Worship At Its Best

While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they, after worshiping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Luke 24:51-52

The gospels record that Jesus’ disciples worshiped him, and are suggesting that we should as well. After his resurrection, as in the passage from Luke above, the disciples understood that in his presence they were in the presence of God, and so they worshiped Jesus (Matthew 28:17). The most explicit instance is when Thomas says to Jesus, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

However, even earlier, after Jesus came to his disciples walking on the water, they worshiped him (Matthew 14:33). Their frequent astonishment at the miracles of Jesus moved them to eventually conclude he was more than a prophet, and truly deserving of worship. Since God alone is to be worshiped (Deuteronomy 6:13), the gospel writers are entreating us to realize, like them, that Jesus is God. We should be like the blind man whom Jesus healed who then worships him (John 9:38).

However, the observation has been made that Jesus never asked anyone to worship him. Instead, he was always asking people to follow him. Why is that? Jesus certainly did not reject worship when it was given, but he did not tell people to worship him. To ask for worship, from people who had yet to understand that he is God, would have been to request adoration which could not be given “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). If his disciples or others had worshiped Jesus because he had told them to, when they had not yet believed in him as God, they would have been going through the motions in a meaningless way. Jesus wanted his disciples to come to their own conviction about who he was and what he was doing as he proclaimed the Kingdom of God.

So Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.” John 7:16–17

Jesus claims that his teaching is not his own, not words coming from an untrained, craftsman-turned-rabbi, but that his message is actually from God. He promises that all who are at least willing to do what God is saying through him, even if they are yet unsure that his words are divine, will in the process discover that his teaching is truly from God. Following will lead to believing. Our willing engagement with his message will result in a revelation of its divine author. This is the reason Jesus asks people to follow rather worship him. If they follow him, they will come to know him as the one sent form the Father, the true Son who is one with the Father, and deserving of all worship.

But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. Matthew 15:9

Not only will following Jesus lead us to know him, but I think we can also say that “following Jesus is the truest form of worship”. There is no true worship without following first. In Matthew 15:9 Jesus quotes Isaiah 29:13 to point out that worship is tied directly to whatever teaching one follows. Worship arises out of our following.

To follow Jesus and his teaching is to imitate him, and to imitate him is to worship him more fully than all church services attended, songs sung, and praises given . . . especially if these are done without imitating him. The real sign of worshiping God in Christ, through the Spirit, is not where we are on a Sunday morning, but how we are living each day of the week.

To give a cup of cold water in his name, to forgive the unforgivable, to love the unlovable, to be generous to the ungrateful, to be kind to the rude, and all such ways of living into the life of the Christ, are greater worship than standing with thousands singing ‘Jesus is Lord’. Worship at its easiest may be as a member of that choir, but worship at its best is in the daily effort to follow Jesus in all things, both big and small.