I had the curious experience recently in a Bible study with a friend where I was confronted with John 4:23-24 and told that there is a “true” or proper way to worship God. (John 4:23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.) The curious aspect was that I used to use that scripture to convince others to worship in a way I considered biblical, what I considered proper and true acts/forms of worship.
In that conversation, my mind went to the conversation Jesus had with Pilate.
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
I think Pilate’s question should have been “Who is truth?”
I also think (of course) of John 14:6-7, Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
So I am starting to consider that Jesus may be the “truth” in the passage “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” rather than “truth” being certain times, acts, and terminology.
When you consider Romans 12:1 (offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship), worshiping in truth (Jesus, as Jesus did) makes a lot of sense since Jesus was a living sacrifice even before he was a dying sacrifice).
April 4, 2010 at 7:05 pm
I believe “truth” to be more of a reference to Christ than to knowledge and ideas. Specifically, the “truth will set you free” establishes the idea that freedom from sin, viz. Romans comes from knowing Jesus, the person that IS all truth.
April 4, 2010 at 9:38 pm
I agree Robin. The “worship in spirit and truth” statement is pretty broad. Lots of room for interpretation there. I like your substitution of Jesus for truth in that line. If we are submitting our wills to Jesus moment by moment and doing the things we are seeing Him do and saying the things we are hearing Him say, then I think we are living our lives as worship to the Lord. “Whatever you do in word or deed, do it to the glory of God.”
April 5, 2010 at 6:44 am
Hey Robin,
I think the whole problem with the whole world is wrapped up in one simple thing. We simply see God the wrong way in our minds. Every human being has a false concept of God. I think the whole point of Jesus was to totally turn that false vision of God that every person and every religion has on it’s head. From that moment in the garden we have seen God as scary and condemning. In the garden we believed the lie and stopped trusting the one who loves us completely. I agree Jesus is the truth. To look at Jesus is to look at God. Any idea we have about who God is should be ran straight through the paradigm of Jesus and if it doesn’t fit it should be thrown out and burned.
August 31, 2011 at 2:32 pm
I believe that Jesus is using the two phrases in apposition, that is, “worship in spirit” is another way of saying “worship in truth.” In other words, based on the context, Jesus is saying God is looking for people to worship Him from the inside out, not just on the outside (note the whole controversy about where to worship–Mount Gerezim or Jerusalem) with no change on the inside (like having five husbands and then giving up on marriage and living with a man). The technical term for this figure of speech is hendiadys (saying one thing through two phrases), and is fairly common in the NT (see two occurrences in Titus 2:13–blessed hope=glorious appearing, Christ is both God and Savior).
October 15, 2011 at 11:56 am
Nice blog!
I think you might like mine too.
Been relational housechurching and planting for 30 years now.
My blog is about Jesus, church and life in general.
http://notesfromthebridge.wordpress.com
Christopher “Captain” Kirk