How Should Humans Respond to God? A Theology of Worship
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How should humans respond to God? The answer to this question will describe a biblical theology of worship. Such an answer is biblical because it must be faithful to the entirety of God’s self-revelation; it is theological because it has to do with who God is and what he has done; and it is about worship because “worship is human response to a gracious God.”[1]
In this article, I will briefly examine how the Bible describes worship, highlighting the discontinuities and continuities between Old Covenant and New Covenant worship.
How the Bible Describes Worship
In the first post-Garden narrative in Scripture, the brothers Cain and Abel each bring an offering to the Lord (Gn 4:3–4). These offerings are human responses to God’s provision and are thus rightly considered acts of worship. Because God accepts one offering and rejects the other (Gn 1:4–5), we see that “God is not always pleased when people decide to worship him.”[2]
There is much debate as to why God accepts Abel’s offering and not that of Cain. Bruce Waltke suggests, “The key to Cain’s failure is found in the narrator’s careful descriptions of Cain and Abel’s tribute. Cain brings ‘some of the fruits.’ There is no indication these are the first or the best. Abel brings the best, fat from ‘the firstborn.’”[3] Later, God would require Israel’s sacrifices to be the “first” (Dt 26:2) and “best” (Nu 18:12) of their produce, the young and healthy ones “without blemish” (Lv 1:3) from their flocks. According to the prophet Jeremiah, such “first-fruit” offerings were to picture Israel herself as God’s portion (Jer 2:3).[4]
God’s acceptance of Abel’s offering and rejection of Cain’s indicates that God has always required—and always deserves—our first and best. Our first observation is that the Bible describes worship as an offering of the best we have to give.
Other suggestions for why God accepts Abel’s offering include 1) that it was a blood sacrifice, and 2) that it was offered in faith.[5] These, too, are legitimate and important aspects of biblical worship. Although these two elements are not emphasized in the Genesis text as the reason why Abel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s rejected, sacrifice and faith are central to the biblical teaching on worship.
Sacrificial offerings are a major element of OT worship,[6] and the NT highlights the faith of Abel (Heb 11:4) as well as that of Abraham (Heb 11:17) and others (e.g., Heb 11:28) in the context of their offerings and sacrifices.[7]
Abraham’s faith is particularly of interest because Genesis 15 depicts Abraham’s faith (Gn 15:6) as a response to God’s self-revelation and promises (Gn 15:1, 4–5), and this belief in God’s word is followed by a sacrifice (Gn 15:9–10).[8] We see that when God’s revelation is received by faith, that faith is evidenced by worship—here, in the form of a bloody sacrifice in a covenantal ceremony (Gn 15:17–18).[9]
The significance of sacrifice to the biblical concept of worship cannot be overstated.[10] Immediately after the fall, God clothes Adam and Eve with garments made from animal skins, which appears to be the first intimation in Scripture of a sacrifice as a covering for sin.[11] In response to God’s deliverance from the flood, Noah builds an altar and offers burnt offerings to the Lord (Gn 8:20). Abraham’s faith is tested and vindicated[12] when he obeys God’s instruction to sacrifice his only son Isaac, restrained at the last moment by God’s command with the gift of a substitute sacrifice (Gn 22:1–14). Jacob regularly offered sacrifices (Gn 31:54; 35:14; 46:1), continuing the pattern set by his fathers[13] and modeling it for his descendants, who later would receive detailed instructions at Sinai for sacrifices in ritual worship.[14] In those Levitical sacrifices, it becomes clear that “the worshipper is offering himself to God through the sacrificial victim.”[15] Our second observation is that the Bible describes worship with blood sacrifices offered in faith.
Yet a blood sacrifice is not the only acceptable form of worship. When Abraham’s servant found Rebekah as the answer to his quest and his prayer, he “bowed his head and worshiped the Lord,” blessing God and ascribing honor to his name (Gn 24:26–27). The people of Israel also “bowed their heads and worshiped” (Ex 4:31) upon hearing God’s word through Moses for the first time, as did Moses himself when the Lord passed before him (Ex 34:5–8). The combination of “bow” and “worship” appears frequently in the OT, combining physical and verbal forms of submission and thanksgiving (Ex 12:27; 2 Chr 7:3; 20:18; 29:29–30; Neh 8:6; Ps 22:29; 95:6).
