Master 210: Spirit and Truth
"The woman said to Him, 'Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.'
"Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.'" (John 4:19-24, excerpt from the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.)
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As I was preparing to lead a Sunday school discussion on Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, I got to thinking about these two ideas. What does it mean to worship in spirit and truth? Much has certainly been written on this topic, but I want to just offer a few thoughts that came to me as I meditated on these ideas. Hopefully they will be helpful.
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Why does Jesus emphasize that God is spirit and that true worshipers must worship in spirit? What does that even mean?
Craig Keener [1] suggests that "spirit" may, in this context, refer to the prophetic Spirit that had moved extensively in the Old Testament but was thought to have been inactive since around 400 BC. Jesus might have been announcing that the spirit was again available to people. According to Jerome Neyrey [2], Jesus is emphasizing that 'worship is not material or sacrificial: It is inspired and mediated by "the spirit of truth."' (94)
William Barclay [3] writes, "If God is Spirit, God is not confined to things; and therefore idol worship is not only an irrelevancy, it is an insult to the very nature of God. If God is Spirit, God is not confined to places; and therefore to limit the worship of God to Jerusalem or to any other place is to set a limit to that which by its nature overpasses all limits. If God is Spirit, a man's gifts to God must be gifts of the spirit. Animal sacrifices, man-made things become insufficient and inadequate. The only gifts that befit the nature of God are the gifts of the spirit--love, loyalty, obedience, devotion. A man's spirit is the highest part of a man. ... True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible." (153-154)
R. V. G. Tasker [4] points out that the worship that took place in the Jewish temple, especially through animal sacrifices, was a shadow of the purer worship that would become possible through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. "His sacrifice is offered in the realm of Spirit; and all who draw near to God, accepting its benefits with grateful hearts, can worship Him in spirit and in truth." (77) F. F. Bruce [5] also emphasizes that true worship is not tied to physical places or seasons. He writes, "God himself is pure Spirit, and the worship in which he takes delight is accordingly spiritual worship - the sacrifice of a humble, contrite, grateful and adoring spirit." (110-111)
[1] The IVP Bible Background Commentary of the New Testament (1993).
[2] The New Cambridge Bible Commentary (2007).
[3] The Daily Study Bible (1955).
[4] Tyndale New Testament Commentary (1960).
[5] (1983)
I'm not actually going to take time to look closely at what these commentators have to say. Their words may be helpful to you or lead you to certain helpful insights, but I want to take a different approach to thinking about this passage.
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What does it mean to take seriously that God is spirit and what does it mean to worship God in spirit? My approach to thinking about this question involves first thinking about what it means to reject or ignore the idea that God is spirit and to fail to worship Him in spirit. These latter notions should not be too hard to wrap our minds around, for we live, today, in a culture that, at least in its elite circles, wholly denies that there is any such thing as spirit. Dallas Willard helpfully defines spirit as unbodily personal power. We live in a culture where many believe that the only real things are the things with which we can make contact through our physical senses. They think that physics and biology, anthropology and psychology can--in principle--tell us everything that there is to know about what kinds of creatures we are and what there is out there in the world.
In such a world and such a context, what happens to our ideas about God and what happens to our worship of God? The short answer is that they are both reduced to mere systems of ideas and human practices. That's where a lot of people are today. That's where a lot of Christians are today. They may claim to believe that God is really out there, but if you look at their behavior and attitudes and choices and activities, you will find that absolutely everything can be explained in terms of the interaction of their personal resources and abilities with the physical and social environment surrounding them.
This situation is not unique to our time. Jesus encountered this mindset in his own ministry. During one late-night conversation, he told Nicodemus, one of the rulers of the Jews and a Pharisee, "[U]nless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus replied, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?" Jesus had to clarify his original claim and point out that he was not talking about another physical birth but a spiritual birth. "[Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." But Nicodemus still did not understand. (Excerpts from John 3:3-6)
Nicodemus was one of the religious leaders in Israel, yet he did not understand and so had trouble taking seriously what Jesus said about the Spirit and spiritual things. When we lose our grip on the spiritual, invariably, we also lose our grip on God's reality. If we have trouble taking the reality of the spiritual and immaterial, then we will have even more trouble taking seriously the reality of God. But once we lose our grip on the reality of God, what happens to our worship? What happens to our prayer and our singing and our gathering? If God isn't really our there then our prayers must not be going anywhere. And if God isn't listening to our singing, then that must just be a way of making ourselves feel good. And if God isn't present at our gatherings, then those must just be about connecting with other people. All the promises of Jesus about the gift and gifts of the Holy Spirit must just amount to so many pretty words. And all the prophecies about the future and heaven and Christ's return--well, those just can't be taken seriously. If you don't take spirit seriously, then you lose the very core of the entire Christian faith.
