Spirit and Truth
John 4:19-26, ESV
The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”
Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
From the end of last year, I have had a deep conviction on the topic of worship, namely the content of songs we sing in church, its affect on the hearers, and, truly, what worship is meant to be towards God.
As many of you know, now some of you may just be learning, my twin brother and I grew up playing worship music for various churches with our dad, who was a worship pastor.
We grew up in the Kirk Franklin “Revolution” era, Third Day “Consuming Fire,” and “Open The Eyes of my Heart,” now into Elevation Worship, Maverick City Music, and Gateway Worship.
After experiencing generations of worship music and seeing a great man prepare and lead services my entire life, I began to realize that worship is much more than singing three or four songs on a Sunday that sound really good or make me feel like I’m experiencing something. In fact, worship is intended to be the complete opposite of those feelings we get.
Being a part of many worship teams in various churches, I’ve heard many terms used as an expectation for our teams,
“We must usher in the Spirit.” “We are creating an atmosphere for the congregation.” “We have to get them to engage the Spirit.”
I’m sure that if you’ve been in any modern church, you have heard or said similar things. You probably don’t remember even the first time you’ve heard it before you said it, but it sounded good, so it stuck. But what does any of that even mean? Where is this found in the Bible? How does it affect our understanding of the New Covenant, the gospel of Jesus, and what is expected of us as Christian’s in fellowship as a part of a church?
Let’s first define what worship is.
What every Christian’s first thought is about worship is probably their favorite song to sing in church. “Jireh” from Maverick City, “Praise” from Elevation, or the newest Brandon Lake song—catchy tunes we have stuck in our heads that make us feel good and exalt God in the process.
The problem is that most worship songs are based off of a poor understanding of what worship is, many of which also have extremely shallow doctrine. In a basic sense, we might say that we are “singing God’s praises” or “thanking God for all He’s done.” This isn’t wrong, but worship is more than just being thankful and telling Him that.
The passage at the beginning is a segment from a conversation Jesus had with a woman from Samaria. The word “worship” was used ten times in this passage, written in the English Standard Version Bible. They have two different views on what worship was.
Like them, we have a dilemma. We are raised to believe that worship is one thing and never explore the fullness of what it means in the Bible.
American Christianity has compartmentalized various portions of our faith in order to appease the “seeker” who enters through the doors of the local church instead of teaching the believer the value of the gospel and what it means to be a worshiper of God. The church has relied on enticement, by means other than the gospel, in order to fill the pews and, many of you know what I’m saying, church has become a business.
In compartmentalizing the faith, churches break apart the gospel into bite sized nuggets to try and band-aid problems we face everyday. The compartmentalization bleeds into how we are to conduct ourselves as Christians. In a sense, we minimize the gospel for our needs, using God when we need God, instead of realizing that the gospel is an all-encompassing thing; it’s life transformation.
There are five Greek words that the English language translates into the word “worship” in the Bible. The word “worship” used in the above passage comes from the Greek word “proskuneó,” which means “to prostrate oneself.” Now don’t confuse prostrate with prostate lol.. to prostrate oneself is to be in full submission to someone or something. It’s, literally, to lay completely flat, nose to the ground, or bent over in reverence on your knees to that person or thing, in subjection.
The way the early Jews and Samaritans would have worshipped in their temples is completely foreign to our way of worship today. It would have meant being in full submission to the rules of the temple or the law of Moses as commanded by God, bringing sacrifices for sins that the law and men required. In breaking the law, they would face serious consequences.
But when Jesus says, “those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,” what is it that He meant? Now that we see what “proskuneó” means, let’s look at “spirit” and “truth” in Greek.
Spirit, in the passage, is the word “pneumati,” which is described as the consciousness of someone; the spirit of someone or their inner person. Truth is the word “alētheia,” which means more than just speaking the truth. This word is synonymous with the word “reality.”
Let’s reexamine the phrase Jesus spoke with a more contextual sense of those words. To worship in spirit and in truth could more clearly be read as “to lay yourself down in submission to God in all of your consciousness and your physical reality.” Therefore, worship is far broader than just raising a hallelujah to God. It is a complete lifestyle change from how you think and behave.
But where does the gospel fit in all of this?
The gospel is bigger than just humanity’s salvation. It is the explanation of the sovereignty of God—His lordship over all things. It’s the realization of the state of man and our failure to be worthy of righteousness. It’s the wrath of God and His disdain of disobedience and sin, but His love towards His creation and a desire to redeem creation’s fallen state. It’s the beauty of God’s gift of grace, who was Jesus, the Anointed Son of God, who is God, that fulfilled all requirements for us that man could never accomplish. Lastly, it is the opportunity to have everlasting life, through and by faith in Jesus’ sacrifice, and to be in the presence of God instead of in eternal punishment, in an all deserving righteous judgment, away from God.
When we understand the greatness of the gospel, we can appreciate what it means to be prostrate to God in both our inner and outer beings. It should change our outlook on the church service’s we attend and the way we handle life.
How has this added conviction in my life as it regards musical worship?
It’s changed the kinds of music I entertain. If I am to be prostrate to God, this brings a better clarity to His commands, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10-37).”
As we sing songs, the content matters. Many of the modern “worship” songs that we are singing in church have self-centered content in them. It’s hard to set ourselves aside when we are conscious of ourselves and our needs. But that is a part of the humility required to be submissive to Christ; the laying down of ourselves and the picking up of the cross of sacrifice. It is a necessity to obeying God’s commands.
Lyrics like, “Praise is a weapon; it’s more than a sound. My praise is the shout that brings Jericho down” or “When I open up my mouth, miracles start breaking out. I have the authority Jesus has given me” have a tinge of selfish power that is abused by Christian’s who supposed that subjection to God gives us a power that we can and should wield, yet that defies the reality of the gospel.
We can’t do it on our own. God saved us and continues to save us, not the other way around. God didn’t enable men of the Bible to do miraculous things, but God did miraculous things through men, even in their weakness, to prove He was the God that they were proclaiming He was.
In conclusion, worship has been, and is, misunderstood by many Christians, me included, and truly has a deeper and more broad meaning to what the gospel is and what it produces in the believer. Worship is rarely taught in sermon form, unfortunately, because we “worship” before the sermons.
But with the contextual clarity of what’s meant by worshiping in spirit and truth, let us be reminded of and encouraged by the humility of Jesus that Paul wrote about in Philippians 2:5-1
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”