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Why is the third Person in the Trinity named “the Holy Spirit”?
Why is the third Person of the Trinity named “the Holy Spirit”?
After all, “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24), so the Father and the Son both possess the attribute of spirituality, of being a “Spirit,” equally with the third Person. So what is the distinction?
Also, the Father is the “holy Father” (John 17:11), and the Son is the “Holy One” (Acts 3:14). The Holy Spirit is not in a higher degree morally pure or righteous than the Father or the Son–Father, Son, and Spirit are all infinitely righteous, possessing equal, immeasurable, infinite holiness.
So why “the Holy Spirit”?
What do you think?
It would seem like we would want to know why God has the names that He possesses, and being able to explain why the Persons of the Godhead possess the names that they do would be extremely important for our fellowship with Him, for our knowing God, which is experiencing eternal life (John 17:3). So why “the Holy Spirit”?
Lord willing, I’ll tell you what I think next Friday in my post then. But you can share your thoughts now in the comment section.
Here’s a clue–why is the “Father” the “Father” and the “Son” the “Son”?
By the way, for a simple overview of the Biblical teaching on the Trinity, see Bible study #2 here; for something with more depth, see the college class here.
–TDR
Are Christian Ministers “Reverend”?
Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox religious organizations call their priests “reverend,” or “reverend Fathers.” So do the large majority of Protestants, and a surprising number of Baptists, even fundamental, independent Baptists. Are Catholic priests “reverend”? How about Christian ministers–are they the “Reverend John Doe” and the like?
There is only one verse in the King James Bible where the word “reverend” appears:
Psa. 111:9 He sent redemption unto his people: he hath commanded his covenant for ever: holy and reverend is his name.
In this passage Jehovah’s name is “holy and reverend,” because He is the Almighty Redeemer, who in faithfulness to His holy covenant promises, redeems His people by His power, chooses and sets them apart to Himself, and makes them like Himself, until He brings them to eternally be with Him in His holy presence. Truly, Jehovah’s name is holy and reverend!
But “Rev. Mr. Jones” does not do any of that. Mr. Jones does not have an infinitely holy name or character; Mr. Jones does not redeem God’s people by an almighty arm and by the blood of Jesus Christ. Simply looking at the English word, one would conclude that a minister calling himself “Rev.” is a form of blasphemy, taking the honor due to Jehovah’s name alone.
What about the Hebrew translated “reverend” in Psalm 111:9? The form is the Niphal (generally passive) participle of the verb “to fear,” nôrāʾ, hence, “to be feared.” Jehovah’s name is “to be feared” and it is holy.
The Niphal participle appears in 34 verses in the Old Testament. Significant examples include:
Ex. 15:11 Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
Deut. 7:21 Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for the LORD thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible.
Deut. 28:58 If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD;
Mal. 1:14 But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.
Psa. 47:2 For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth.
Psa. 66:3 Say unto God, How terrible art thou in thy works! through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee.
Psa. 66:5 Come and see the works of God: he is terrible in his doing toward the children of men.
Psa. 68:35 O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places: the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Blessed be God.
Psa. 76:7 Thou, even thou, art to be feared: and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry?
Psa. 76:12 He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth.
Psa. 89:7 God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him.
Psa. 96:4 For the LORD is great, and greatly to be praised: he is to be feared above all gods.
Psa. 99:3 Let them praise thy great and terrible name; for it is holy.
Job 37:22 Fair weather cometh out of the north: with God is terrible majesty.
Dan. 9:4 And I prayed unto the LORD my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments;
Neh. 1:5 And said, I beseech thee, O LORD God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments:
Neh. 4:14 And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.
Neh. 9:32 Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the terrible God, who keepest covenant and mercy, let not all the trouble seem little before thee, that hath come upon us, on our kings, on our princes, and on our priests, and on our prophets, and on our fathers, and on all thy people, since the time of the kings of Assyria unto this day.
1Chr. 16:25 For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods.
