When we worship the true God, it is fundamentally not about what we get out of it, but rather glorifying Him. Yet as we worship Him, we are gradually being conformed more and more to His image. This benefits us as well as being honouring to Him. Meanwhile, our understanding of what God is like cannot but shape the manner in which we worship Him. When we have a true grasp of who He truly is, the consequence for our worship will be that it truly reflects what He is like. The way we worship God should tell a story about the kind of God He really is. These interconnected themes stand out in the following excerpt from Hugh Binning’s discussion of John 4:23–24 (“…true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth…”).

Our worship should correspond to the God we are worshipping

The right manner of worshipping God is so as our worship carries the stamp of His image on it, such that it is like a mirror in which we may behold God’s nature and properties.

What He Himself is, that is what He wants to be acknowledged to be, and I think it would really be true worship if it had engraved on it the name of the true and living God, and if it proclaimed of itself: God is, and He is a rewarder of them that seek Him diligently.

Most part of our service speaks of an unknown God. Its inscription is, “To the unknown God.” There is so little reverence, or love, or fear, or knowledge in it, that it’s as if we did not worship the true God at all, but an idol. I fear that our worship is sometimes such that no one could conclude from it that it had any relation to the true God!

But this is true worship, when it renders back to God His own image and name. In water from a pure and clean fountain, you may see your reflection distinctly, but a troubled or muddy water, he cannot see himself. So, pure worship is worship which receives and reflects the pure image of God, but impure and unclean worship cannot receive it and retain it.

Christians, please consider this, for the Father seeks a certain kind of worshipper —and why? Because in them He finds Himself (so to speak) — His own image and superscription is on them, His mercy is engraved on their faith and confidence, His majesty and power are stamped on their humility and reverence, His goodness is to be read on the soul’s rejoicing, His greatness and justice in the soul’s trembling.

O, how little true worship there is, even among them whom the Father has sought out to make true worshippers! We stay at the first principles of religion, and do not go on to build on the foundation. Sometimes our worship has a stamp of God’s holiness and justice, in the fear and terror of such a majesty which makes us tremble before Him — but where is the stamp of His mercy and grace which should be written in our faith and rejoicing? Tremble and fear indeed, yet rejoice with trembling, because there is mercy with Him. Sometimes there is rejoicing and quietness in the soul, but it quickly degenerates into carnal confidence, and makes the soul turn grace into wantonness, and think of itself above what is right, because it is not counterpoised with the sense of His holiness and justice.

O, to have these jointly written on the heart in worship — fear, and reverence, and confidence, and humility, and faith! That is a rare thing. It is a divine composition and temper of spirit that makes a divine soul. For the most part, our worship reflects nothing of God, neither His power, nor His mercy and grace, nor His holiness and justice, nor His majesty and glory. A complacent, faint, formal way, void of reverence, of humility, of fervency, and of faith!

I beseech you, let us consider, as before the Lord, how much effort and time we lose, and how we please no one but ourselves, and profit no one at all! Stir up yourselves as in His sight! For it is the fixed and constant meditation of God and His glorious properties that will beget the resemblance there should be between our worship, and the God whom we worship, and imprint His image on it. Then it would please Him, and profit you, and edify others.

Our worship should be spiritual

Our worship must have the stamp of God’s spiritual nature, and be conformed to it in some measure, else it cannot please him. There must be a conformity between God and souls. This is the great purpose of the gospel, to repair the image of God which was originally on man, and make him like God again.

Now, this is the way that Jesus Christ repairs this image, and brings about this conformity with God. As the soul worships God in a way that is suitable to His nature, it is the more and more like God, and happy in that likeness. “God is a Spirit, therefore,” says Christ, “you must worship him in spirit and truth.” The worship of saints must be of a spiritual nature, so that it may be like the immortal divine Spirit. It is such worshippers the Father seeks. He seeks souls to make them like Himself, and this likeness and conformity to God is the very foundation of the soul’s happiness, and eternal refreshment.