Other physical forms of worship include kneeling (Ps 95:6), standing (Ps 119:120), dancing (Ps 149:3), feasting (Ez 46:9), clapping (Ps 47:1), raising hands (Ps 63:4), and bringing physical offerings to the Lord such as grain (Lv 2:1), bread (Lv 7:13), fruit (Lv 20:30), or money (2 Kgs 12:16), in addition to the sacrificial offerings of animals mentioned above. Verbal expressions of worship include singing (Ps 47:6), shouting (Ps 27:6), prayer (1 Sa 2:1), confession (Lv 5:5), thanksgiving (1 Chr 16:8), and proclamation of God’s character, attributes, and deeds (Ex 9:16). Our third observation is that biblical worship is both physical and verbal.
The Old Testament designated specific times (the Sabbath and feast days) and places (dedicated altars, the tabernacle/temple) that were to be set apart as holy to the Lord as times and places for worship.[16] Yet it is clear that God’s claim on his people is holistic—Israel as a people is holy (Dt 7:6). The times and places outside of prescribed worship are also meant to be dedicated to the Lord. The Psalmist said of time, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Ps 34:1) and of location, “May the whole earth be filled with his glory” (Ps 72:19).
Scripture presents formal cultic acts of worship—i.e., temple sacrifices—alongside special situational worship—i.e., Abraham’s servant worshiping in response to favorable circumstances—as well as a sense of whole-life worship—i.e., the Shema, which requires a loving worship of God with the whole heart, soul, and might (Dt 6:4–9)—in such a way that God’s commands were to encompass their civic calendar and daily routines, their public worship and private home life. Thus, our fourth observation is that the Bible portrays worship as a whole-life activity of God’s special people, who worship the Lord with love in their regular activities and in their special acts of devotion.
To put all these elements together, we can say that Biblical worship is a whole-life activity of God’s special people, who, with love and faith and a continual proclamation of God’s glory, both in their regular activities and in their special acts of devotion, respond physically and verbally to God’s self-revelation by offering the best they have to the Lord including their very life, which is represented by a blood sacrifice. Of course, much more could be said. The definition could be developed further to specify important notions of thankfulness, purification and cleansing, obedience, fellowship with God, fellowship with others, prayer, singing, and more.[17] The current definition works because, as we have seen, it arises from the OT and, as we will see, it concurs with the NT.
Continuities Between Old and New Covenant Worship
When God reveals himself, man is to respond in sacrificial worship. Yet not all do respond (Ps 14:1), and of those that do, not all are accepted (as noted above; see also Is 1:11; Hos 6:6; Ps 51:16–17; Prv 21:3). Those who respond acceptably are those who believe (Hb 2:4), and right worship emanates from trust in God’s character and promises. That is why I. H. Marshall clarifies, “The term ‘worship’ is misunderstood if it gives the impression that the major element is what human beings do or offer to God. Biblical religion is primarily concerned with what God does for his people (Mk. 10:45).”[18]
Faith is central to biblical worship because everything about worship is rooted in who God is and what he has done. This is illustrated in the covenant ceremony with Abraham. Not only does God freely give his promises to Abraham, he passes through the divided pieces of the sacrificial animals, signifying that he alone will uphold and fulfill the covenant on Abraham’s behalf.[19] Abraham is depicted in this passage as entirely passive, even miraculously so due to the “deep sleep” (Gn 15:12) which appears to have prevented him from passing through the divided animals as would have been typical of a covenant ceremony.[20] Even in the midst of Abraham’s sacrificial response of faith, God is shown to be the operative agent.
Up to this point, our focus has been on OT texts that establish the particulars of our definition of worship as the right response of God’s people to his self-revelation. Now we turn our attention to the New Testament in order to “see the unity of Scripture as a redemptive-historical drama,” which is how the Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition defines the task of biblical theology.[21]
The same themes that defined Old Covenant worship continue in the New Covenant, particularly the idea that Biblical worship is a whole-life activity of God’s special people, who, with love and faith and a continual proclamation of God’s glory, both in their regular activities and in their special acts of devotion, respond physically and verbally to God’s self-revelation by offering the best they have to the Lord including their very life, which is represented by a blood sacrifice.
