Gospel-Centered Congregational Worship (Part One)
April 23rd, 2008*I often wonder what Christians are actually thinking about worship as they worship corporately through the singing of hymn texts, the giving of offerings, the responsive reading of Scripture, etc. If we could quietly pull aside a few people who are participating in these corporate expressions of worship to ask them what they think worship is, I wonder what they might say. I wonder if their answers would be more man-centered than God-centered. In A Passion for Christ: The Vision that Ignites Ministry, James B. Torrance thinks that more answers would come out on the man-centered side than would on the God-centered side. Torrance believes that there is one particular view of worship that seems to dominate the evangelical landscape, namely, that worship is primarly something which we do in response to who God is and what He’s done. Although this view appears God-centered at first look, when it’s really examined its true man-centered colors begin to show. He describes the thinking behind this way of understanding worship like this:
We go to Church, we sing our psalms to God, we intercede…, we listen to the sermon (too often simply an exhortation), we offer our money, time and talents to God. No doubt we need God’s grace to help us do it; we do it because Jesus taught us to do it and left us an example to show us how to do it. But worship is what WE do (36).
How many within evangelical churches would describe corporate worship in this way? Worship, after all, is a response to God, our response to God, is it not? In worship we offer to God that which He rightly deserves, correct? Torrance argues that this way of thinking “falls short of the New Testament understanding of participation through the Spirit in what Christ has done and in what Christ is doing for us in our humanity. It is human-centered.” (38).
He adds:
Its weakness is that it falls short of an adequate understanding of the role of the vicarious humanity of Christ (emphasis mine) and of the Spirit in our worship of the Father - of why Christ became man for us and our salvation (38).
(If you want to hear an entire sermon that considers the significance of the vicarious humanity of Christ for Christian living / worship, check out my audio sermon here.) Torrance is essentially arguing that the dominant view of worship fails to give the doctrine of Christ’s vicarious humanity its rightful place. It is a view that has lost sight , in many (most?) cases, not of Christ’s vicarious death but of His vicarious humanity, that is, of his vicarious life. Sure, our church may sing songs about Christ, corportately read biblical texts that explicitly reference Christ, and listen to sermons that speak of Christ, but if our understanding of corporate worship centers on what we do in response to what God has done, it may not be as gospel-centered as we think it is. Torrance writes:
Although [this view] stresses how God comes to meet us in Christ, the movement from us to God is still our movement, our faith, our response (emphasis mine)! This theology short-circuits the vicarious humanity of Christ and belittles union with Christ. While it seems to emphasize the vicarious work of Christ on the cross to bring forgiveness and make our faith a real human possibility, it fails to see the place of the High Priesthood of Christ as the One who leads our worship, bears our sorrows on his heart and intercedes for us, presenting us to the Father in himself as God’s dear children and uniting us with himself in his life in the Spirit.
To reduce worship to this two-dimensional thing (God and ourselves today) is to imply that God throws us back on ourselves to make our response, and to ignore the fact that God has already provided for us that Response which alone is acceptable to him - the Offering made for humankind in the life, obedience and passion of Jesus Christ. But is this not to lose the comfort and peace of the Gospel, as well as the secret of true Christian prayer as the gift of sharing in the intercessions of Christ, that we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit makes intercession for us? Whatever else our faith is, it is a response to a Response already made for us and continually being made for us in Christ (41).
Torrance is arguing that true Christian worship is worship that is swallowed up into what Christ has done in his vicarious life and death and what he continues to do as our Heavenly Intercessor. We may well be aware of Christ’s vicarious death as we gather to worship but we must not lose sight of his vicarious life and continued priestly ministry. Gospel-centered worship actively recognizes that God has not only provided us with His gracious movement toward us in Christ but also with our responding movement toward Him in Christ as well. God has not only provided that which we must respond to, namely, the gospel, but also our Response, Jesus. The Gospel teaches us that Christ is our acceptable response to the Father given to us by the Father. Christian worship is never simply something we do. It is both something that already has been done in the life and death of Jesus and something that Jesus is doing for us in his High Priestly ministry. As we worship we must be careful to understand Christian worship as participation in what Christ has done in His vicarious life and death and presently is doing as our heavenly High Priest. It is never simply a response to who God is and what He has done.