This is a point of great consequence, and I fear, not much laid to heart. The worship must be like the Worshipped. It is a spirit that must worship the Eternal Spirit. It is not a body that can be the principal and chief agent in the business.: What communion can God have with your bodies, while your souls are removed far from Him, any more than He can with beasts? All society and fellowship must be between those that are like one another. A human being can have no comfortable company with animals, or with stones, and trees: it is people that can converse with people; and a spirit must worship the self-existent Spirit.

Our worship should involve our whole person

Do not, however, make a mistake on this point, as if in New Testament times we are not called to an external and bodily worship, and services to which our outward body is instrumental. This is one of the deep delusions of this age, into which some have fallen, that there are no external ordinances, but that Christians are called to worship all spirit. This is one of the “spiritual” teachings (as they would call themselves) which you must not receive, for it is neither the Spirit of God, nor of Christ, that teaches this — nor, indeed, the Spirit of God the Creator, because He created the whole man, body and soul, and so must be worshipped by the whole man. He created man with the capacity to offer up external actions in a reasonable manner with the inward affections.

Thus, as the Lord created us, so we should serve Him, every member, every part in its own capacity — the soul to precede, and the body to follow; the soul to be the chief worshipper, and the body its servant employed in the worship. True worship has a body and a soul as well as a true human being. As the soul separated is not a complete person, so neither is the soul separated a complete worshipper without the body. The external ordinances of God is the body, the inward soul affection is the spirit, which, joined together, makes complete worship.

Our Lord Jesus taught us to offer up our bodies and spirits both, in a reasonable service (Rom. 12:1–2). The sacrifice of the bodily performance, offered up by the spiritual affection and renewed mind is “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable and reasonable:” The spirit which dwelt in Christ above measure, did not think it was too base to express itself in the way of external ordinances! He was indeed above all, above the law, yet He willingly came under them — to teach us, who have so much need to come under them. He prayed much, He preached, He sang and read, to teach us how to worship, and how much need we have of prayer and preaching.

The spirit which Christ promised to His disciples and apostles breathes most lively in the use of the external ordinances all their days. “The hour is come, and now is,” said Christ, “in which the true worship of God shall not be in the external ceremonies of the Old Testament church, or in rites void of all life and inward sense of piety.” The true worship of God shall be made up of a soul and body, of spirit and truth — of the external appointed ordinances according to the Word of truth and the Spirit of truth, and of the spirit and inward soul-affection and sincerity which shall quicken and actuate that external performance. Worshippers who had no use of ordinances were never envisaged. Christ was not that kind of worshipper, His disciples were not that kind of worshippers, and therefore the idea that we can do without ordinances is a “new gospel,” which we ought not to receive.

As it is certain then, that both soul and body must be employed in this business, so it is sure that the soul and spirit must be the first mover, and chiefest agent in it. That is because it is a spiritual business, and relates to the Fountain Spirit, who has the most perfect opposition to all false appearances and merely external shows. The part of man that comes nearest to God must draw near in worshipping God, and if that is removed far away, there is no real communion with God. Man judges according to the outward appearance, and can reach no further than the outward man, but God is an all-searching Spirit, who tries the heart and reins, and therefore He will pass a different judgement on your worship then other people can do, because He observes all the secret wanderings and escapes of the heart out of His sight. He misses the soul when you present attentive ears, or eloquent tongues. There is no dallying with His majesty. Painting will not deceive him: His very nature is contrary to hypocrisy and dissimulation.

O consider, my beloved, what a one you have to do with! It is not other people, but the Father of spirits, who will not be pleased with what pleases others of your own flesh, but who must have a spirit to serve Him!

Alas! what are we doing with such empty names and shows in religion? Busied in the outside of worship only, as if we had no one to do with but others who have eyes of flesh, all that we do in this way is lost labour, and will never be reckoned as true worship!

Many make religion merely a matter of outward fashion and external custom. Even your very thoughts and minds are removed from this business. You have nothing present but an ear, or an eye, and your minds are about other business. Your desires, your fears, your joys, your delights, your affections never did run in the channel of religious exercises, but all your enthusiasm is for other things. You have no sense of God, His mercy, or justice, or wrath, or of your own misery and need. You sorrow in other things, but have no sorrow here — none for sin. You rejoice for other things, but you cannot rejoice at the gospel. Oh, be not deceived! God is not mocked.

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