What is Worship? (Part 1)

In order to properly discuss what is an act of worship we must define it. There are several words for worship in the New Testament but the most prominent is proskuneo. This literally means “to kiss towards” and has the idea of someone in a kneeled position directing praise toward God. Based on this definition we have to assume that worship is an action with a direct purpose of praising God.

Everything we do in life cannot be worship for several reasons. In Genesis 22:5 Abraham tells his men to wait while he and Isaac go to worship. If all of life is worship he would not have made the distinction. Also, if all of life is worship then why would there be a New Testament mandate to assemble and perform certain actions on the first day of the week? One must take ridiculous positions to consistently keep this doctrine. One must declare that going to the bathroom was worshipping God, or sleeping, or eating chocolate pie (this would make a good argument for the husband to convince his wife he needs more pie but nonetheless unsound doctrinally). Many people go to Romans 12:1-2 to say that all of life is worship. Some versions have the word “service” and others have “worship.” The word here is latreia which can be translated worship. But this word is not talking about worship as described above. Instead it has the idea of being a minister or servant of God in everything we do (Colossians 3:17). There is a major difference. Service can be any good work to help the church or fellow man and this is service to God (Matthew 10:40). Worship is praise that God authorizes.

It is important to determine whether this idea is true because it will determine how we conduct our Sunday worship service. Each action we perform is because we have authority from the scriptures to do so. We would not know which actions Christ wanted us to do on Sunday if all of life was worship. Without a distinct separation of worship and service we could worship however we choose on Sundays, and some have taken this approach. It is an act of service to provide food. We have a Bible example of Jesus feeding the 5000 and later the 4000. It is holy and right to follow the example of Jesus by serving others. But this does not mean that we could serve any type of food for the Lord’s Supper and call it worship. Obviously this is not right. We must be able to discern between a life of service and worship. If not, we could have a worship service where we put tables up and play cards and call it worship. We could put up a big screen TV and watch an episode of The Andy Griffith Show (I’ve witnessed this personally) and call it worship.

The problem with believing that all of life is worship is not the idea itself, because many believe it and still worship in the proper way on Sunday. The danger is where it leads. If we are unsure about New Testament worship then unauthorized, unacceptable practices will be allowed in congregational worship to God.