The Pharisees (including Nicodemus) reflected just this condition. They claimed to believe in and follow God, but their conduct showed that their confidence lay more in cultivating the good opinions of people and in adhering to the letter of the Jewish law. They really didn't take seriously that there was anyone "out there" who actually wanted to have a relationship with them and interact with them.
It might be a good idea to reflect on the character of your own life. Are you living in a way that shows that you take seriously that there really is someone out there who loves you, is watching over you, is interested in you, and desires to do a work in and through you? What would that kind of life look like?
On this point, I think it's helpful to use the analogy of a conversation. A conversation is a two-way interaction that depends upon the participation of both individuals. If you try to engage in a conversation while failing to take seriously the need for any contribution on the other person's part, you simply will not have a conversation. So imagine, for a moment, that you are a single guy (or, for my female readers, that you are a single girl) and that there is a cute girl (or guy) standing across the room. You might feel the urge to walk over there and begin a conversation. But then you might also wonder, What if she doesn't like me? What if she refuses to talk to me? What if she brushes me off? What if she rejects me? If you think about these sorts of things too long, chances are, someone else will begin a conversation with that girl and you'll have missed your opportunity.
What's the point of this conversational analogy? Conversations are the kinds of things that are not in your complete control. If you walk over to that cute girl and introduce yourself, she may brush you off and ignore you. But she may also tell you her name and actually engage in a meaningful interaction with you. And who knows where that might lead.
Now some people, when it comes to their religious commitments and relationship with God get very nervous about the idea of interacting with this being who is really out of their control. We like to be in control. We like to be confident about what's coming next. We don't like to be surprised. But if your main focus is being in control of your relationship with God (or avoiding being out of control) then you will probably settle for a merely human religion--just like, if you're main focus is on avoiding the possibility of rejection by that girl and not being out of control of that situation, you will probably not introduce yourself to that cute girl.
The analogy, here, is not perfect, and it also does not capture a number of important characteristics of our relationship with God, but I think it is helpful for understanding the difference between a religious life that is wholly explainable in terms of human ideas and practices, and a religious life that depends upon there really being a God out there who hears and responds and is active in the world. Think about when you go to a Sunday morning worship service. There are two mindsets with which you could approach that religious activity. For some people, the worship service is nothing more than a ritual. They go into a room, greet people, sing a bunch of songs, close their eyes and say, 'Amen,' after the preacher says a number of words, listen to that preacher read from a really old book and give advice about life before singing some more songs and going to lunch. Everything that I've described, here, is explainable just in terms of human abilities and activities. But for some people, church is about much more. They may attend the same church services as everyone else but their whole mindset and mentality are different. They are watching and listening and attentive and engaged because they are prepared to receive something that cannot be fully explained in terms of human practices and abilities--a word or touch from God. Our different stances toward Sunday worship services reflect just one way of capturing the distinction between those who worship in spirit and those who worship in mere human ability. Many more could be cited.
The main question to consider is how worshiping in spirit differs from the alternative. How does taking seriously the reality of spirit, of the immaterial, and of God differ from ignoring or neglecting or denying the reality of these things? The Apostle Paul offers a helpful illustration of this contrast in Philippians 3, which I also invite you to consider. But, for now, let's turn to the idea of worshiping God in truth.
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What is involved in worshiping God in truth? As a contrast, what would it mean to worship God in falsehood? I want to suggest that worshiping God in truth has two components: worshiping God as He truly is, and worshiping God as we truly are.