We see this most clearly in Romans 12, which begins: “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. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rm 12:1–2).
In this passage, we can discern many of the elements of our definition. First, Paul says that we are to offer the best we have to give—our bodies, which “refers to the whole person.”[22] Second, this offering of ourselves is a “living sacrifice” done “by the mercies of God,” which is to say, a sacrifice offered in faith, trusting in God’s work on our behalf. Third, in presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice we are presenting all of our living faculties, including our physical and verbal abilities. Fourth, Paul’s appeal is to “brothers,” which is to say God’s special people,[23] who are to have their minds and activities shaped by and conformed to the will of God. Paul says that these things amount to “spiritual worship,” which John Frame calls the “broad” sense of how the Bible speaks about worship.[24]
Broadly speaking, Romans 12:1–2 captures the idea of worship we found in the OT. In that broad sense, worship is consistent throughout the Old and New Testaments; namely, that worship is something “that we perform all the time, as we seek to live godly lives.”[25] Speaking of this broad sense, Harold Best says,
Worship is not a special event or any sequence of them. Worship is fundamental to humankind itself, so much so, that we must assume that it goes on all the time, all around us, inside of us, and, in a paradoxical way, in spite of us. So before we talk about the specificities of worship, we must first of all understand that there is no one in this world who is not, at this moment, at worship in one way or another: consciously or unconsciously, formally or informally, passively or passionately. For in a most comprehensive way, we are always giving our lives over to something or someone that we consider to be worth the most. Worship does not just apply to specific religious activities and to the deeply religious people who have strong feelings about a nameable god (Judeo-Christian or otherwise), and how that god is to be occasionally encountered, pleased, placated, served, and worshiped. In a way that goes beyond nameable liturgical activities, it applies to our deepest expressions—many of them left unseen or unsaid—of our worldview.[26]
Best is describing the idea of a living sacrifice. The word “living” in Romans 12:1 does not contrast the NT conception of worship with the OT in terms of living humans versus dead animals, of one liturgical or cultic practice replacing another; rather, it describes a lifestyle, “a living or perpetual sacrifice never to be neglected.”[27]
Worship has always been a whole-life activity. In Romans 1, Paul found fault in mankind because their lifestyle of worship—the whole-life activity Best described as “giving our lives over to something or someone that we consider to be worth the most”—was misdirected. Instead of rightly responding to God’s revelation, man’s “living sacrifice” was devoted to the creature, not the Creator (Rm 1:25). Such a life of worship fails not because it is not perpetual (Best, and Paul in Rm 1:18–32 contend that it is) but because their “living sacrifice” is not holy and acceptable to God (Rm 12:1). Our lives will always be directed somewhere in worship.
The Old and New Testaments alike present a unified witness that condemns mankind for wrongly directed worship and calls mankind to turn to God and worship him acceptably.[28]
Discontinuities Between Old and New Covenant Worship
We have seen that worship considered in the “broad” sense illustrates the continuity of the biblical storyline. As we begin to consider the discontinuities between Old and New Covenant worship, we see differences in the “narrow” sense of worship regarding ceremonial and liturgical elements.
In the Old Covenant, the liturgy centers around the sacrificial system.[29] In the New Covenant, the liturgy centers around the Word (Col 3:16). In the Old Covenant, formal worship took place in or was directed towards the tabernacle or temple. In the New Covenant, worship takes place not at a mountain or in Jerusalem but “in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:23). These differences point to the greatest difference of them all, namely Jesus (Heb 2:9).
I have labored thus far to provide a picture of worship by keeping the focus on the worshipers because the question at hand is, “How should humans respond to God?” This article has attempted to examine the biblical conception of worship the way a photographer might take pictures of the audience at a theater production as they respond to the drama unfolding on stage—now laughing, now crying, now gasping in agony, now cheering in celebration. Our responses must reflect God’s reality, and we, like the theater audience following the production on stage, must respond rightly to the unfolding drama. But the central fact of worship has to do with the One whom we worship. I will again quote Marshall, “The term ‘worship’ is misunderstood if it gives the impression that the major element is what human beings do or offer to God. Biblical religion is primarily concerned with what God does for his people (Mk. 10:45).”[30]
So, I turn the lens to the stage. What God has done for us is fully and finally revealed in Christ. The blood sacrifice is no longer offered because Christ is our sacrifice (1 Cor 5:7; Heb 10:10). We no longer rely on an earthly priest entering an earthly temple with an animal sacrifice that can never make us perfect (Heb 10:1, 4) because Jesus is our priest (Heb 6:20), and he has made his people into his temple (1 Cor 3:16) by entering the true holy place by means of his own blood (Heb 9:12). True worship has always been by faith, but under the Old Covenant believers had to trust that God would supply what was lacking in their offerings, seeing only “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb 8:5).