The strong majority of uses refers to Jehovah as the One who is to be feared / reverenced. An examination of the complete list of texts (Gen. 28:17; Ex. 15:11; 34:10; Deut. 1:19; 7:21; 8:15; 10:17; 28:58; Judg. 13:6; Is. 18:2, 7; Ezek. 1:22; Joel 2:11; 3:4; Hab. 1:7; Zeph. 2:11; Mal. 1:14; 3:23; Psa. 47:3; 66:3, 5; 68:36; 76:8, 13; 89:8; 96:4; 99:3; 111:9; Job 37:22; Dan. 9:4; Neh. 1:5; 4:8; 9:32; 1 Chr. 16:25; note that the Hebrew versification is sometime slightly different than the English) reveals not a solitary text where a godly person, or a priest, or a minister, or anyone of the sort is called “reverend.”
Jehovah is reverend. If you are a Christian minister, you are not reverend.
What about a Catholic priest? There are a small number of texts where “to be feared” or “terrible” has the sense of desolate judgment. Thus, in Habakkuk 1:7 the evil, pagan Babylonians, who come to lay waste, kill, and destroy the Lord’s people, are called “terrible” (Hab 1:7). Likewise, a desolate, life-destroying desert is called a “terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water” (Deut 8:15). So Catholic priests, as representatives of their pagan and Satanic false religion, in the sense that they are pagan, evil, destroyers of God’s people, are “reverend” in the sense that they are actually terrible, are life-destroying like a desolate desert full of serpents and scorpions, and are soul-murderers the way that the pagan Babylonians were “terrible.” After all, the pagan Baylonians are their ancestors as they are part of that great harlot sitting on many waters, the future one-world religion centered in Rome, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth (Revelation 17).
So let Catholic priests call themselves “reverend” or “terrible” if they wish–it is true, albeit not in the way that they intend, but in the same sort of way as when the Pope calls himself “vicar of Christ” he employs a title equivalent in Greek to “anti-Christ” (Latin vicarius = Greek anti).
So if you are a Baptist or a Protestant who claims to fear the true God, don’t call yourself reverend. In the good sense, it is true for the one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, alone–He alone is holy and reverend. In the bad sense, of something genuinely terrible and destructive, it is true of pagan murderers of God’s people, and so, in that sense, an appropriate title for a Roman Catholic priest or of other servants of religions that are drunk “with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:6). You are unworthy of “reverend” in the good sense, and I rather think you don’t want to be called “reverend” or “terrible” in the bad sense.
So Jehovah is “reverend”–Hallelujah–and Catholic priests are “terrible/reverend”–to their everlasting shame. If you preach the true gospel and are a servant of Christ, you are emphatically not “reverend.” So stop calling yourself or others “Rev.” The title is either blasphemy, if intended as a compliment, or a statement that they are pagan enemies of God, in the bad sense.
Spurgeon well commented on Psalm 111:9:
“He sent redemption unto his people.” When they were in Egypt he sent not only a deliverer, but an actual deliverance; not only a redeemer, but complete redemption. He has done the like spiritually for all his people, having first by blood purchased them out of the hand of the enemy, and then by power rescued them from the bondage of their sins. Redemption we can sing of as an accomplished act: it has been wrought for us, sent to us, and enjoyed by us, and we are in very deed the Lord’s redeemed. “He hath commanded his covenant for ever.” His divine decree has made the covenant of his grace a settled and eternal institution: redemption by blood proves that the covenant cannot be altered, for it ratifies and establishes it beyond all recall. This, too, is reason for the loudest praise. Redemption is a fit theme for the heartiest music, and when it is seen to be connected with gracious engagements from which the Lord’s truth cannot swerve, it becomes a subject fitted to arouse the soul to an ecstacy of gratitude. Redemption and the covenant are enough to make the tongue of the dumb sing. “Holy and reverend is his name.” Well may he say this. The whole name or character of God is worthy of profoundest awe, for it is perfect and complete, whole or holy. It ought not to be spoken without solemn thought, and never heard without profound homage. His name is to be trembled at, it is something terrible; even those who know him best rejoice with trembling before him. How good men can endure to be called “reverend” we know not. Being unable to discover any reason why our fellow-men should reverence us, we half suspect that in other men there is not very much which can entitle them to be called reverend, very reverend, right reverend, and so on … we would urge that the foolish custom should be allowed to fall into disuse.
