Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so. This side of the Fall, human worship of God properly responds to the redemptive provisions that God has graciously made. While all true worship is God-centered, Christian worship is no less Christ-centered. Empowered by the Spirit and in line with the stipulations of the new covenant, it manifests itself in all our living, finding its impulse in the gospel, which restores our relationship with our Redeemer-God and therefore also with our fellow image-bearers, our co-worshippers. Such worship therefore manifests itself both in adoration and action, both in the individual believer and in corporate worship, which is worship offered up in the context of the body of believers, who strive to align all the forms of the devout ascription of all worth to God with the panoply of new covenant mandates and examples that bring to fulfillment the glories of antecedent revelation and anticipate the consummation.
Taken from "Worship by the Book" Edited by D.A. Carson. Zondervan, 2002.
Some things are worth reading more than once...
What a wonderful description of worship! I remember reading Piper's book on missions (Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions).
ReplyDeleteHe made the point that worship is the one thing we will continue to do in eternity. Many of the other things we do here on earth find their purpose only as they are related to worship. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Evangelism is necessary because there are some who do not worship.
To God be the glory!