What does it mean to worship God as He truly is? If you look on television or search the Internet, you will find all sorts of people who have all sorts of different ideas about who God is and what He is like. They will claim to follow a god who would never send people to hell, who is standing behind every faith tradition that is out there, who encourages people to express themselves sexually in whatever way they please, who is one of many gods. They will claim to follow a god who who will give them anything they want (including money and expensive possessions) if only they will pray in just the right way, who will never allow you to suffer any setback or misfortune so long as you have enough faith, and who was at one time just another human being. The key question: Is there really such a god as these people claim to follow. If I claim to be following God but don't acknowledge that He is as He claims to be, refuse to obey the commands that He has given, ascribe to Him attributes and qualities that He doesn't have, and really just use His name as a way of legitimating my own preferred life-choices, then does it really make sense to say that I am following God?
Now one may legitimately point out that our having a relationship with God does not depend on us having all and only perfectly correct knowledge about who He is and what He is like. It seems plausible to think that there will always be a great deal about God that we do not know, and, especially in our current fallen state, it is quite reasonable to think that none of our ideas capture, perfectly accurately, the complete character of God. But there is an awful lot about God that we can know--because He has revealed truths about Himself to us through His Word. And the question is, are we prepared to adjust our lives and desires and plans and expectations to fall into line with who God is and what His will is? Do we desire to know the truth about God? Or would we rather do our own thing and make our images and ideas about God match up with our own preferred life plan? If you really want to have a relationship with God, then you must desire to know God as He really and truly is.
That's a bit on the first part of worshiping in truth--worshiping God as He truly is. Now let's consider the second part--worshiping God as we truly are. To be related to God and to worship God as He desires us to, we need to come before Him in the right way--as we truly are. One of the main areas where this becomes an issue is in unconfessed sin. There are many Christians who continue to carry, in secret, the burden of past sins and the weight of current sins against God. They refuse to approach God in a wholly transparent way. They refuse to stand before Him (and fellow believers) as they really are. Instead, they pretend to be better than they are and they try to bury the bad memories of the past, with the result that they cannot enter into genuine, fulsome worship (or into genuine, meaningful interactions with fellow believers).
This problem does not have to be tied to sin. It may also be tied to deep-seated insecurities. When a person does not feel adequate or does not feel loved, if she tries to find self-worth and self-esteem in the praise of others instead of in the loving embrace of almighty God, if she tries to put on a facade or mask of contentment and serenity just in order to hide the depth of pain or loneliness that she feels inside, she will have a hard time worshiping God. By contrast, the person who is able to be open and honest with God about the true depth of her brokenness will find a loving, compassionate, generous response. She will discover, in time, that there is so much more to her than her sin, that there is so much more to her than her inadequacies, that she is of inestimable value and worth because she has been created in the image of God and is loved by Him. That realization is what opens the door for full and true authentic worship.
We see this vividly illustrated in Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well. Jesus began His conversation with her by offering her living water. He told her, "[W]hoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." (4:14) This woman was one whose entire life was defined by her need and lack. Her culture dictated that she needed to be married in order to have worth or value. But marriage after marriage had ended in brokenness and hurt. When Jesus met her, she had already had five husbands. But while each of them might have provided her with some kind of social standing, none of them satisfied the much deeper need that she had for wholeness. And as each of those relationships, in turn, fell to pieces--probably, in part, because of her own weakness and dysfunction--she must have grown more and more despairing and despondent. At the time that Jesus met her, she had already had five husbands, and at that time was living (and probably sleeping) with a man who was not her husband. Her troubled history had left her with no standing in her community. She was despised by all the other women, and so she tried to find what little contentment that she could in a man who may actually have been the husband of another woman.
As I said, this woman was one whose entire life was defined by her need and lack. And Jesus came along and offered her something that would change all that. But before He would give it to her, He challenged her to face the reality of who she was and her brokenness. This woman was completely shocked when this Jewish rabbi, a complete stranger, whom she had never met, suddenly confronted her with the history that she had tried so hard to hide and ignore and forget. He focused on all of that. Why? I think, because He wanted her to know, with absolute certainty, that what He offered was really for her. If Jesus had allowed her to keep those secrets and had offered her the gift of living water, spoken encouraging words of love to her, made gestures of acceptance, and revealed Himself to her as Messiah; she might have been left with the lingering suspicion that, 'If Jesus only knew who I really was, then He would take it all back."