C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David: Psalms 111-119, vol. 5 (London; Edinburgh; New York: Marshall Brothers, n.d.), 4.
–TDR
Profane
Reading through the Bible for my second time this year, I arrived at Leviticus again and the word “profane” stood out to me. It is found 26 times in the Old Testament of the King James Version and seven in the New. Fifteen of those total times are in Leviticus.
In eighteenth century English dictionaries, to profane something is to violate something sacred. The Universal English Dictionary in 1706 defines “profane”:
Ungodly, unholy, irreligious, wicked; unhallowed, common, ordinary: It is often opposed to sacred.
The Hebrew word, translated “profane,” also many times means and is translated “to bore or to pierce.” Something is added that is not natural to a thing when it is pierced. It is violated. I like to use the analogy of a dirty dish placed with the clean dishes.
Here are the fifteen usages of the English word “profane” in Leviticus, all found in five of the chapters.
Leviticus 18:21, And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:12, And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 20:3, And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
Leviticus 21:4, But he shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people, to profane himself.
6, They shall be holy unto their God, and not profane the name of their God: for the offerings of the LORD made by fire, and the bread of their God, they do offer: therefore they shall be holy.
7, They shall not take a wife that is a whore, or profane; neither shall they take a woman put away from her husband: for he is holy unto his God.
9, And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.
12, Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God; for the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him: I am the LORD.
14, A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.
15, Neither shall he profane his seed among his people: for I the LORD do sanctify him.
23 Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I the LORD do sanctify them.
Leviticus 22:2, Speak unto Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, and that they profane not my holy name in those things which they hallow unto me: I am the LORD.
9, They shall therefore keep mine ordinance, lest they bear sin for it, and die therefore, if they profane it: I the LORD do sanctify them.
15, And they shall not profane the holy things of the children of Israel, which they offer unto the LORD.
32, Neither shall ye profane my holy name; but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the LORD which hallow you.
Profane, you can see, is an adjective, noun, or verb. As a verb, the Hebrew word (chalal) means, “to be commonly used.” The Hebrew word is also translated in the King James Version, “pollute” (Numbers 18:32). An understanding of “profane” must be taken in contrast to sacred, hallowed, or holy.
Something sacred is kept separate, not mixed with the common. By mixing it with the common, it is profaned or becomes profane, which is the opposite of holy. By adding something common to something sacred, the sacred is profaned. It is no longer hallowed or kept separate. The common is something not sacred, so it is of a different nature than the sacred or the holy. For something to remain holy, it must be kept distinct, and a difference must be kept between the holy and the profane in order to keep sanctified that what is holy. This is especially in important in worship and Leviticus is a guidebook for worship.
To keep something hallowed that is sacred, one must understand it’s nature. What makes it holy? What is this act, thing, or person in its essence? Then only something of that essence or of the same kind can be associated with it, brought into contact with it, or linked with it or correlated to it. It’s worth reading all the usages above from Leviticus.
The first usage in Leviticus of “profane” reads, “neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God.” It does not explain what that is. It assumes the reader knows what that is.
“The name of God” is who God is. It’s what characterizes Him in His Person and Work. To profane His name is to associate or correlate with Him something that is contrary to His nature. It disrespects Him. It dishonors Him. It mischaracterizes Him, and this is very serious to do to God, so God adds, “I am the LORD.” John Gill writes about this: “I [am] the Lord; who would avenge such a profanation of his name.” God isn’t going to allow someone to keep profaning His name.
I’m going to select a few of the above examples to give the sense or understanding of “profane.” Leviticus 21:12 says, “Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary, nor profane the sanctuary of his God.” To profane the sanctuary is to make it common. It’s a sacred place and it is treated as a common place, not unique to God. This is not just profaning God, but profaning God’s sanctuary, something closely associated with God.
Leviticus 22:1-2 say,
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Speak unto Aaron and to his sons, that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, and that they profane not my holy name in those things which they hallow unto me: I am the LORD.
Those who had become common and, therefore, not holy, were not qualified to offer holy sacrifices. God would be profaned by the unholy offering the holy. The person himself could profane God and the worship of God and the thing offered could be profaned so as to profane God and the worship of Him. Common things, which are unholy, are to be kept out of worship. They may not even be evil — they’re just common. Something is made common when it is not treated in a unique or sacred manner, but is treated like everything else.
