What does the word worship mean to you? I have noticed in recent years it has become a sort of synonym for singing. More specifically, it seems to mean congregational singing, or even a type of singing. A good friend said to me, “I like the worship more than the other parts of the service.” If you know me, you know I, too, love the music portion of worship greatly. Still, I wondered, “Which parts of the service were not worship?” Why? Because we need to eliminate them. For that matter, we might eliminate every part of the activity in our lives that is not worship. Our English word worship comes from an anglo-saxon word, “worthship.” In worship we give God his worth.
Let Paul explain. After he told the Roman Christians that he wanted his fellow Jews to come to Jesus, he explained that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved by confessing with our mouths, “Jesus is Lord,” and believing in our hearts that God raised him from the dead. God will save Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus. Then he recorded a beautiful doxology in our passage today. The division between chapters 11 and 12 was inserted many years after Paul wrote. When Paul writes, “Therefore,” he is referring back to God’s marvelous plan of salvation. This is the mercy which all his readers can see. (By the way, we all live in view of God’s mercy – we can see it from everywhere.)
In response to God’s merciful gift of salvation, we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is our true and proper worship. Perhaps this is why the song “Heart of Worship” says, “I’ll bring you more than a song, for a song in itself is not what you have required.” When Paul defines worship here, he does not mention music. True and proper worship is to give ourselves, our whole lives to God as sacrifices in view of his gift of life to us. This is a bigger commitment than liking and singing a particular song or style of worship. True we bring the sacrifice of praise to the Lord. But offering our praise without offering our whole lives would be empty. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied with him.
So by definition, worship is never about, “What do I like?” but about, “What does God like?” In our consumer world, we may think that worship is some sort of way to make us feel good. This leads to division by musical tastes in worship. The first-century church, which used almost none of the instruments or songs we use, could not have envisioned dividing up the body of Christ by musical preferences. The writer of Hebrews says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” This means we are not consumers when we worship. We are, consumed, more like the fuel that a fire burns. Let us worship God today in the beauty of his holiness, singing, praying, studying the word and offering our whole lives to him. God is so worth it, and worthy of our worship.
