I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)

Worship is not an easy topic to navigate in the church. Think of it as a minefield. Strewn across the landscape are hundreds…even thousands…of hidden landmines just waiting for an unsuspecting person to trigger them. Not only are their locations unknown but each bomb is unique because it reflects the personality and style and preferences of the bomb-maker. Diffusing each bomb is a seemingly impossible mission.

The reason for this is simple and complex at the same time. Worship means many things to many people, and each individual has their own concept of the word “worship” which is defined and styled by tradition, background, preference, and knowledge. For some, worship is synonymous with attending church. For others, it represents a specific aspect of a church service, such as singing hymns, or praying, or listening to the sermon, or taking communion. Within these various facets lies the purpose and intent of worship, from the need for comfort, encouragement,  and self-expression, to seeking God’s “presence” in a mystical way. It can be equated with religious piety and stoic calmness by one person, but as religious ecstasy and spiritual elation by another.

That’s quite a minefield. Here, take my hand and let’s walk across and see what happens…

Honestly, the reality of this individualized type of worship puts enormous pressure on churches and pastors, who feel the constant expectations to meet these countless needs and desires. Ultimately, the wise pastor knows by instinct or learns in time that they will inevitably fall short of the expectation. Someone will be disappointed. And yes, the church and its leaders do feel the weight that it is judged on how their particular expression of “worship” does or does not meet the “needs” of the people who attend.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. This is beginning to sound like something written by a beat-up worship pastor with an agenda. Well, let me clarify a couple of things. First, I’ve never felt beat-up at Anchorage Grace for the worship. But yes, I do have an agenda. My agenda is simple: I want you to understand worship. That’s the only way to diffuse the landmines of church worship. Unless things happen at the level of the heart, it’s all just fussing with preferences, and there’s no way to win that battle. You will like what you like. I will like what I like. And we may never agree to like each other’s likes. But we can come together in worship despite all our “likes” and “dislikes” if we dig far enough down beneath the surface to recognize what worship really is and how it can fuel our preferences without necessarily being defined by them.

If you remember, I ended my blog last week by working up to this theological definition for worship written by David Peterson:

True worship is engaging with God on the terms that he proposes and in a way that he alone makes possible.

I present this definition because I think it accurately captures the thrust of what true worship is while still allowing each of us to recognize and embrace our own preferences. Preferences in worship aren’t bad. They just can’t define worship for everyone. Only God gets to define worship.

Now, that brings us to the passage I presented at the start of today’s post…Romans 12:1. That verse is a culmination of the entire book of Romans. It brings together everything Paul said before it, and I think it’s pretty telling that the focus of that one verse is on worship. That means whatever comes before it has everything to do with worship.

worship and wrath

Paul opens the first major portion of his epistle to the Romans with the assertion that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18). As we come to find out, the “truth” being suppressed which elicits God’s wrath is none other than the truth about God as creator and lord over everything. Such knowledge is known by them, because it’s been made known to them (1:19-20), and this knowledge leads to guilt and culpability (“so they are without excuse,” 1:20).

Regardless of the fact that they have this knowledge, they suppress it nonetheless, and this suppression has massive implications:

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom 1:21-23).

Undergirding this whole statement is the assumption that true knowledge of the true God should lead to something…WORSHIP! When you know God, it should elicit love, loyalty, and obedience. Peterson writes,

“Giving glory to God in biblical thought means responding appropriately to God’s own self-revelation, acknowledging his holiness, majesty and power…and not giving the praise that is exclusively due to God to any other. It means declaring, but also reflecting in lifestyle, something of the glory or revealed character of God” (170).

That’s where the massive breakdown comes in. Instead of responding rightly, they suppress this knowledge and “exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man…” (1:23). Why would they do this? Because accompanying this failure to glorify God is a foolishness and darkening of the mind and heart: “They became futile in their thinkings, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (1:21-22). And in their darkened, foolish hearts, their reverence and devotion fundamentally shifted from the true object of worship…the creator God…to a lie. Hear the language Paul uses to describe their sin:

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Romans 1:25).

The phrase “worshiped and served” are strategic. They speak of “the esteem and reverence paid to created things, which has aways found expression in false religion, particularly in acts of cultic service, [which] should have been directed to the living and true God” (Peterson, 171).

The summary of Paul’s statement regarding humanity is that mankind, who was created to reflect God’s glory and bear his image throughout creation…who owes his creator full allegiance, devotion, praise, thanksgiving, reverential awe, service, and obedience…refused to glorify him, give him thanks, or serve him or show him devotion, choosing rather to suppress any notion of the one true God which is clearly revealed and evident to all, instead redirecting their allegiance and devotion to that which is not God.

For this reason, humanity bears the wrath of God. It is a wrath that works itself out practically through the amplification of wickedness, as God withdraws his restraining grace, allowing sin to multiply and thicken, leading to all kinds of evils (cf. Rom 1:29-31). But it is a wrath which prefigures a final wrath which will come at the end of the age.

So, from a pre-gospel perspective, man has failed utterly at worshipping God “on his terms.” This is true of Gentiles. This is true even of Israel, who received God’s self-revelation yet nonetheless failed to honor him as God (cf. Ps 106:20; Jer 2:11). As it stands, apart from Christ, all people are in the impossible predicament of refusing to engage with God on his terms, yet corrupted by a darkened and foolish heart which disables them from thinking rightly about anything related to worship. The only thing that can change this is for God to act.

worship and christ

The amazing thing is that God has moved on his own accord to deal with humanity’s predicament. Mankind is unable to worship him on his terms. Only God can make it possible for them to do so. God must act if we are to engage with him in the way he requires.

In Christ, God acted.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it–the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Romans 3:21-25).