How people understand God in their imagination comes in a major way through association. Not only does God take offense at it, because it disrespects Him, but it also gives people as much as anything a wrong view of God. Someone will have a lesser view of God, a diminished understanding of Him, and that will affect a person’s life. He may not believe in the true God or live in accordance with the true God.
As much as anything today as an application of profane is the mixture in worship in the contemporary churches what is common with what it holy. Professing churches give God profane worship and they profane God. They give Him something worldly, lustful, and distorted so as to blaspheme God. The people then become like their worship. They themselves are profane and this just results in even further profanity of God and of their lives. The world doesn’t know God because of the correlation of the common or the profane with God in professing churches. The people of these professing churches are made common and profane as they blaspheme God with their profanity.
The Gnostic History of Images of Jesus Christ
Images of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, should not be made for the reasons explained in the appropriate articles in the studies on ecclesiology here. But did you know that the Gnostics were the first ones to makes images of the Savior? Note the following:
The Gnostics, in their enmity to God the Father, had proscribed his image, but being favourable to the Son, they painted and sculptured the figure of the Saviour, of all dimensions, and under various forms. It … appears … that we are indebted to Gnostics for the earliest portraits of Jesus. “It was for the use of Gnostics, and by the hand of those sectaries, who attempted at various times, and by a thousand different schemes, to effect a monstrous combination of the doctrines of Christianity with Pagan superstitions, that little images of Christ were first fabricated; the original model of these figures they traced back to Pontius Pilate himself, by a hypothetical train of reasoning, which could scarcely deceive even the most ignorant of their initiated disciples. These little statues were made of gold, or silver, or some other substance, and after the pattern of those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and other sages of antiquity, which those sectarians were accustomed to exhibit, crowned with flowers in their Conciliabula, and all of which were honoured with the same degree of worship. Such, indeed, is the positive assertion of St. Iræneus,* confirmed, or at least reiterated by St. Epiphanius.† This superstition, which on the same principle permitted painted images of Christ, was peculiarly in vogue amongst the Gnostics of the sects of Carpocrates; and history has preserved the name of a woman, Marcellina, adopted by that sect, for the propagation of which she removed from the farthest East, to Rome; and who in the little Gnostic church, as it may be called, which was under her direction, exposed to the adoration of her followers images of Christ and of St. Paul, of Homer and Pythagoras. This fact, which is supported by the serious evidence of St. Augustine,‡ is, besides, perfectly in accordance with the celebrated anecdote of the Emperor, Alexander Severus, who placed amongst his Lares, between the images of the most revered philosophers and kings, the portraits of Christ, and of Abraham, opposite those of Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana, and who paid to all a vague kind of divine worship.§ It cannot, therefore, be doubted, that this strange association originated in the bosom of certain schools of the Neo-Platonists, as well as in several Gnostic sects, and we may thence infer, that the existence of images fabricated by Gnostic hands, induced Christians, as soon as the Church relaxed in its primitive aversion to monuments of idolatry, to adopt them for their own use.*”[1]
* St. Irenæus, Advers. Hæres. lib. i., cap. xxv., a. 6, édition de Massuet.
† St. Epiphanius, Hæres. cap. xxvii., a. 6. See on this subject the dissertation of Jablonsky, “de Origine imaginum Christi Domini in Ecclesia Christiana,” s. 10, in his Opuscul. Philol. vol. iii., 394–396.
‡ St. Augustin, de Hæresib. cap. vii.: “Sectæ ipsius (Carpocratis) fuisse traditur socia quædam Marcellina, quæ colebat imagines Jesu et Pauli, et Homeri et Pythagoræ, adorando incensumque ponendo.” (See the dissertation of Fueldner, upon the Carpocratians, in the Dritte Denkschrift der Hist. Theol. Gesellschaft zu Leipzig., p. 267, et seq.)