There was a Pharisee who actually had this thought. Dr. Luke tells us about a time when Jesus had dinner at the home of a prominent Pharisee. While they were eating, a prostitute came into the house and began to wash Jesus' feet and anoint Him with costly perfume. Luke says, "Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner." (Luke 7:39) The fact that Jesus allowed this woman to touch him convinced the Pharisee that He must not be a prophet (and certainly must not be the son of God). If he were a prophet, the Pharisee reasoned, then he would know that this woman is a sinner and would never allow her to touch Him. But Jesus made it clear to the Pharisee, to that woman, and to everyone gathered there, that He knew who this woman was and that He loved her anyway.
It's one thing to be loved by someone. It's a whole other thing to be loved by someone who knows all your failures and faults and inadequacies. Only the latter kind of love can really bring wholeness and healing to our brokenness. But that requires that we be completely open and transparent about who we are. That's what this woman experienced. Though it was probably painful at first, she came to realize that this Jewish rabbi knew everything about her. Then she realized that He still loved her, cared about her, and was offering her a way to quench the thirst that had been consuming and defining her entire life. She discovered that she did not need to be defined by her needs and inadequacies. And her life was so completely changed that she ran back into the city, to all the people who had despised her and rejected her and hurt her--and she invited them to come and see the man who had told her about everything that she had done. She no longer needed to hide that history, because she came to realize that there was more to her than that history. She found a place to stand, and it was in Jesus Christ.
This, then, would have served as an important component in her worship. She would not need to hide her history. She would not need to pretend that she was more pious or saintly than she really was. Instead, she could freely approach God as she really was and lay herself completely at His feet and give herself wholeheartedly (holding nothing back) to Him in submission and service.
What does it look like to stand openly and transparently before God? I suspect that our openness and transparency before God is very closely tied to our openness and transparency before people--and especially the church. It is extremely unfortunate that the practice of confession has basically disappeared from the lives of so many Christians. Because with the loss of the practice of confession comes the loss of an incredible opportunity for people to love and accept one another in spite of the bad in their lives. Have you ever thought of confession in that way? Many people probably think of confession as a burdensome practice. But true confession is actually disburdening, freeing, liberating, and it creates the opportunity for people to offer love and grace and mercy to one another. Now I will not say that confessing to people is required before one can confess to God or receive forgiveness from God. But it remains the case that fellow Christians can and are supposed to serve as very tangible sources of God's grace and love in our lives. To cut ourselves off from those kinds of human relationships is to cut ourselves off from a great good that God offers.
And remember--one more thing--that this is not all about sin. Some people struggle with feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, insecurity, the sense that they are condemned to be always out-of-place and out-of-sorts. These feelings are not inherently sinful, but they are still extremely hurtful--and they should be addressed in the same basic way: through love and grace and compassion and mercy lived out in the concrete substance of our actual lives. Again, taking seriously the truth about ourselves must be about more than just assenting intellectually to a set of propositions. It must penetrate our lives.
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Addendum: One of the greatest struggles for someone in my position, I think, is to articulate the truths of Christianity in a way that is relevant. Some might think that meditations on the themes of spirit and truth are good for high-minded intellectuals but not for everyone. My thought is that they are helpful just because they illuminate the depth of hurt and pain that Jesus' ministry and gospel actually address. They are thus a source of incredible hope that has very real and tangible effects on our lives. At the same time, however, I can appreciate that long blog-posts and heady discussions can obscure that fact. If you think that this does sound like so much pie in the sky, let me know. Don't settle for thinking that these are all just pretty-sounding words. Doing that will simply guarantee that you'll derive no benefit from the ideas and teaching. Rather, challenge them. Are these words true to life? Is it possible to be changed and transformed in the way that the woman at the well was? Is the 'living water' that Jesus offered actually the sort of thing that you would want? Do you even understand what he was offering the woman? These are some of the basic questions that need to be addressed before one can derive a lot of the benefit that comes from going deeper. Think about them.
Is that enough for now? I felt that I needed to add the addendum because of a recent conversation I had about these topics. More can always be said, but I'll leave that at that.