New Covenant believers also must worship by faith, but we get to look back on the finished work of Christ and receive the benefits of better promises (Heb 8:6), which include God’s law written on our hearts and minds (Heb 8:10). It is this work of Christ that makes the difference between presenting our bodies as “living sacrifice” to worship and serve the creature or to worship and serve the Creator (Rm 1:25). When we are purified by the blood of Christ (Heb 9:14), he makes us holy and acceptable to God (Rm 12:1) and we can then rightly present our bodies to the Lord in worship. This necessarily includes a transformation of the mind (Rm 12:2), where formerly our thinking was futile and our hearts were darkened in false worship (Rm 1:21). In Christ, however, our minds are renewed and our hearts are enlightened because the law has been put into our minds and onto our hearts (Heb 8:10).
All of this is the work of Jesus Christ, the hero of the story and the focus of our worship.
Applications for Today
Now we can see clearly why there are differences and continuities between Old and New Covenant worship.
The continuities are summarized by this definition: Biblical worship is a whole-life activity of God’s special people, who, with love and faith and a continual proclamation of God’s glory, both in their regular activities and in their special acts of devotion, respond physically and verbally to God’s self-revelation by offering the best they have to the Lord including their very life, which is represented by a blood sacrifice.
The discontinuities can be summarized by Paul: “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rm 10:4). The sacrificial form of worship revealed in the Mosaic law is no longer binding.[31] Christ has fulfilled and completed the OT forms of worship and lives forever as our great high priest (Heb 7:24–25) and our enduring sacrifice (Heb 7:27).
Worship is not primarily about something that we do. Rather, biblical worship is our natural, reasonable response to what God has done for us in Christ. Yet the Word of God must form and shape our response, because the Word is where Christ reveals himself (Lk 24:27). So, as we come full circle, we can acknowledge that even the discontinuities between Old and New Covenant worship point us to the unifying theme of Jesus Christ as the source and object of our worship. This leads us to some practical applications.
First, biblical worship has always been directed towards God alone, for his glory. With the revelation of Jesus Christ, New Covenant worship is shown to be Trinitarian. The Second London Baptist Confession says, “Religious worship is to be given to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to Him alone” (2LBC 22:2).[32] This worship is a whole-life offering of the best we have to give, which is shown by fearing, loving, praising, calling on, trusting in, and serving this triune God with the entire heart, soul, and strength (2LBC 22:1) as a Spirit-empowered response to what God has done for us in Christ (Jn 14:15–17, 26; Acts 1:8; Rm 8:26).
Second, biblical worship has always been based on God’s revelation. “The acceptable way to worship the true God is instituted by Him, and it is delimited by His own revealed will” (2LBC 22:1). Because Christ fulfilled and completed the sacrificial system as that to which the Old Covenant forms pointed, the “specificities” of New Covenant worship are Word-centered rather than sacrifice-centered. This indicates a change in the “narrow sense” of worship. The Confession states, “The elements of religious worship of God include reading the Scriptures, preaching and hearing the Word of God, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord, as well as the administration of baptism and the Lord’s supper” (2LBC 22:5). These things point us to the work of Christ on our behalf, who physically took on flesh and “became God’s ‘tabernacle’ in the world” (Jn 1:14),[33] verbally proclaiming God’s Word (Mt 9:35) as the full and final revelation of God (Heb 1:2). Our worship is still physical and verbal, but it flows from a Word-based response to Christ’s work as our sacrifice and as the one who reveals and proclaims himself to us.