- Æl. Lamprid. in Alexandr. Sever. cap. xxix. “In larario suo, in quo et divos principes, sed optimos (et) electos et animas sanctiores, in queis et Appollonium, et quantum scriptor suorum temporum dicit. Christum, Abraham et Orpheum, et hujusmodi ceteros, habebat ac majorum effigies, rem divinam faciebat.” Such is the lesson proposed by Heyne for the employment of this text. (See the dissertation of Alexandr. Sever. Imp. religion. miscell. probant., &c., in his Opuscul. Academ. vol. vi., p. 169–281; see also on this subject the dissertation of Jablonsky, De Alexandra Severo, Imperatore Romano, Christianorum sacris per Gnostico initiato, in his Opuscul. Philol. vol. iv., p. 38–79.
* Such, we are told by M. Raoul Rochette, is the inference drawn by the pious and learned Bottari, from the testimony quoted above, Pitture e Sculture Sacre, vol i., p. 196; and that his opinion, formed in the bosom of orthodox Catholicism, has been adopted by all Roman antiquaries.
[1] Adolphe Napoléon Didron, Christian Iconography; Or, the History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages, trans. E. J. Millington and Margaret Stokes, vol. 1 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1886), 243–245.
So if you use images of Jesus Christ to (mis)represent Him in curricula for children’s ministries, or around the 25th of December you make a little image of Jesus and put it in a stable, you are not only violating the Second Commandment by engaging in a form of (likely unintentional) idolatry, but you are following the ancient Gnostics.
Maybe it is time to immediately stop making, using, condoning, promoting, or contributing in any way to the use of images of the Son of God.
–TDR
There is no balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul
The famous hymn “There is a Balm in Gilead” begins:
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul …
The song is based on Jeremiah 8:22:
Jer. 8:22 Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
The problem is that in this verse Jeremiah is teaching that there is no balm in Gilead that can heal Israel’s sin-sick soul. The other two texts that refer to “balm” in Jeremiah likewise specify the failure of balm to heal:
Jer. 46:11 Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured.
Jer. 51:8 Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed: howl for her; take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed.
Perhaps it would be more accurate, if one is to sing this hymn, to sing:
There is no balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There is no balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soulOnly Jesus Christ can do it,
Not any balm of man;
There is no balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.
Sadly, if one sings the traditional version, he is singing to God exactly the opposite of what Scripture says.
Churches are encouraged to sing from hymnals where the compilers actually cared that their content is doctrinally accurate, such as the Trinity hymnal: Baptist edition or Great Hymns and Psalms of the Faith (currently words-only, a version with tunes is being worked on by the Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle), as well as singing God’s inspired and infallibile psalms, as the New Testament explicitly commands (James 5:13).
–TDR
The Place of Fear in a True Church and With True Worship
I’ve read recently, “Fear is not a virtue.” A company called, American Virtue Clothing prints “Fear Is Not a Virtue” on its clothing. Heather Delapi argues that “fear” isn’t found in the lists of virtues of scripture, hence is not a virtue. The English word “fear” is found 385 times in the King James Version of the Bible. I have read all of those verses, but I haven’t sorted through everyone of them to find how many times fear is rebuked or admonished and how many times it is extolled or commended. There are both.Fear is a virtue. No godly person lives without fear. It is a necessity for pleasing God. Just because it isn’t listed as fruit of the Spirit doesn’t mean that it isn’t a virtue. It is dangerous and wrong to say it isn’t a virtue. Why would I even write this? I’ve taught through Acts all the way through once, and in great detail about halfway through the whole book about five times. I’m teaching and preaching through it again right now as we evangelize and plant a church in Southern Oregon. When Luke writes under the inspiration of God to describe the basics of the church of Jerusalem in that classic passage in Acts 2:41-47, he writes in Acts 2:43 an attitude of that first church:
And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.
“Fear came upon every soul.” This verse got my attention again on this subject, so I’m writing on it. This same morning as I was preaching the end of the book of Acts, in Sunday School I started a short series on “The Detection and Correction of Doctrinal and Practical Error.” In my introduction I quoted what Jesus said in Matthew 10:28 and elaborated about its part in that subject.
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
What Is Worldly Worship?