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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
"Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.'" (John 4:19-24, excerpt from the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.)
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As I was preparing to lead a Sunday school discussion on Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, I got to thinking about these two ideas. What does it mean to worship in spirit and truth? Much has certainly been written on this topic, but I want to just offer a few thoughts that came to me as I meditated on these ideas. Hopefully they will be helpful.
--
Why does Jesus emphasize that God is spirit and that true worshipers must worship in spirit? What does that even mean?
Craig Keener [1] suggests that "spirit" may, in this context, refer to the prophetic Spirit that had moved extensively in the Old Testament but was thought to have been inactive since around 400 BC. Jesus might have been announcing that the spirit was again available to people. According to Jerome Neyrey [2], Jesus is emphasizing that 'worship is not material or sacrificial: It is inspired and mediated by "the spirit of truth."' (94)
William Barclay [3] writes, "If God is Spirit, God is not confined to things; and therefore idol worship is not only an irrelevancy, it is an insult to the very nature of God. If God is Spirit, God is not confined to places; and therefore to limit the worship of God to Jerusalem or to any other place is to set a limit to that which by its nature overpasses all limits. If God is Spirit, a man's gifts to God must be gifts of the spirit. Animal sacrifices, man-made things become insufficient and inadequate. The only gifts that befit the nature of God are the gifts of the spirit--love, loyalty, obedience, devotion. A man's spirit is the highest part of a man. ... True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible." (153-154)
R. V. G. Tasker [4] points out that the worship that took place in the Jewish temple, especially through animal sacrifices, was a shadow of the purer worship that would become possible through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. "His sacrifice is offered in the realm of Spirit; and all who draw near to God, accepting its benefits with grateful hearts, can worship Him in spirit and in truth." (77) F. F. Bruce [5] also emphasizes that true worship is not tied to physical places or seasons. He writes, "God himself is pure Spirit, and the worship in which he takes delight is accordingly spiritual worship - the sacrifice of a humble, contrite, grateful and adoring spirit." (110-111)
[1] The IVP Bible Background Commentary of the New Testament (1993).
[2] The New Cambridge Bible Commentary (2007).
[3] The Daily Study Bible (1955).
[4] Tyndale New Testament Commentary (1960).
[5] (1983)
I'm not actually going to take time to look closely at what these commentators have to say. Their words may be helpful to you or lead you to certain helpful insights, but I want to take a different approach to thinking about this passage.
--
What does it mean to take seriously that God is spirit and what does it mean to worship God in spirit? My approach to thinking about this question involves first thinking about what it means to reject or ignore the idea that God is spirit and to fail to worship Him in spirit. These latter notions should not be too hard to wrap our minds around, for we live, today, in a culture that, at least in its elite circles, wholly denies that there is any such thing as spirit. Dallas Willard helpfully defines spirit as unbodily personal power. We live in a culture where many believe that the only real things are the things with which we can make contact through our physical senses. They think that physics and biology, anthropology and psychology can--in principle--tell us everything that there is to know about what kinds of creatures we are and what there is out there in the world.
In such a world and such a context, what happens to our ideas about God and what happens to our worship of God? The short answer is that they are both reduced to mere systems of ideas and human practices. That's where a lot of people are today. That's where a lot of Christians are today. They may claim to believe that God is really out there, but if you look at their behavior and attitudes and choices and activities, you will find that absolutely everything can be explained in terms of the interaction of their personal resources and abilities with the physical and social environment surrounding them.
This situation is not unique to our time. Jesus encountered this mindset in his own ministry. During one late-night conversation, he told Nicodemus, one of the rulers of the Jews and a Pharisee, "[U]nless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus replied, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?" Jesus had to clarify his original claim and point out that he was not talking about another physical birth but a spiritual birth. "[Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." But Nicodemus still did not understand. (Excerpts from John 3:3-6)
Nicodemus was one of the religious leaders in Israel, yet he did not understand and so had trouble taking seriously what Jesus said about the Spirit and spiritual things. When we lose our grip on the spiritual, invariably, we also lose our grip on God's reality. If we have trouble taking the reality of the spiritual and immaterial, then we will have even more trouble taking seriously the reality of God. But once we lose our grip on the reality of God, what happens to our worship? What happens to our prayer and our singing and our gathering? If God isn't really our there then our prayers must not be going anywhere. And if God isn't listening to our singing, then that must just be a way of making ourselves feel good. And if God isn't present at our gatherings, then those must just be about connecting with other people. All the promises of Jesus about the gift and gifts of the Holy Spirit must just amount to so many pretty words. And all the prophecies about the future and heaven and Christ's return--well, those just can't be taken seriously. If you don't take spirit seriously, then you lose the very core of the entire Christian faith.
