) and the rest begin to crumble. Because they desire less structure and more accessibility, they remove the location pillar. Because they desire to reach culture, they soften ideas of Biblical judgment and accept and encourage all walks of life within their congregation, and so the next pillar – truth in worship – begins to slide downhill. Gradually, they begin to question the comprehensive nature of the Bible and move away from belief in its infallibility. When truth in worship becomes compromised, whats left is a purely philosophical, opinion-based, emotion-driven “faith” which has divorced itself from true belief in Jesus Christ. It becomes a road to inter-spirituality through mysticism, a blending of religions and morals to suit the desires of the congregants.

In other words, that's not what I'm trying to communicate.

As a member of a church which began in a school, and a volunteer worship leader at another which rents out a bar while waiting on their permanent location, I know for a fact that true worship can take place beneath a steeple or otherwise. The point of this post is not to say that we should or shouldn't meet in a church building on Sundays to worship: the point is that worship should be our continual state, present with the body of Christ or apart.

So if worship is characterized by heart motive and truth, and is no longer dependent upon location, then our understanding of worship should be that it is not simply an activity which needs to take place in church on Sunday – or even an activity at all, for that matter. To the contrary, worship is a lifestyle, necessarily incorporating our daily thoughts and actions. Worship is proper, loving interaction with brothers and sisters in Christ. Worship is service – true and undefiled religion which cares for the orphans and widows without expecting reciprocation (Jas 1.27). In that regard, worship is very much like love. It involves action, sure, but that action is an expression of the heart. Just like faith cannot exist without the verification of works (Jas 2.26), and love is nonexistent without sacrifice, so worship is a condition of the heart which demands external expression. But the inverse is also true: works profit nothing without the foundation of faith, actions done “in love” do not always reflect the genuine sentiment of the heart, and simply going through the motions in worship does not mean we are truly celebrating the Lord.

There is one more defining characteristic of worship that I want to tease out of John 4.

Near the beginning of their conversation, Jesus had told the Samaritan woman, “Everyone who drinks of this [well's] water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4.13-14). Similarly, in Luke's account of the Beatitudes, Christ blessed the ones “who are hungry now, for [they] shall be satisfied” (6.21). In both passages, what Jesus was trying to teach is that satisfaction is found only in worshipping God. Therefore, genuine worship done in spirit and in truth is soul-satisfying.  When we are consumed with Him, the distractions of this empty world lose their ability to draw us away from the truth.  Therefore, worshipping the Father is predicated upon dissatisfaction with this life and longing for intimacy with Him.   It is recognition of the fact that only He is worthy of our worship, and that only He can satisfy our thirst and our hunger.  Jesus often cautioned the one who is rich in this life that he has “already received consolation” (Luke 6.24).  In other words, the one who has invested all his time and passion in worldly things has already received his earnings.  True worshipers are not fooled by the material, however.  They worship God because He alone brings satisfaction.

The sum total of our lives should be a testament of worship -- the type of living sacrifice which continuously glorifies God on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour basis (Rom. 12.1).  Worship does not take place solely in singing any more than it is restricted to a church building on a Sunday morning.  It is an active, abiding expression of love and adoration for our heavenly Father which must encompass every facet of our lives -- in spirit, truth, and any locale.  In fact, our lifestyles should be so full of worship that we are clearly identifiable as Christ-followers -- so that the expression of our faith through words is merely a confirmation of the observer's pre-existing assumption.