At least twenty years ago, from scripture I came to the following as a definition of worship. It is my definition, but I believe it reflects what the Bible says. “Worship is acknowledging or recognizing God for Who He is according to His Word and giving Him what He says that He wants.” If I were going to add a secondary important aspect, “worship necessitates coming to the right God and in the right way.” You aren’t worshiping God if He isn’t actually God and then you’re not worshiping Him if you are doing it your way. God doesn’t accept just anything.
I googled the two terms “worldly worship” and it produced 12,300 results. Those were not all articles written by me, although I found I had used that terminology in some online writings. It is a known concept though, worship that is worldly that is not acceptable to God, which is of the nature of the world system and not the nature of God. I went ahead and googled “syncretistic worship” too, because I think it’s a related concept. That showed up 6,060 times.
Syncretize means: to “attempt to amalgamate or reconcile (differing things, especially religious beliefs, cultural elements, or schools of thought).” When referring to syncretism in worship, many have pointed to the practice in Israel of bringing aspects of the worship of paganism into the worship of God, mixing the two. Many examples of syncretism are seen in the nation Israel (Exodus 32:1-8; Leviticus 10:1-7; Deuteronomy 12:30-31; 1 Kings 3:5-10; etc.). The way Israel syncretized is not the only way to syncretize. Mixing something impure with purity makes it impure.
Speaking of worship, Paul commands, “be not conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2). Because God accepts only holy worship, not profane, then it can’t be conformed to this world system, the spirit of the age. Obviously, everything we do occurs in this world or on this planet, on earth. The world system clashes with God. It is represented by darkness and all the characteristics described in scripture as seen in many places, one of which as an example is James 3:15: “earthly, sensual, and devilish.” There are many more. One should assume that all of these can be understood and applied.
The world is attractive to sinful flesh. Satan shapes the world system to lure people away from God. Because the world is a lure, it also works when a church uses it. Satan designs it as a lure and if a church takes that lure and uses it, it’s still a lure. That’s the temptation of using anything worldly.
Varied aspects of this world are filled with meaning. Many of those meanings are not congruent with God. One should even expect that they are not. Whatever it is that will please God has already been around. One should question any new style or method, especially that has proceeded from worldly lust, which Titus 2:11-12 says that the grace of God teaches us to deny. I contend that rather than denying worldly lust, most churches today promote it. They might argue that this new way is neutral, neither good or bad. God’s people didn’t originate it, actually rejected it, and then after a period of time, accepted it, then used it, arguing now that God also wants it.
Someone may ask, what basis do I have that churches are using worldly music? I haven’t been in all these churches, so how do I know? Not only have I been all over the country, but I’ve looked at websites of churches all over. I know enough.
Every church and their leaders should want accountability as to whether they are using worldly worship. They should look for constructive criticism. People are deceived in many different ways as they relate to God. The broad road to destruction has many religious people on it. When I read the materials of the church growth movement used as a model for thousands of churches, they encourage worldly worship as means of church growth.
God doesn’t accept worldly worship, so why would churches still do it? Why would Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire to the Lord? I would contend that the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu is a lesser perversion of worship than most worldly worship, and God killed them for offering it. They were still offering incense. They just changed the recipe. They offered something God didn’t say that He didn’t like. They offered something different than what God said He wanted. It seems that Nadab and Abihu just didn’t take God seriously, what could be called, not fearing God. We know what they did was bad and wrong and sinful, but it was still not something that God had said was wrong.
Worldly worship we know God doesn’t want. There are two obvious motives for giving God something He doesn’t want, and they are seen in scripture. First, the one offering it likes it. This is the serving the creature of Romans 1. He’s not really even giving to God as much as he’s doing something for himself that he likes. I’ve seen this again and again in churches I’ve visited. It can happen anywhere. Second, other people will like it too, so it will make the church more popular. The people wanting that worship don’t like what God likes, but they either convince themselves or are just deceived into thinking that God will accept it. A third reason is deceit. The feeling the worldliness causes often is mistaken for a spiritual experience.
Worldly worship parallels with a worldly life. The world offers what the flesh desires. There were times in church history that a wide chasm existed between the worship of the Lord in the churches and the world. That gap has shrunk to where there isn’t much difference. It’s worse that that. The churches like the world and they expect God to like it too. It shows an amazing lack of understanding of God and what He wants.