The Pharisees (including Nicodemus) reflected just this condition. They claimed to believe in and follow God, but their conduct showed that their confidence lay more in cultivating the good opinions of people and in adhering to the letter of the Jewish law. They really didn't take seriously that there was anyone "out there" who actually wanted to have a relationship with them and interact with them.
It might be a good idea to reflect on the character of your own life. Are you living in a way that shows that you take seriously that there really is someone out there who loves you, is watching over you, is interested in you, and desires to do a work in and through you? What would that kind of life look like?
On this point, I think it's helpful to use the analogy of a conversation. A conversation is a two-way interaction that depends upon the participation of both individuals. If you try to engage in a conversation while failing to take seriously the need for any contribution on the other person's part, you simply will not have a conversation. So imagine, for a moment, that you are a single guy (or, for my female readers, that you are a single girl) and that there is a cute girl (or guy) standing across the room. You might feel the urge to walk over there and begin a conversation. But then you might also wonder, What if she doesn't like me? What if she refuses to talk to me? What if she brushes me off? What if she rejects me? If you think about these sorts of things too long, chances are, someone else will begin a conversation with that girl and you'll have missed your opportunity.
What's the point of this conversational analogy? Conversations are the kinds of things that are not in your complete control. If you walk over to that cute girl and introduce yourself, she may brush you off and ignore you. But she may also tell you her name and actually engage in a meaningful interaction with you. And who knows where that might lead.
Now some people, when it comes to their religious commitments and relationship with God get very nervous about the idea of interacting with this being who is really out of their control. We like to be in control. We like to be confident about what's coming next. We don't like to be surprised. But if your main focus is being in control of your relationship with God (or avoiding being out of control) then you will probably settle for a merely human religion--just like, if you're main focus is on avoiding the possibility of rejection by that girl and not being out of control of that situation, you will probably not introduce yourself to that cute girl.
The analogy, here, is not perfect, and it also does not capture a number of important characteristics of our relationship with God, but I think it is helpful for understanding the difference between a religious life that is wholly explainable in terms of human ideas and practices, and a religious life that depends upon there really being a God out there who hears and responds and is active in the world. Think about when you go to a Sunday morning worship service. There are two mindsets with which you could approach that religious activity. For some people, the worship service is nothing more than a ritual. They go into a room, greet people, sing a bunch of songs, close their eyes and say, 'Amen,' after the preacher says a number of words, listen to that preacher read from a really old book and give advice about life before singing some more songs and going to lunch. Everything that I've described, here, is explainable just in terms of human abilities and activities. But for some people, church is about much more. They may attend the same church services as everyone else but their whole mindset and mentality are different. They are watching and listening and attentive and engaged because they are prepared to receive something that cannot be fully explained in terms of human practices and abilities--a word or touch from God. Our different stances toward Sunday worship services reflect just one way of capturing the distinction between those who worship in spirit and those who worship in mere human ability. Many more could be cited.
The main question to consider is how worshiping in spirit differs from the alternative. How does taking seriously the reality of spirit, of the immaterial, and of God differ from ignoring or neglecting or denying the reality of these things? The Apostle Paul offers a helpful illustration of this contrast in Philippians 3, which I also invite you to consider. But, for now, let's turn to the idea of worshiping God in truth.
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What is involved in worshiping God in truth? As a contrast, what would it mean to worship God in falsehood? I want to suggest that worshiping God in truth has two components: worshiping God as He truly is, and worshiping God as we truly are.
