Sayings of Jesus: “Worship In Spirit And Truth”
John’s Gospel is full of enigmatic sayings—mysterious phrases that often lead the reader to quietly wonder, “What does that mean?” This saying of Jesus from John 4:23-24 is one of them. The fuller version reads:
“True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
It’s easy to interpret statements like this as if they have in mind our own church context today. For example, what we mean by the word “worship.” Some churches will advertise “Morning Worship at 10.30 am,” referring to the entire service content. Other churches use “worship” to refer to “sung worship,” or to a “time of worship” (meaning a set of worship songs).
But the New Testament Greek word that’s translated as “worship” (proskyneō) has none of those ideas in its sights. Firstly, it’s not just used biblically in relation to God but also to people. It meant kneeling, prostrating, bowing down, or falling on one’s face, as a mark of deep respect and reverence in greeting someone or approaching someone (rather as Muslims do in prayer). It’s recognising and honouring the person concerned as having superior status and it’s translated in those ways around one-in-three times in the NT. The encounter in the wilderness after Jesus’ baptism had to do with whether Jesus could be tempted into acknowledging Satan as having superior status—Jesus granting him honour and reverence. It wasn’t about whether Jesus would sing songs to him.
When we discuss “worship” nowadays, the conversation tends to focus on cultural features: the styles of songs or hymns we sing, the kinds of instruments we use (guitars? organ? tambourines?), whether it’s hymn-prayer sandwiches or medley, and whether we close our eyes, keep them open, and raise our hands. However, to focus on these cultural elements, necessary though they are to any contemporary expression of worship, is to miss the point. The New Testament offers us no cultural guidance on what worship timelessly looks like.
The supposed distinction we sometimes hear between “praise” and “worship” also misses the point—when praise is thought of as externally-focused, loud, and energetic singing to God, but worship is assumed to be internally-focused, softer, contemplative singing to God. I say “supposed” distinction because they are not two versions of one thing. Praise per se has nothing to do with volume, exuberance, or bpm. Praise is simply expressing how we see God and ourselves in relation to God. It's declaring our gratitude, appreciation, respect, and admiration for who he is and what he does, whether that’s in song or in speech.
Already we can perhaps see that the very idea of someone saying, “I didn’t get anything out of the worship this morning,” is complete nonsense. Worship is not about what we get out of it, it’s about what he gets out of it! Anything that we get is a relational byproduct of its primary goal, which is entirely God-focused.
The second part of proskyneō—kyneō—is the word for “to kiss.” But that isn’t to be read in a sexual intimacy sense, where both partners are contributing and mutually benefitting from the experience (hopefully). Rather, it’s part of that same ancient world custom of prostrating oneself before someone greater, as a mark of respect, kissing the person’s feet, or the ground in front of them, or the hem of their garment.
If worship isn’t about what I get out of it, that also means that the lyrics of “worship” songs should not be “all about me” either. God (not me) should be the subject. Of course there’s a relational balance to be struck when we’re engaging with God in worship, but I suggest that when we’re invited to sing certain songs we give some thought to how much the lyrics are about him and how much they’re about me. It’s not just to do with how frequently we see the words “I” and “me” repeated, but it may offer a clue. An example you might like to consider is Hillsong’s (I Am) Who You Say I Am. Just to be clear, it’s not whether a song is stating untrue things (I am loved, I am chosen, I am forgiven, are all true statements) it’s the fact that we don’t worship those things, we worship the God who does those things. We don’t declare and worship truths about ourselves, we declare and worship truths about him.
This is not about theological nitpicking—although, worship leaders paying a bit more attention to the theology in songs, or implied in songs, wouldn’t go amiss. Perfect “balance” is impossible (no work of art is fully “balanced”—song lyrics, poems, paintings) and there is nothing wrong with creative picture language and metaphors (including new ones—they don’t have to be metaphors found in the Bible). But we should be sensitive to material theological errors or omissions, and misleading statements or overstatements, not least because most Christians get most of their theology from song lyrics rather than sermons or personal Bible reading (hence the responsibility on worship leaders).
When it comes to worshiping “in spirit,” charismatic and Pentecostal Christians are likely to assume it means “the way that we worship”—focused on personally engaging with God experientially through the Holy Spirit. The implied contrast is with worshiping “in the flesh,” by which they probably have in mind something (slightly judgemental) to do with “head versus heart”—not being as visibly engaged emotionally as charismatics and Pentecostals. However, all Christians are likely to believe that the way they worship (whatever it is) fits Jesus’ definition of “true worshipers” (otherwise they would presumably do it differently)!
So what does worshiping “in spirit” mean? I think the best clue comes from Jesus’ pairing of these italicised phrases in v.24: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit …” (Notice in the NASB’s word-for-word translation here it doesn’t say “must worship in the Spirit.” The NIV has added the and capitalised Spirit, a combination that plays to a modern charismatic way of reading it.)
I think Jesus is saying that because God is spirit, so too, in our worship we must relate to him as spirit—to relate to him on his terms. That our spirit should be engaged. What does that mean? The Greek word for spirit, pneuma, has a wide range of meanings, determined by the context in which it’s used. This includes speaking of the nature of God (as here in v.24), at times speaking of the Holy Spirit, and sometimes speaking of the human spirit or soul, the inner “me”—as The Outline of Biblical Usage puts it, “The power by which the human being feels, thinks, decides.” This latter meaning is the sense it’s being used of us, here. Worship as the coming together of God as spirit with us as spirit.
How might we sum up what that means in everyday language? When we worship, we need to give God our complete attention, with our hearts and our minds—our whole self—fully engaged and centered on him. It’s perhaps easiest to illustrate by reference to what would be the opposite: going through the motions in a worship service, with our minds and hearts in neutral (stand up, sit down, sing the words, say “amen” at the appropriate times). Worship is about engaging, not attending. It is a relational encounter with the God who is spirit, on his terms.
Does that sound a bit subjective? Yes, it does. Which is probably where the second element comes in: “those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The word “truth” here means exactly what we would expect it to mean: what’s right, what’s true, what’s authentic, what’s real. In particular, in the context here, truth means what’s true of God and true about God. God is both spirit and truth, and we should worship him in spirit and truth. This is where objectivity comes into our worship, to balance what could otherwise be unrestrained personal subjectivity. We need a true view of God, a true understanding of God, in order to be truly relating to him, with that truth both anchoring and channelling our thoughts and feelings. It’s another reason why the theology in (or implied in) the lyrics of worship songs matters.
I would suggest that the most important truth that we need to grasp as individual Christians is a true view of the nature and character of God. Everything else—including what God wants from us—ultimately flows from that. Where to look, to find that “true” view? The Jesus of the Gospels. John 14:9: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Colossians 1:15: “The Son is the image of the invisible God.”