As you have read this, reader, perhaps you wanted to know more specifics. “Give me a specific of worldly worship.” I could say, using the world’s music in worship. To get more specific, I could go further, using rock music in worship. There are many other specific examples. It’s better to start with the principles for discerning what is worldly and that God doesn’t want something worldly.
To accommodate worldliness, I have heard evangelicals give a very narrow understanding of worldliness as internal only, that nothing external is worldly. However, Paul wrote, “Be not conformed to this world.” There is internal worldliness, the love of the world in the heart, but conforming by definition must be external. God doesn’t want something we can see and hear is worldly. He rejects it.
Psalm 106: Becoming Your Worship
Reading Psalm 106 this week, a psalm accounting the history of Israel, I came to verses 19-20:
19 They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image. 20 Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.
Man was made in the image of God. Since he is made in God’s image, God is to be his glory. Let’s go through it.
First, they made a molten calf. Second, they worshiped it. Third, by doing those first two things, they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox. It wasn’t even an ox, something God made. It was an image that they made to look like an ox. Instead of being in the image of God, they took on the glory of the ox, which is significantly less. It eats grass. It doesn’t self-exist. It needs grass that God makes.
This activity lessens the man. It reminds me of the young man loitering around the “whorish woman” in Proverbs 6:26, who is “brought to a piece of bread.” The relationship of the young man to the woman is similar to the people of Israel related to their molten calf. The woman has power over him through her seduction, leading him, and his acquiescing to her diminishes him to something akin to a slice of bread. I often like to say that she turns him to carp bait.
Their glory, which is the summation or aggregation of their attributes, who they are, is changed by what they worship. I want to take it a step further. The God or god you imagine is what or who you become. When the true God is imagined in a lesser way, a way not according to his attributes, that is who you become.
You take on the image of who you worship. You are made in the image of God, but perversion is that the person becomes what he worships. This is seen in the use of the term, “holy” (qadosh קָדוֹשׁ) in the Old Testament. The masculine noun קדש (qadesh) denoted a male temple prostitute (Job 36:14, 1 Kings 14:24) and the feminine קדשה (qadesha) described a female religious prostitute (Deuteronomy 23:17). They became what they worshiped. They were separated unto the nature of their god, taking on their god’s image, its attributes.
These evangelical churches using the world’s music aren’t worshiping the true God. The lust with and by which they worship indicates they are becoming who they worship. It is sacred in the sense that it is separated unto the god of their imagination, which would be pleased by lust. The ecstatic worship of Babylonian mysticism carried with it sexual prostitution in Corinth and in Ephesus. True worship is not ecstatic. It worships God in truth, which is to worship God according to the revelation of scripture.
Your children very likely will become the worship of your church. When they turn into that worship, don’t be surprised. Even if it is true worship of the true God, that doesn’t mean that they will still turn out as the glory of God. They will still need to choose that for themselves. It is very tempting to change into the glory of the creature and not the Creator.
What or who someone worships designates his highest value. If the value is diminished, his values are too, and so he is. He is reduced. Worshiping the one and true God in the beauty of His holiness brings glory from the One he worships. The glory of God is the glory of man.
How Is Alcohol Related to Worship?
Maybe the question of the title got your attention. It sounds like that’s what I was trying to do, but I wasn’t. Instead I jumped into the car and turned it to the 24/7 radio station of the biggest Calvary Chapel in our area of Oregon. The son, who is now the senior pastor, was preaching on worship, a subject that is near and dear to me, as you readers know. In the midst of his talk, he had his crowd turn to Ephesians 5:18-19, which read:
18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; 19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
He didn’t break down verse 18 very far, but he related being “sloshed,” a word he used twice to refer to being drunk. He said that alcohol itself was fine, just not being drunk. To start, that belies the grammar of the verse. Look at it. Speaking of the “wine,” Paul said, “wherein is excess.” In other words, in the wine is excess, which is riotousness. The “wine” itself isn’t innocent. This is also how the Bible reads about alcohol or “wine” that can get someone drunk. It must be alcoholic, so in it is excess or riotousness, which are both sinful.
