Eclectic Christian welcomes guest blogger Michael Powell. Mike is the associate Pastor at our church and preached on Sunday about the relationship between Christ and Worship. This was a topic which I had been interacting a lot about recently in various blogs, and a thought that an abbreviated version of what we heard on Sunday would make an excellent contribution to the topic. Here are Mike Powell’s thoughts below:
How can we be sure that the worship we offer to God is genuine, authentic, or acceptable? When I was in high school, I thought a lot about this question. Working at camp during the summer, the staff would have morning devotions every day, and our time together would include sharing from the Bible, prayer and singing. As we sat around in the staff lounge during our time of worship, I would often wonder if I was truly connecting with God. I was surrounded by others who gave off the impression that they were, for lack of better terms, “in the zone” or spiritually centred. And as I compared myself to them, I often felt that my offering of worship was inadequate – that I was missing something. When I brought this up with one of my mentors at camp, he told me that I should try not to compare myself with others, but to focus on my own offering of worship. He also said it was entirely possible that the people I deemed as “closer to God” were actually thinking the same thing about me.
In essence, no matter who we are, any worship that we offer to God is going to be broken, lacking, wanting, imperfect. We’re human and even the most sincere offering of worship may be wrought with selfishness. It’s not uncommon to engage in worship simply because it makes us feel good. Once we come to this understanding – specifically, that anything we present to the Lord as an act of worship is in and of itself unworthy – doesn’t it make you wonder? Why bother coming before God in worship day after day, week after week, if the very best that we can offer is insufficient? Should we carry on solely because we feel it’s expected? Because we’ve been taught that it’s the right thing to do? Or because we feel obligated? Moreover, if our own self-offering is imperfect, how can God – who is holy – welcome us into his presence during worship at all?
To answer this question, it might be helpful to point out that something is only pure and unadulterated if God welcomes it as so. This is as much true today as it was in ages past. In Israel, our spiritual foreparents worshipped the Lord via the sacrificial system. In other words, God set apart various means of adoration and atonement that he would accept. Whether it was an offering of grain or the sacrifice of an animal, the older order of things was instituted by the Lord and was accepted as true worship. What they offered in faith was adequate, and according to this system of doing things, a person would bring his or her sacrifice to the priest, who would in turn offer the sacrifice to the Lord on their behalf. Essentially, the priest filled the role of intercessor or mediator – an intermediary between God and his people. But no matter how perfect a plan is – in this case, God’s design of the sacrificial system – if the people involved don’t follow through with the plan, it’s just not going to work. Hebrews 8:8 says that, “God found fault with the people.” And as patient as the Lord is, I believe that God’s patience also has its limits. So – instead of continuing to require the repeated offering of sacrifices to make amends for one’s sins, the Lord made a dramatic shift in his original plan that would change the practice of worship forever. The sacrificial system itself was at one time sufficient. The only inherent flaw in the system was the people themselves.
Accordingly, motivated by love, God willingly chose to share in the humanity of his people (Hebrews 2:14), allowing himself to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect (Hebrews 2:17), yet was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord himself would do what his people were never fully able to do: flawlessly keep the covenant, and offer pure worship through his life as a faultless high priest and his death as a perfect sacrifice. Jesus – God the Son – offered acceptable worship on our behalf, in our name, and this is what gives us confidence that we can offer genuine worship. Whether it’s a song, a prayer, a good work, or any creative expression of devotion, whenever we worship in Jesus’ name, God welcomes our worship. Hebrews 9:24 affirms that Christ is our mediator, and that the offering of himself was done so on our behalf. All we need to do is claim it for ourselves – to worship vicariously through Jesus Christ. By faith, to share in the experience of Christ’s life and death. Perhaps a description of Christ’s role in our worship by Scottish theologian James B. Torrance will clarify what I mean by vicarious:
“The good news is that God comes to us in Jesus to stand in for us and bring to fulfillment his purposes of worship and communion. Jesus comes to be the priest of creation to do for us, men and women, what we failed to do, to offer to the Father the worship and the praise we failed to offer, to glorify God by a life of perfect love and obedience, to be the one true servant of the Lord…[Jesus] comes to stand in for us in the presence of the Father, when in our failure and bewilderment we do not know how to pray as we ought to, or forget to pray altogether”(Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace, p. 14).
God not only became a human in the person of Jesus Christ to set an example for us to follow, but to offer a perfect response of obedience as a representative of humanity as a whole. In this way, God is able to fill up what is lacking in our own imperfect self-offering. No matter what we present to the Lord in worship, as the song “Holy, Holy” rightly claims, “we lift our hearts/heads/hands/voice before [God] as a token of our love.” A token. Something small and symbolic. An outward expression of thanks or gratitude that we give for something that we can never fully offer for ourselves or repay by ourselves.
However, if it’s true that Jesus has already given what is necessary, and that his perfect worship becomes ours through faith, does this release us from a responsibility to worship God? After all, haven’t we been made holy through what Christ has done, once for all? This is almost true. But something doesn’t have value for us unless it’s personalized. Something isn’t yours unless you own it. It’s as if our worship to God is a cheque. God’s already done all the work. He’s given us what we need to make the necessary payment. All we have to do is endorse the cheque. We simply have to sign our name, offering our approval and acceptance of Christ’s perfect self-offering. That’s what it means to worship vicariously, and it’s for this reason we can have complete confidence that what we offer to God each day, week, month and year is genuinely acceptable worship…even when we accurately know that what we give isn’t flawless.
Michael Bell
Joshua Hearne
Tim Melton
Joel Black
