At the core of Christianity—at the core of everything—there is God, uniquely revealed in Jesus Christ. From the earth-bound, human perspective, Christianity is primarily about being in a right relationship with God through Christ. This is a many-faceted relationship involving reconciliation with God, experiencing his forgiveness and intimate love, learning his character and living consistently with his ways, studying his works, reflecting his creativity through our own expressiveness, and more.

Wrapped around in all of this is worship.

I suspect that’s a concept that seems foreign, even a little weird, to non-Christian readers. (It’s hard enough for us believers to grasp!) If I could present a good non-religious analogue to worship it would help, but I’m not sure there is one, especially in egalitarian America. The closest parallel I can think of is the historic regard with which kings and queens have been treated by their subjects, but even with that there are problems. First, among American readers there is the instant gut reaction, “But all men are created equal!” (Women too, but I was quoting the Declaration of Independence.) We can’t bring ourselves to believe it’s right to bow the knee to another person. Second, in spite of differences in station, it’s true: we are all of equal worth, so it really isn’t right to bow before another.

So then who is God that we should bow the knee to him? Is he any different? The question seems ludicrous on its face, yet we’ve gotten it wrong. It was the quest to be like God, to be independent of him, that was the downfall of the first humans (Genesis 3; especially Genesis 3:5; see also Ezekiel 28:1-19, which most commentators believe also refers to the fall of Lucifer). It’s a mistake that has been at the core of all our problems since then. The same desire for independence from God runs rampant still.

True worship begins in seeing God for who he is, and ourselves for who we are: the unfathomable distance between Creator and created, Infinite and small, Holy and sinful, Self-existent and contingent (we derive all that we are from him, while he is who he is necessarily and of himself). Worship in other words is a natural response to seeing the Supernatural, recognizing its infinite and personal reality.

It is moreover a love response to a loving God, who gave himself for us so that we could be brought near to him. As we read in Colossians 1:13-14:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

To worship is to take a stance of submission, of yieldedness to God. A professor I had in college, himself an atheist, related something an Episcopal priest had said to him. It was a cute yet very appropriate twist on a familiar phrase: You worship God your way, and I’ll worship him his. For how could anyone say, “I’ll worship God my way,” and be thinking of anything remotely like real worship? It would be like saying, “God, I acknowledge your great majesty and supremacy, how marvelous and loving and awesome you are; and yet if you don’t mind, sire, I’ll decide for myself how I think I ought to follow you, because I think I can figure you out for myself..”

I’m not saying Christians have it all figured out how to worship God in the way that pleases him most. What I’m saying is that this is our goal, our quest, our intention. We believe God knows himself truly and has revealed himself truly, and that to some extent we can truly know him and grow in that knowledge. We seek to understand God for who he is, not for who we may think him to be. We know that such understanding is given to us not through our wisdom but by his grace.

Worship, then, is based in our relationship with God and in experiential knowledge of who he is. Churches often speak of having a “worship time,” meaning a time of singing and praying together. That’s fine as long as we don’t misunderstand: true worship is expressed through the whole life. We practice it through the gladness of song, yes, but also through the bodily expressions of submission (one word for worship in the Bible means literally “to bend the knee”), the intimacy of prayer, the view we have of God in fellow believers, and the regular disciplines of seeking to know him better and follow him more fully.

Back to the core again, then: God is at the center. Worship is about recognizing that reality, and expressing it through all that we are and all we do.

Christianity, Worshiping 3 comments

God created us for relationship with Him, and with genuine moral significance as part of our makeup. We turned away from Him and broke that relationship. Our connection to the true source of life and love was broken, and death and alienation entered our experience. This we learn from Genesis 1 through 3, as covered in the first two posts in this series (see the Series list below).

The first chapters of Genesis illustrate God’s holiness and justice without actually using those terms. The full picture of these facets of God’s character emerges later in His word. God’s holiness speaks of his purity, his righteousness, his perfect moral character. It also connotates separateness from all that is evil or impure. Habakkuk 1:13 says God’s eyes are too pure even to look on evil. It’s metaphorical, obviously, but the point is that God cannot in any way approve evil. In Psalm 5 we read,

“For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.”

God’s justice is that which demands that right be rewarded and wrong be punished; that moral actions have fitting moral consequences; that we do indeed “reap what we sow.” It is on the one hand a source of tremendous hope for those who have been oppressed or wronged. On the other hand it stands in front of all who have done wrong, which is each one of us.

The consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin were given to them out of God’s righteous holiness and justice. (And mankind has been railing against holiness and justice ever since.) This is not all there is to say about God’s character, for He is also a God of mercy, compassion, love, and forgiveness. How he can express both mercy and justice will be the subject of a future post in this series.