The Calvary Chapel senior pastor then said that there is a kind of singing when someone is sloshed. He compared to drunken revelry, and he said that was a contrast here. One can imagine the pub where a group of men are staggering home off pitch and slurring a popular song, what today is called a drinking song. I know this happens, but is this what Ephesians 5:18 is talking about? No. It really misses the point.
Being drunk is contrasted with being filled with the Spirit. There are at least two points that Paul is making with this contrast and it does relate to worship. One, drunkenness puts alcohol in control of someone. He’s controlled by the alcohol. The Greek words for “filled with” mean “be controlled by.” The believer is commanded to be controlled by the Holy Spirit and not alcohol. The alcohol is related to worship, but someone is never to be controlled by anyone or anything but the Holy Spirit. That means in every area of life, which the next twenty something verses reveal.
The control of alcohol brings excess and riotousness. The control of the Holy Spirit results in something else, what follows in the proceeding verses. Alcohol really does control. Someone can understand that. With that understanding, come to the Holy Spirit and imagine His controlling instead. Alcohol almost totally takes over with limited human control. Holy Spirit control is almost total control with a background of human control. A person is still doing something, but he’s controlled by Someone else as a whole, the Holy Spirit.
The second point of Paul is to relate to the false worship of Ephesus at the temple of Diana that the audience of the church at Ephesus would know. In the base of the pillars were ornately carved grapes. Drunkenness was part of the worship. It would bring a state of ecstasy, which was confused with a kind of divine control. This out of body type of experience of drunkenness gives the impression that someone is out of control, which he is, but that he is under the control of divine power. He isn’t. It’s the alcohol. Paul contrasts the false worship of Ephesus with the true worship of the true God. It isn’t ecstatic, which unfortunately and ironically is the worship of these Calvary Chapels.
The rock music of the the CCM that even originated with the first Jesus’ movement of the first Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California gave the impression of something spiritual occurring. It wasn’t. It was entirely fleshly, ecstatic, like the drunkenness of the worship of Diana. Fleshly music brings a kind of ecstasy like that produced by alcohol that gives a counterfeit, false experience of spirituality. It might be “a spirit,” but it isn’t the Holy Spirit. It isn’t Holy and it isn’t Spiritual. Spiritual worship does not arise from the flesh, from alcohol, or from rhythm. These churches manipulate their listeners, giving them the wrong understanding of true spirituality. It is a form of idolatry.
There is actually no contrast in the worship of the Calvary Chapels with the world’s temples. They incorporate the ecstatic experience of the world into their so-called “worship.” In so doing, their people develop a false imagination of God. Their worship gives them a false god that does not have the same nature as the One and True God.
The local Calvary Chapel pastor compared drunken singing to the singing of Ephesians 5:19. First, he approved of alcohol as long as someone isn’t “sloshed.” He was saying this in a mocking tone, like he was embarrassed to be preaching about something bad related to alcohol. He was approving of alcohol as long as it didn’t result in drunkenness. In many people’s minds, being “sloshed” is a further level of drunkenness than the mere term drunken or legal drunkenness. This is missing the teaching of the verse and is dangerous to his audience.
The worship of Ephesians 5:19 proceeds from the control of the Holy Spirit. This is not carnal or emotional. It might result in emotions, but it is not emotional. Colossians 3:16 is a parallel passage and it compares Spirit filling to being controlled by the Words of Christ. If someone is controlled by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, the first way that will manifest itself is in true worship.
The participles of Ephesians 5:19 relate to being controlled by the Holy Spirit. You can or will know if someone is saved and then filled with the Spirit, based upon your worship. Worship comes first in this list of manifestations. False worship is controlled by something other than the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t have to be alcohol. It could also be fleshly music that brings a closely related ecstasy to that occurring in the false worship in Ephesus.
The Command to Worship the LORD in the Beauty of Holiness
Without doubt, scripture teaches that worship of God must be regulated by what God says. The point of this post comes from Psalm 29:2
Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.
I’ve seen this verse many times. Many. Yet, something occurred to me when I read it in my Bible reading this year that really struck me. Since true worship of God is regulated by scripture, then worship should be regulated especially by this verse. There are not many verses as stark as this one on worship of the LORD. The teaching is also repeated three times. It’s not a stand alone.
1 Chronicles 16:29, “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.”Psalm 96:9, “O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.”
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