The thrust of Paul’s argument is this: God has provided the final sacrifice…the “propitiation”…in the death of Christ, which was the price paid for the redemption of all who believe.

To be “redeemed” is the be set free. In the Old Testament, the ultimate picture of redemption was the exodus, where God redeemed Israel, setting them free from their bondage to Egypt so they could worship and serve him. Here, sinners are set free from their sin and its consequences. They are freed to serve him anew, and they are freed by means of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. His blood provides the way for sinners to be made right with God (Rom 5:8-9). As Peterson writes,

“The atoning value of his obedience, which culminates in his death, lies in the fact that he surrenders himself completely to the Father as the representative of sinful humanity. Thus, it is implied by Paul’s argument that we may only relate to God on the basis of Christ’s perfect ‘worship’, which is his self-offering. Jesus’ death was a once-for-all sin offering, providing the atonement towards which the propitiatory rites of the old covenant were ultimately pointing.” (173).

How does one appropriate this final sacrifice? Paul adamantly stresses that it is “through faith” (Rom 3:23). When a sinner abandons all attempts to approach God on self-determined terms (i.e., through works) and instead goes by faith, they are intrinsically approaching God on the only terms that God accepts and makes possible. There is no way to have Christ be your representative while still trusting in works of the law. Only “through faith” will one have Christ as their representative, and his death as the ransom price for their life.

As one comes to God through faith, they are baptized into Christ’s death (cf. Rom 6:1-10), a picture of complete identification with Christ in his death:

Christians enter into fellowship with Christ in his total surrender to the will of the Father in order to find acceptance with the Father through his atoning work on their behalf…. Christian obedience is made possible by the self-giving obedience of Jesus Christ.” (Peterson, 173).

But then Peterson says this very thought-provoking statement:

If Jesus’ death is the unique and never-to-be-repeated sin offering of the new covenant, faith expressed in obedience is the ‘holocaust’ or ‘burnt offering’ which Christians can offer to God because of that sin-offering. ‘Dying with Christ, being crucified with him in baptism, stamps the whole earthly life of the Christian, sanctified by his Spirit, with the cultic character of his death on the cross.'” (173).

So when we go back to Peterson’s definition of worship as “engaging with God on the terms that he proposes and in a way that he alone makes possible,” we have to recognize that true worship starts with faith, and that he has made engaging with him possible by offering Jesus Christ the final sacrifice for sin in order to redeem sinners, free them from sin and its consequences, and unite them with the only human being to ever serve God and worship him perfectly…Jesus Christ. In other words, you can’t worship God without Christ as your representative. And you can’t have Christ as your representative without abandoning all attempts to approach God on your own terms.

In the gospel, God has prepared us to worship him as he requires.

worship and living sacrifices

We return finally to the passage I first introduced…Romans 12:1. It’s at this point that Paul begins to unpack the implications of everything he’s expounded in chapters 1-11. The real question for the Christian is, ‘What is worship in light of the gospel?’ That’s Paul’s concern as well.

What Paul wants is for believers to worship in “understanding.” That’s the best way to understand what the ESV translates as “spiritual” worship. It’s not just concerned with the inner person, or somehow disconnected from the physical or the body. Neither is it merely “rational” or “reasonable” worship, as other translations put it. It’s talking about worship which flows logically and consistently out of the truth of the gospel. It is the only proper worship that comes in response to “understanding” the gospel in faith.

What is this “understanding worship”? It is simply this: “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” The language here conjures up the idea of each believer as a priest, who presents his own “body”…really his whole life…as a sacrifice to God. But it’s not a bloody sacrifice any longer. Christ’s blood was the last bloody sacrifice to be given. Rather, we are to be “living sacrifices” which are set apart (“holy”) for service to him. That is the worship God finds acceptable…when a person redeemed by God responds in repentance and faith by offering all of himself to God in Spirit-empowered service to God.

worship and church

Okay, so I know you’re reading this and just wanting to hear something very practical. This has been a lot of theology, I know, but without it the practical makes no sense. “Understanding worship,” after all, is “understanding” because it “understands” what the proper response to the gospel is.

But how does something like this affect the church? What would this look like when the church gathers together on a Sunday? After all, it’s a little hard to see how offering ourselves as living sacrifices has anything to do with what we sing or the style of our music or the order of service.

Well, it does, but not in the way you think. Romans 12:1-2 sets the context of everything else that follows it, from chapters 12-16. But I find it very interesting that immediately following this exhortation to worship in light of the gospel, Paul then exhorts believers to humbly serve each other (12:3-8) by exercising their own spirit-empowered gifts. In other words, if you want to know how to worship as a church…GET SERVING.

We worship God by prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing to the needs of others, exercising leadership and showing mercy to others in the fellowship of God’s people (12:3-8). These activities may continue outside the formal meeting of the church but they are an essential part of such meetings in the perspective of several New Testament passages. While all ministry must be understood as a response to God’s grace, and not in any sense a cultivation of his favour, ministry to others is an important aspect of our self-giving to God.” (Peterson, 178-9).

There’s an adage in the church known by every local pastor: 20 percept of a congregation does 80 percent of the ministry. Those numbers vary from church to church, but the adage is true and it’s been proved out. There is a lot of consumerism that takes place in churches based partly on a wrong understanding of worship. When worship is viewed in a context of self-fulfillment, it leads to criticality and negativity. When worship is viewed as self-emptying through humble service, critical spirits melt away because the heart is softened.

Worship which is acceptable to God can never be about us. That was the line of reasoning that led to the wrath of God in Romans 1. But our minds, once darkened and foolish, are being renewed and transformed through the gospel. We know what true worship is. God has made it possible to worship him just as he requires. Praise him. Thank him. Obey him. And serve him. That is understanding worship.