What does it mean to worship God as He truly is? If you look on television or search the Internet, you will find all sorts of people who have all sorts of different ideas about who God is and what He is like. They will claim to follow a god who would never send people to hell, who is standing behind every faith tradition that is out there, who encourages people to express themselves sexually in whatever way they please, who is one of many gods. They will claim to follow a god who who will give them anything they want (including money and expensive possessions) if only they will pray in just the right way, who will never allow you to suffer any setback or misfortune so long as you have enough faith, and who was at one time just another human being. The key question: Is there really such a god as these people claim to follow. If I claim to be following God but don't acknowledge that He is as He claims to be, refuse to obey the commands that He has given, ascribe to Him attributes and qualities that He doesn't have, and really just use His name as a way of legitimating my own preferred life-choices, then does it really make sense to say that I am following God?
Now one may legitimately point out that our having a relationship with God does not depend on us having all and only perfectly correct knowledge about who He is and what He is like. It seems plausible to think that there will always be a great deal about God that we do not know, and, especially in our current fallen state, it is quite reasonable to think that none of our ideas capture, perfectly accurately, the complete character of God. But there is an awful lot about God that we can know--because He has revealed truths about Himself to us through His Word. And the question is, are we prepared to adjust our lives and desires and plans and expectations to fall into line with who God is and what His will is? Do we desire to know the truth about God? Or would we rather do our own thing and make our images and ideas about God match up with our own preferred life plan? If you really want to have a relationship with God, then you must desire to know God as He really and truly is.
That's a bit on the first part of worshiping in truth--worshiping God as He truly is. Now let's consider the second part--worshiping God as we truly are. To be related to God and to worship God as He desires us to, we need to come before Him in the right way--as we truly are. One of the main areas where this becomes an issue is in unconfessed sin. There are many Christians who continue to carry, in secret, the burden of past sins and the weight of current sins against God. They refuse to approach God in a wholly transparent way. They refuse to stand before Him (and fellow believers) as they really are. Instead, they pretend to be better than they are and they try to bury the bad memories of the past, with the result that they cannot enter into genuine, fulsome worship (or into genuine, meaningful interactions with fellow believers).
This problem does not have to be tied to sin. It may also be tied to deep-seated insecurities. When a person does not feel adequate or does not feel loved, if she tries to find self-worth and self-esteem in the praise of others instead of in the loving embrace of almighty God, if she tries to put on a facade or mask of contentment and serenity just in order to hide the depth of pain or loneliness that she feels inside, she will have a hard time worshiping God. By contrast, the person who is able to be open and honest with God about the true depth of her brokenness will find a loving, compassionate, generous response. She will discover, in time, that there is so much more to her than her sin, that there is so much more to her than her inadequacies, that she is of inestimable value and worth because she has been created in the image of God and is loved by Him. That realization is what opens the door for full and true authentic worship.
We see this vividly illustrated in Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well. Jesus began His conversation with her by offering her living water. He told her, "[W]hoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." (4:14) This woman was one whose entire life was defined by her need and lack. Her culture dictated that she needed to be married in order to have worth or value. But marriage after marriage had ended in brokenness and hurt. When Jesus met her, she had already had five husbands. But while each of them might have provided her with some kind of social standing, none of them satisfied the much deeper need that she had for wholeness. And as each of those relationships, in turn, fell to pieces--probably, in part, because of her own weakness and dysfunction--she must have grown more and more despairing and despondent. At the time that Jesus met her, she had already had five husbands, and at that time was living (and probably sleeping) with a man who was not her husband. Her troubled history had left her with no standing in her community. She was despised by all the other women, and so she tried to find what little contentment that she could in a man who may actually have been the husband of another woman.
As I said, this woman was one whose entire life was defined by her need and lack. And Jesus came along and offered her something that would change all that. But before He would give it to her, He challenged her to face the reality of who she was and her brokenness. This woman was completely shocked when this Jewish rabbi, a complete stranger, whom she had never met, suddenly confronted her with the history that she had tried so hard to hide and ignore and forget. He focused on all of that. Why? I think, because He wanted her to know, with absolute certainty, that what He offered was really for her. If Jesus had allowed her to keep those secrets and had offered her the gift of living water, spoken encouraging words of love to her, made gestures of acceptance, and revealed Himself to her as Messiah; she might have been left with the lingering suspicion that, 'If Jesus only knew who I really was, then He would take it all back."
