Forgiveness as an Act of Worship

What is worship but a response in the human heart to the realization of who God is, and what He has done?  It is the sense of awe-struck wonder that we have found ourselves embraced by His love; but more.  It is the sense of fear and reverence that He is holy, that we have offended Him, that we deserve Hell; but it is more than that too.  It is the act of obedience to His righteous commands because we realize we have been bought with the price of Christ's blood; but more.  It is the astonishment and admiration upon recognizing the glories of His creation, the perfection of what He has made; but certainly more than that.  It is all of these things, being informed by His Word and taught by His Spirit, and recognizing in some small part the majesty that is His, and offering to Him in some small part the everything that is us.

And so I present the first of my "Acts of Worship"—Forgiveness.

When we forgive those who have offended us—because of God's forgiveness to us—that is an Act of Worship.  When we set them free of any obligation that is owed us, whether known or unknown, we offer that obligation to God and let Him do what He wills with it, forgetting as much as possible that it was ever owed to us at all.

The basis of this releasing of a perceived debt is of course rooted in God's forgiveness for our sins, which is greater by far (to say the least) than any debt that is owed us.  One thing we have regrettably lost in the 21st-century American church is the awareness of how massive is the debt we owed to God because of our sins.  We have trivialized our trespasses, we have lost sight of the purity and holiness of God. (Here I would refer you to the great book The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul.)

But when we can say (whether inwardly or outwardly), "Because of what Jesus has done for me, I release you from any sense that you owe me something," that is an act that honors the Lord.  I have written at other times about our obligation to forgive based on the teaching of Jesus; I won't burden us anymore today with a recasting of those words.

When we realize who God is, and what He has done by pouring His love out in us, what can we do but forgive?  When we realize that we owed God the price of an eternity in Hell, but He has instead promised us an endless paradise in Heaven, how can we not forgive?  When we see the words of Jesus written in red, as red as blood, how can we cling to our own demands for our own sense of justice?  Answer: We can't.

We offer to our most holy and loving Father the injustices and injuries that have been done to us.  Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.  And give us the grace to forgive continually in a way that will honor You … and bring You pleasure with this Act of Worship.

Intro to Acts of Worship

For years I have been troubled by the contemporary American Christian view of what "praise" is and what "worship" is.  This is grossly oversimplifying the problem, but I trust you will understand: "Praise" is when the music is fast and "worship" is when the music is slow.  The first is hand-clappy; the second is hand-raisey.  "Praise" makes you feel excited and glad to be a Christian, whereas "worship" fills you with gooey emotions as you imagine yourself being in the very presence of God.  I meekly submit the possibility that we are being manipulated by musicians in our quest to find and do true worship.

(Full disclosure: I spent more than a decade of my younger years as a piano player and worship leader for several charismatic/pentecostal congregations, trying like crazy to produce exactly the same effects as those which I have just described.  So my discomfort may very well be tied to my intimacy with the issue.  What honest cigarette-smoker wants to be around someone who has just quit?  The evangelistic fervor of the new non-smoker is a disagreeable pain in the backside for those who have no thought of cessation.  Maybe it's the same with me; I grant the possibility.)

But what happens when you don't like the style of music played at your church?  Someone very dear to me dislikes modern worship choruses and loves the old hymns.  That person has said to me, "I just can't worship with that music."  My children (at least when they were young) loved modern worship music and despised hymns, thinking any hymn-singing crowd to be the hallmark of dead religion.  I find myself falling in the middle; I like some of the new songs, but hate the lazy song-writing most of the new lyrics exhibit.  Some of them seem like random slap-togethers of religious-sounding phrases.  And some of the old hymns bore me, and some of them are a little questionable theologically too.  I find myself feeling a lot more "worshipful" when there's a song being played that I like, and the drummer executes a particularly clever and innovative fill (the drummer at our church is very talented).  I instantly realize that my emotions are being manipulated by the music … but I didn't recognize that when I was younger.

As far as "being in the very presence of God" is concerned, though … whenever were you not in the presence of God?  It is a staple of the Christian faith to believe that God is omnipresent; He is everywhere.  Though He may choose not let you sense His presence, there is no place where He is not.  "In Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28 NKJV).  Where do we live?  In Him.  If our very existence is in Him, where can we be that  He is not?  Our problem is our perception; our problem is that we don't recognize Him.

Romans 12:1 says this: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service" (NKJV).  Normally I dislike using multiple translations in order to cherry-pick the one that best supports the point I'm trying to make, but the fact is that the "reasonable service" mentioned in this verse does bear looking at in other versions.  The ASV presents it as "spiritual service"; the CEB as "appropriate priestly service"; the ESV as "spiritual worship."  The Amplified, which is useful for wringing every possible nuance out of the scriptures, presents Romans 12:1 as this: "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship."

Here we get to the heart of the matter: Our "spiritual worship" of God has little to do with our feelings.  It has much to do with our actions.  There may be emotions that are stirred by the recognition of what God has done for us—indeed, one would be astonished if there were not—but the act of worship is a living, obedient, sacrificial thing that we do, not that we feel.  I stumble a bit at my own characterization that it is a living thing that we do, for in a sense it is also a dying thing that we do.   It involves a death to selfish pleasures in order that someone else may live, in clear-eyed recognition of who God is, and what He has done for us.  It involves a death to our reputations and our fortunes and our comforts in order that someone else may live, in clear-eyed recognition of who God is, and what He has done for us.  And it is in this dying that we find ourselves more completely alive at a different level.

In the coming posts, I will offer three or four examples of what I call Acts of Worship.  Please feel free to debate or offer suggestions or examples of your own.