*This is an edited version of an article that was originally posted in August 2006.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:55 am
I’m studying the parable of the Sower for my Women’s Bible Study. Would you say the Jesus is the Sower as well as the seed? Based on your post I’m wondering if union with Christ means he is the seed (as well as the sower) that is planted when we enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus becomes the focus for growth, maturity and harvest. We don’t grow ourselves through doing - but through participating in what Christ has done in His vicarious life and death.
The soil is our responsibility - to not be hard-hearted, but receptive and grateful for what Christ has done and is doing. We grow unto harvest for His kingdom as a result of sanctification because of union with Christ.
I’ve always thought of the seed as - the Word - it’s what I do with the word (little “w”) - that’s been my focus.
Am I off base? I’m really trying to understand the meaning of Union with Christ and your posts on this, they’ve been very helpful. Thank you.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
This is good stuff Dan. I think I’m going to have to come back and read it a few more times.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am
[...] Gospel-Centered Congregational Worship (Part One) [...]
April 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
[...] Gospel-Centered Congregational Worship (Part One) [...]
April 30th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Hi, Dan! Your post is good because it forces us out of our comfort zones of believing in what we typically see or do, which is no more than human tradition. We need to see the continued involvement of God in our salvation. In fact, if anything good comes from us at all, it is Him who deserves the praise for it, not us! We can so easily get caught up in fulfilling our Christian duties that we overlook the very fact that it is only by God’s grace that we are able to accomplish those duties and that if anything good is accomplished it is the result of a jealous God bringing Himself glory! I write with a lot of exclamation points!
However, I am not so convinced of the vicarious humanity of Christ. Don’t get me wrong, I totally agree that Christ lived a perfect life and needed to. I’m just not convinced that it is applied to us as believers. As I look at Scripture, I can’t find any clear teaching on this. I do see Romans 4 and 5 pointing towards the facts that just the forgiveness of sins is necessary for righteousness, and that the one act of Christ is like the one act of Adam (emphasis on one). So, far be it from me that I would want to lessen the gospel in any way. I just want to reflect what Scripture says about this area. And I see the glory of our salvation being inseparably bound in the death of Jesus. So, I want to point to the cross with all my might and show the inexhaustible riches of God through the death of Christ.
Love the blog, keep ‘em coming!
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
Hello there,
I believe Christ’s perfectly faithful life was an absolute necessity to our salvation.
The sacrifice needed to be pure. For God is purity and will accept nothing less.
He did what we could never do. Live the law, completely with pure motives and a selfles heart, only trusting in the Father and acting or the neighbor out of love.
So Christ is central. The cross and resurrection is central. Our response to this act of God for our saked in not important on account of God, but it is important on account of our neighbor.
Thanks!
- Steve Martin San Clemente, CA
May 4th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Hey Steve,
Depending on what your first sentence means I may or may not be saved. (at least in your perception) I do also believe that Jesus needed to be perfect in order to be our Savior. However, the point I am making is that I disagree with what reformed theology typically teaches on this. It typically teaches that Jesus’ perfect obedience to the Mosaic law is imputed to us as Christ’s righteousness at salvation. I’m not saying we don’t get Christ’s righteousness. We desperately need it! What I am saying is that I ONLY see Scripture stating that the cross/death of Jesus was gifted into our sinful accounts. (see Scripture references above) Dan, did, however send me a kind e-mail in which he asked me to listen to his sermon on the topic and consider it with fresh eyes, which I will be trying to do. Hope this clarifies.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Hello JJ,
I think you are right that the cross was enough.
But in order for the cross to be the perfect sacrifice the Lamb had to be without blemish.
Christ had to be fully man and endure all the same temptations that we have…only He didn’t cave in. He stayed faithful in every way.
At least that is what I have been taught. I’m open to other interpretations.
Thanks J.J.!
- Steve Martin
May 12th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
[...] Gospel-Centered Congregational Worship (Part One) [...]
May 13th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Hey Dan! Got a glimpse of you at T4G 08 but didn’t get to talk to you.
I enjoyed musing over some of these thoughts on the centrality and necessity of the Person and Work of Christ in corporate worship.
I’ll probably have to go back and read over and ponder what you have posted here, but is what you’re saying essentially have to do with the truth that worship is not merely a ‘giving’ but a ‘receiving’? So gospel-centered worship implies a receiving of the fulness of Christ’s work as our Redeemer in the past and qualitatively as our Intercessor in the present? Also, if all this is true, what might gospel-centered worship look like in heaven, as Christ our Sovereign King?
Peace be with you,
Gabe Zepeda