Meanwhile we need to take note of further results of the first humans’ rebellion against God. Not only were they separated from God, not only did they become subject to death, they also experienced the curse of their sin. We’ve all been experiencing it since.

For the woman the curse mostly had to do with pain relating to children and men. For the man it had to do with the painful frustration of labor and production. The world would now fight back against these rebels; and people in their alienation would fight each other. When we speak later of what Christ has done for us we will touch on reconciliation between people, which begins when people relate to one another in Christ. Reconciliation with the frustrations of the natural world is yet to come, in a future state after the return of Christ.

The tempter (who later in the Bible we understand to be Satan) was also cursed, and in that curse the first hint of a promised redemption comes to us: the seed of the woman would crush his head. The seed (offspring) of the woman–notably not the seed of the man–was the coming Christ, born of a virgin, whose work would include destroying the works of Satan.

Now, I am fully aware that this exposition will raise questions and objections from some loyal non-believing readers here. My purpose in this post, as in the previous two, has been to present a brief outline of what we know about the root of humanity’s dignity and brokenness, as background for explaining what Christ has done about it. You who may question or object to this, I ask to read this for what it is: an exposition of a belief, a viewpoint on the condition of humanity.

I believe it is a true viewpoint; I know that you do not. I ask that you approach this for understanding and not primarily for dispute. You who object to Christian beliefs, this is your chance for a deeper understanding of their source. I hope your questions will be that: requests for clarification. This is not the time for me to prove to you that Genesis 1-3 tell a true account of where we came from. It is a time to focus on the account itself and what it means, taken for what it is.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions — a post that elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a long answer

Brokenness, Christian, Eve, Genesis, Holiness, Justice, Satan, Worshiping, Worshiping Christian 21 comments

Yesterday we saw that God created humans to have great dignity, and superior value and worth, above every other created thing. We were in fact created for relationship with God. He has always intended to love us, and for us to love Him. This is not love between equals, though, for God created us to be dependent on Him. The food, the air, the very ground that every human has walked upon–all this has always been provided by God.

And so it was once that humans enjoyed intimate, unmarred fellowship with God. This has been the design from the start. Our ancestors seriously messed it up, though, by pursuing independence from God, which separated them from Him. We each ratify that decision through our own independent attitudes and actions daily. The rest of the story of what Christ does for us tells how God is restoring people to that intimate, properly dependent and at the same time highly dignified relationship with Him.

Let’s slow down again, though, and look at how our roots of relationship with God were broken. The story is in Genesis 3. The first part tells of Adam and Eve’s fateful decision.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

The lie that Eve accepted was that she could have her own independent wisdom, apart from God’s; she wanted to “be like God” herself. Adam’s error included all that as well as placing his wife ahead of God. Both of these were moves of independence and rebellion. The result was a break in their relationship with God. God had warned them that disobedience would mean death. They did not physically die that day (although it was at that time that they first became subject to death). That day marked their separation from God, though; it was an immediate spiritual death. They hid from God. We’ve been hiding ever since.

This had no effect whatever on God’s love for us. It did not decrease our worth in God’s eyes one whit. Later we’ll see that even before the foundation of the world He knew this was coming, and He planned the sacrifice of His own Son on our behalf, even before we were created. He would not do that if we were of no value in His eyes.

This provides more background for a question doctor(logic) asked two days ago:

I don’t see how it can be both ways. On discussions on this blog, humans have been described as infinitely evil compared to God, worthy of suffering, death and eternal torture. How is something worth a lot, and yet worthy of death and suffering?

Aaron answered this already:

This is where basic philosophical categories and distinctions come in handy. Something cannot be both A and non-A in the same way and at the same time, right? Well, the sense in which humans have worth (in virtue of what they are and were created to be) is different than the sense in which they are worthy of punishment (in virtue of what they have done).

Our value in God’s eyes is undiminished. But we who were created to live in loving, close, dependent relationship with Him chose to try an independent route, and death was the consequence. It’s quite a natural one: it’s impossible to live separated from God. It’s impossible for us to be our own gods, as if we could sustain ourselves apart from His creation and provision. And to cut oneself off from the only true source of life and love is to walk into one’s own death.

I have not yet spoken of God’s holiness and justice, which also enter into this equation. That will come up in a future post in this series. The groundwork laid so far shows what God intended, and how the first humans turned their backs on His intent. We all do the same, still, today. There’s no understanding of what Christ does for us without this background.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions — a post that elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a long answer

Christ, Eden, Sin, Worshiping, Worshiping Christian 10 comments