Worshipping in Truth
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:21-24
Have you ever experienced this: you’re sharing the gospel or just telling someone about something good God has done for you, and the person comes out with ”I’m a Catholic” or “I’m a Lutheran”? They think that’s a perfectly valid response to anything you’re saying.
The Samaritans had built a temple on Mt. Gerazim to rival Israel‘s temple in Jerusalem. The Mt. Gerazim temple had been destroyed but Samaritans still worshipped on that mountain.
The issue is not where we worship (Catholic/Lutheran …); the issue is who we worship and how we worship.
How are we to worship? We’re to worship in spirit and in truth. What does that mean? The part of us that can relate to God is called ‘spirit.’ Before anyone comes to Christ their spirit is dead toward God, but when we put our faith in Christ, our spirit comes alive to Him. To worship in spirit is to worship out of that part of us which relates to God. The leader in a meeting can say “We will now worship God by singing Hymn 324” but until our spirit begins to worship, we are not worshipping.
What does it mean to worship in truth? To worship ‘in truth’ is to worship according to God’s pattern for worship. Because it’s God we’re worshipping, it’s expected that He will have told us how He wants to be worshipped.
In the Old Testament tabernacle and later in the temple, God prescribed quite closely how He wanted to be worshipped. In the New Testament the pattern is not set out as clearly as in the Old, but we can find in the book of Acts and the New Testament letters, how the early church understood this pattern.
The most common New Testament word for worship (and the word used here) is two words put together; the first means ‘towards’ and the second ‘to kiss.’ Does our worship fit a “kissing-towards” paradigm? It should. The further it moves away from “kissing-towards” the less it resembles the worship Jesus says in our passage the Father is wanting.
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