There was a Pharisee who actually had this thought. Dr. Luke tells us about a time when Jesus had dinner at the home of a prominent Pharisee. While they were eating, a prostitute came into the house and began to wash Jesus' feet and anoint Him with costly perfume. Luke says, "Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner." (Luke 7:39) The fact that Jesus allowed this woman to touch him convinced the Pharisee that He must not be a prophet (and certainly must not be the son of God). If he were a prophet, the Pharisee reasoned, then he would know that this woman is a sinner and would never allow her to touch Him. But Jesus made it clear to the Pharisee, to that woman, and to everyone gathered there, that He knew who this woman was and that He loved her anyway.
It's one thing to be loved by someone. It's a whole other thing to be loved by someone who knows all your failures and faults and inadequacies. Only the latter kind of love can really bring wholeness and healing to our brokenness. But that requires that we be completely open and transparent about who we are. That's what this woman experienced. Though it was probably painful at first, she came to realize that this Jewish rabbi knew everything about her. Then she realized that He still loved her, cared about her, and was offering her a way to quench the thirst that had been consuming and defining her entire life. She discovered that she did not need to be defined by her needs and inadequacies. And her life was so completely changed that she ran back into the city, to all the people who had despised her and rejected her and hurt her--and she invited them to come and see the man who had told her about everything that she had done. She no longer needed to hide that history, because she came to realize that there was more to her than that history. She found a place to stand, and it was in Jesus Christ.
This, then, would have served as an important component in her worship. She would not need to hide her history. She would not need to pretend that she was more pious or saintly than she really was. Instead, she could freely approach God as she really was and lay herself completely at His feet and give herself wholeheartedly (holding nothing back) to Him in submission and service.
What does it look like to stand openly and transparently before God? I suspect that our openness and transparency before God is very closely tied to our openness and transparency before people--and especially the church. It is extremely unfortunate that the practice of confession has basically disappeared from the lives of so many Christians. Because with the loss of the practice of confession comes the loss of an incredible opportunity for people to love and accept one another in spite of the bad in their lives. Have you ever thought of confession in that way? Many people probably think of confession as a burdensome practice. But true confession is actually disburdening, freeing, liberating, and it creates the opportunity for people to offer love and grace and mercy to one another. Now I will not say that confessing to people is required before one can confess to God or receive forgiveness from God. But it remains the case that fellow Christians can and are supposed to serve as very tangible sources of God's grace and love in our lives. To cut ourselves off from those kinds of human relationships is to cut ourselves off from a great good that God offers.
And remember--one more thing--that this is not all about sin. Some people struggle with feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, insecurity, the sense that they are condemned to be always out-of-place and out-of-sorts. These feelings are not inherently sinful, but they are still extremely hurtful--and they should be addressed in the same basic way: through love and grace and compassion and mercy lived out in the concrete substance of our actual lives. Again, taking seriously the truth about ourselves must be about more than just assenting intellectually to a set of propositions. It must penetrate our lives.
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Addendum: One of the greatest struggles for someone in my position, I think, is to articulate the truths of Christianity in a way that is relevant. Some might think that meditations on the themes of spirit and truth are good for high-minded intellectuals but not for everyone. My thought is that they are helpful just because they illuminate the depth of hurt and pain that Jesus' ministry and gospel actually address. They are thus a source of incredible hope that has very real and tangible effects on our lives. At the same time, however, I can appreciate that long blog-posts and heady discussions can obscure that fact. If you think that this does sound like so much pie in the sky, let me know. Don't settle for thinking that these are all just pretty-sounding words. Doing that will simply guarantee that you'll derive no benefit from the ideas and teaching. Rather, challenge them. Are these words true to life? Is it possible to be changed and transformed in the way that the woman at the well was? Is the 'living water' that Jesus offered actually the sort of thing that you would want? Do you even understand what he was offering the woman? These are some of the basic questions that need to be addressed before one can derive a lot of the benefit that comes from going deeper. Think about them.
Is that enough for now? I felt that I needed to add the addendum because of a recent conversation I had about these topics. More can always be said, but I'll leave that at that.
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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
posted by Metaphysician_delta | 2:28 PM
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