Worshipping God Specifically

Working at Carpet One has afforded me the opportunity to listen to the radio. For many of us, the radio has become a thing of the past. Why listen to the radio when I can listen to a CD, or even better my iPod? I can even hit random and have my portable music device function as a radio, playing only songs that I approve of in some kind of arbitrary order. I have been driving the work truck to and from my job which does not have my CDs or my iPod in it. I am forced to listen to whatever I can find on the airwaves. The station I most frequently listen to is a well-known Christian radio station. This has given me the opportunity to hear what is popular in mainstream Christian music. What I have been hearing lately, however, I find unnerving.

The kind of worship songs that tend to be most popular are what I dub the “worship a generic God” songs. The focus on singing about God in a very generic sort of way. He’s a God who accepts me for me. He’s a God who frees us (though never specifically told freed from what or how we are freed.) He’s a God who loves and dances and sings over us. He’s a God who blesses, encourages, helps, supports, chases, and invites me. All of this is true and correct. However, I always come away from these songs feeling like there is something more than these generic pick-me-up God songs.

And in fact there is. You see, Christian worship is necessarily centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ. We don’t worship God generically. We worship God specifically, revealed to us in the crucified and risen Jesus. For instance, the topics I listed above are indeed true, but only because of Jesus. For example, why does God accept me? Because Jesus died in my place, and has imputed or transfered to me his righteousness. How has God freed us and from what have we been freed? Jesus died on the cross so that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. I am free from the power of sin and death. How has God loved me? By sending his son to die for me. Why does God sing and dance over me? Because I am intimately connected to him through his son by the blood shed on the tree. Why does God chase me, and what does he invite me to do? To know and love the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is uncool and offensive even in many “Christian” circles.

For the Christian, think to the songs that move you most. Aren't the songs we sing about Jesus, his death, and his resurrection for you the most moving, inspiring and glorious? These generic God worship songs fall flat compared to songs like “Sweetly Broken,” “In Christ Alone,” and “Overwhelmed.” A worship service where the Spirit is moving will be a worship service that is centered on the person and work of Jesus. Remember what the Apostle John wrote in 1 John 4.2-3a, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” God honoring worship, that is, worshipping God in Spirit and truth, is focused on Jesus.

Philippians 2.5-11 gives us the reason that we worship Jesus, the name above all names: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Because Jesus, though he was God, became a man and obediently humbled himself to the point of death on a cross, God has “highly exalted him” and has given him “the name above every name.” Jesus is the center of exaltation and worship, because of his death on the cross. And also notice that it is not at the name of God generically that every knee bows and every tongue confesses, but at the name of Jesus, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

One last thing I would like to mention in relation to these texts. Jesus centered worship never leaves the rest of the trinity out of the loop. Notice, confession that Jesus is Lord is to the Glory of God the Father. When we worship Jesus, the Father gets the glory. After all, he is the one who sent his son. He is the mastermind of history. Also, the worship of Jesus is empowered by the Spirit. It is the Spirit who enables the confession that Jesus, who came in the flesh, is Lord. Worship of Jesus is by definition then, Trinitarian worship.

So stop worshipping God generically, and fix your eyes upon Jesus.