Knee Bends
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:24 NASB
Worship – Have we ever made mileage with this verse! I can’t count the numbers of times it has been employed in apologetics, sermons, and intense discussions of doctrine. Most of our focus seems to be on the first part of the verse, the “God is spirit” (usually with a capital) part. Then, of course, there’s the immediate connection to worshipping in “spirit and truth,” as if once we grasp the concept of “God is spirit,” we will immediately understand what it means to worship Him in spirit and we will lay aside all our idolatrous pretensions and fall in line with the correct doctrines. But I wonder if we haven’t overlooked the obvious. Yeshua isn’t arguing the point that God is spirit. Everyone knew that. This isn’t a verse about idolatry. It’s a verse about worship. The point of the statement is not about what or who God is. The point of the verse is about how we worship. Just so we’re crystal clear about this, most of our forms of worship are not in spirit and truth. They are, in fact, just the opposite, despite their religious appearance. Why do I say this? Because of the following:
“To strengthen our alertness, to refine our appreciation of the mystery is the meaning of worship and observance. For faith does not remain stationary. We must continue to pray, continue to obey to be able to believe and to remain attached to His presence.”[1]
“Religious thinking is in perpetual danger of giving primacy to concepts and dogmas and to forfeit the immediacy of insights, to forget that the known is but a reminder of God, that the dogma is a token of His will, the expression the inexpressible at its minimum. Concepts, words must not become screens; they must be regarded as windows.”[2]
“The essence of Jewish religious thinking does not lie in entertaining a concept of God but in the ability to articulate a memory of moments of illumination by His presence. Israel is not a people of definers but a people of witnesses:”[3]
To worship (in spirit and truth) is not to contemplate ideas about God, doctrines, dogmas, ritual or practices. To worship is to open ourselves to the mystery of His presence, to be willing not to know, to pursue the question without an answer, to recognize that the moments of revelation in the past are windows for our souls in the present. Worship is not songs and sermons and orchestrated silence. Worship is amazement, awe, admiration and attachment. Worship is the experience of something beyond us, something greater than we can describe, greater than we can understand. Speaking about God comes after worshipping Him. Afterward we bend the knee.
Topical Index: worship, awe, spirit, John 4:24
[1] Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 69.