Finally, biblical worship has always required a mediator. “Since the fall, worship is not to be given without a mediator…” (2LBC 22:2). In the Old Covenant, mediators such as prophets, priests, and kings were required. Yet these, too, were mere men, and we have seen that men such as Abel, Abraham, and even Abraham’s servant offered acceptable worship. What the New Covenant reveals is that this mediation is and always has been through Christ. The remainder of the above 2LBC quote reads, “… nor through any mediation other than of Christ alone.” It is only “in Christ” (Rm 6:23, 1 Cor 15:22) that we are made alive and can thus offer ourselves as a “living sacrifice” (Rm 12:1). Such Christ-centered worship is holy and acceptable only because of what he has done on our behalf.
Conclusion
So how should humans respond to God? As we behold what God has done for us in Christ, we respond in gratefulness (Heb 12:28) by offering the best we have—our very lives, which have been made holy and acceptable by the work of Christ. This is biblical worship.
[1] I. H. Marshall, “Worship,” ed. D. R. W. Wood et al., New Bible Dictionary (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 1250.
[2] John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, A Theology of Lordship (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008), 468.
[3] Bruce Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 97. Matthew Henry made the same observation, saying, “Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, any thing that came next to hand, what he had not occasion for himself or what was not marketable. But Abel was curious in the choice of his offering: not the lame, nor the lean, nor the refuse, but the firstlings of the flock—the best he had, and the fat thereof—the best of those best.” Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, n.d.), 38.
[4] R. K. Harrison, Jeremiah & Lamentations: An Introduction & Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 55.
[5] For these views and others, see Jack P. Lewis, “The Offering of Abel (Gen 4:4): A History of Interpretation,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 37 (1994): 481–96, accessed October 24, 2023, https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/37/37-4/JETS_37-4_481-496_Lewis.pdf.
[6] E.g., Gn 15:1–21; Ex 12:1–13; 20:24; 24:8; Lv 1:5; 17:1–14. Also see Hebrews 10:1–2, which labels those who offer sacrifice as “worshipers.”
[7] George Guthrie, Hebrews, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 1998), 381.
[8] In Genesis 11:26 to his name change in 17:5, Abraham is called Abram in the text. I will refer to him as Abraham for simplicity and consistency.
[9] Waltke, Genesis, 244–245.
[10] Scott R. A. Starbuck, “Sacrifice in the Old Testament,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
[11] Waltke, Genesis, 95. Note that here, in this proto-sacrifice, God takes the initiative to clothe and cover the two naked humans.
[12] G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 521.
[13] Waltke, Genesis, 573.
[14] Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979), 25.
[15] Ibid., 62.
[16] For an overview of sacred space and sacred time in Israel’s worship, see Tremper Longman III, Immanuel in Our Place: Seeing Christ in Israel’s Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001) 1–74, 161–213.
[17] Instead of continuously expanding a definition that already recognizes worship as a whole-life activity, I invite the reader to connect such themes to the existing definition. For instance, prayer and singing have already been mentioned as verbal acts of worship; fellowship with others can be discerned in the corporate term “God’s special people;” obedience is reflected in the words “response” and “love” (per Dt 6:4–9); and so on.
[18] Marshall, “Worship,” 1250.
[19] Thomas R. Schreiner, The King in His Beauty: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 18–19.
[20] Ibid., 18.
[21] Kelly M. Kapic and Wesley Vander Lugt, Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition, The IVP Pocket Reference Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 23.
[22] Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1998), 644.
[23] Schreiner, Romans, 707.
[24] John M. Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013), 1037.
[25] Ibid., 1038.
[26] Harold Best, “Authentic Worship & Faithful Music Making,” (Manuscript of lecture, ACDA National Convention, February 27, 1999), accessed November 1, 2023, https://www.andrews.edu/sem/inministry/uploads/2015summersyllabi/authentic-worship-harold-best.pdf, 4.
[27] Charles Hodge, Romans, The Crossway Classic Commentaries (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1993), 343.
[28] See G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), particularly 268–283.
[29] Frame, Systematic Theology, 1038.
[30] Marshall, “Worship,” 1250.
[31] Schreiner, Romans, 547.
[32] All quotations of the 2LBC are taken from Stan Reeves, ed., Confessing the Faith: The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2012).
[33] Beale, NT Biblical Theology, 632.