A Biblical Definition of Worship

Tim Keller is pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. His thoughts on worship, presented in the book, "Worship by the Book" (edited by D.A. Carson) are some of the most Biblical and helpful I've read on this crucial topic.

Here's an excerpt: "Worship, as Carson writes, 'is ascribing all honor and worth to God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so.' We are therefore only truly worshiping when we are serving God with our entire beings, including our hearts, which must be 'affected' by God's glory.

"The fullest definition of worship, then, is something like 'obedient action motivated by the beauty of who God is in himself." (p. 204).

What Keller writes here is related to the fact that the key Biblical words for worship have to do with serving God and submitting to him (literally, bowing down, falling prostrate, before him). Many of us seem to think of worship mainly in terms of 'the feeling or the mood that I experienced during the music' -- but that's not the heart of worship (although our 'affections' and emotions should certainly be engaged).

Keller's definition of worship is also related to the fact that in the New Testament, worship is seen to be our response to God in all of life, not just when we're gathered together for 'corporate worship.' As Paul teaches in Romans 12 our "spiritual act of worship/service" is offering all that we are to God as living sacrifices, which includes avoiding worldliness as, instead, we are transformed by the renewing of our mind/perspective. And all this happens as a response to our recognition (with mind and heart) of "the mercies of God."

Our worship will please God and will truly transform us as his people when we think of it, and experience it, along the lines of what Scripture actually teaches -- that true worship is 'obedient action [including the actions of confessing sin, praying, praising, carefully listening to the preached Word in order to live by it...] motivated by the beauty of who God is in himself.'

(Rom. 12:1-2; Matt. 4:10; Rom.1:25; 2 Cor. 3:18; Heb.12:28-29)