Are you worshiping God in spirit and truth?
What does that even mean?
There’s a wonderful story in Chapter 4 of the Gospel of John that is rich with deep insights into the heart of Jesus. And it gives us an insight into Jesus’s idea of what true worship is.
You probably know the story well, but I’ll summarize it just a bit.
Jesus and his disciples were going back to Galilee, and the fastest way to get there was to go through Samaria.
The Jews and the Samaritans did not like each other. In general, they would not even talk to each other and if they did, it was not in friendly greeting to one another. There was an age old rivalry between them.
As Jesus and his disciples approached the city of Sychar, which was in Samaria, they came to the well Jacob had dug there back in the Old Testament.
It was around noon and Jesus sent his disciples into town to get something to eat.
The Samaritan woman and Jesus
Jesus was sitting by the well resting, when a woman came with a large pot to get water from the well. This was rather unusual. Women usually came in groups in the early morning or late afternoon, never in the heat of the day. This hints that she really didn’t fit into society very well.
Jesus engages her in conversation by asking her for a drink. She notices right away he is Jewish and challenges him why he would even speak to her, since she is a Samaritan.
There’s a lively back and forth, which I recommend you read the whole conversation if you haven’t recently.
They go from talking about a drink of water from Jacob’s well, to a more spiritual sense of water that nourished the soul. The conversation takes a shift when Jesus tells her of her past five husbands and her current situation.
The woman decides Jesus must be a prophet. Here at last is someone who she can talk to, someone who is not shunning her, someone who cares about more than the village gossip and the price of leeks and onions.
Where should we worship?
The fact that she instantly brings up a controversial religious issue between the Samaritans and the Jews – where to worship God – shows that it is something she has been pondering. When she meets a holy man, who is willing to talk to her, her question bursts forth.
So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped? John 4:20 NLT
Don’t you just love her boldness to someone she perceives to be a prophet? She didn’t shrink back and demur to him. She wanted answers to a question deep in her heart.
Maybe she was already seeing the limitations of thinking you had to be in a certain place to worship God. Maybe, in being an outcast of society, she had been forced to worship God in her own private way, with no rituals and ceremonies or community.
When she asked about the disagreement between the Jews and Samaritans on where to worship, it’s almost as if she’s challenging Jesus to defend what she thinks is not the real issue.
Of course, there’s no way to know exactly what she was thinking. It would be easy to assume she was not the God-worshiping type, considering her lifestyle. But if these things weren’t important to her, why would she ask them so quickly of someone she discerned to be a man of God?
Jesus’s response: worshiping God in spirit and truth
The fact that Jesus responds to her in such an open, almost tender way, gives us a hint that he saw deep in her heart an earnest receptivity to his message, which he did not always find in people.
So back to the idea of where to worship.
Jesus can see this woman is ready for his bold declaration about worship, which turns on its head the Jewish practice for hundreds of years of needing to be in a physical place to worship God, and performing rituals and sacrificial ceremonies.
Imagine the thrill in this woman’s heart when she hears Jesus assure her,
Jesus replied, “Believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:21, 23, 24 NLT
The heart of true worship
Jesus cut right to the heart of what true worship is.
The word for worship in Greek is proskyneō to fawn or crouch to, i.e. (literally or figuratively) prostrate oneself in homage (do reverence to, adore), make obeisance, whether in order to express respect or to make supplication
It literally means to kneel or prostrate oneself to show reverence for a superior. It doesn’t always mean to acknowledge as God. But in the context of worshiping God, it means to acknowledge that God is supreme.
How do you kneel or prostrate yourself to show reverence to God in spirit and in truth?
Does it mean you have to get on your knees or prostrate yourself physically? No. It’s not about going through specific motions or saying certain words that make up true worship.
It’s about kneeling spiritually, humbling yourself, and acknowledging God in the secret chambers of the heart.
Ceremonies and rituals are not true worship
Jesus had seen all the Jewish ceremonial rituals and sacrificial practices in the Temple in Jerusalem. And he could also discern the thoughts and intents of the heart as well.
Just because the priests were going through the right motions and saying the right words, didn’t mean they were sincere. It didn’t mean they weren’t either.
The point Jesus is making here is that true worship must be in the heart. It’s a spiritual experience honoring, acknowledging, and humbling yourself with God.
Some churches today have more rituals and ceremonies than others. I have friends who find comfort in these practices. And I have friends who have very few rituals in their church.
The human mind loves rituals
But the human mind can make a ritual out of anything, like always sitting in the same seat at church, without even thinking about it. I am so guilty of that at times.
But I must say, there have been many times when I have asked God where to sit during church, and it made all the difference as to who I met or talked to afterwards, and the blessings that came as result.
And have you ever listened to how you say the Lord’s Prayer? Sometimes it sounds like a race to get to the end.
Other times it can sound more like a list of things to get at the grocery store. We are so familiar with the words, we’re just repeating them and not plumbing their depths spiritually.
When we just go through the motions or just repeat the words at church, and there is little or no inspiration, we’re not really worshiping God.
David’s glimpse of true worhsip
When Jesus prophesied to the woman at Jacob’s well there would be a day when we would worship in spirit and in truth, it was not a new idea.
David hints at this very thing in Psalm 51.
You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God. Psalm 51:16, 17 NLT
Even though David glimpsed that true worship was about what’s going on in your heart, it didn’t stop the rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices in the way most people thought about worshiping God. When Jesus came along 1,000 years later, this form of worship was still prevalent.
Worshiping God in spirit and truth
So let’s talk about what it means to worship in spirit and in truth.
- It doesn’t necessarily mean getting all worked up emotionally
- It’s not about what’s going on around you or with your body
- It’s not just about your actions and words
- It IS about what’s going on spiritually in your heart
- It’s how you acknowledge God
It’s what’s going on in your heart.
You can pray. You can sing. You can shout “Amen” and words of praise to God. You can go through all kinds of motions with incredible fervency.
But none of this, in and of itself, means you’re actually worshiping God in spirit and truth.
No formula for worship
There’s no formula for worshiping God the way Jesus hopes for us. But the Bible gives lots of guideposts along the way. I’ll share just a few.
The prophet Micah echoes what David wrote in the Psalm I just referred to:
With what shall I come before the LORD,
And bow myself before the High God?
Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
With calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
Ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? Michah 6:6-8 NKJV
What does God require of us? What pleases God?
Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God.
Micah has put his finger on a great truth. True worship includes treating others with justice and mercy and not just being humble in your relationship with God.
Love is worship
When you show love to someone, you are worshiping God. You are effectively coming into God’s presence when you show love to someone. Why is this worship? Because you are reflecting the love of God toward others. As a child of God made in His image and likeness, you are treating others justly and with mercy, just as God treats us all.
You are glorifying God, worshiping God, by reflecting His nature, by being like God in your daily life.
Worshiping God in spirit is not just what you do in church, but how you live your life.
Worshiping God in truth is knowing and acknowledging who God is.
Jesus knew and acknowledged who God is in every step he took, in every person he talked to, and everyone he healed. He did not seek his own glory, but God’s glory. (See John 8:50)
The way he lived his life was the highest form of worship possible.
The way you live your life is the way you worship God
Every time you get to know God more intimately, you are worshiping in truth. Every time you experience God’s all-encompassing love and acknowledge God is the source of this love, and you are not, you are worshiping God in spirit.
And when you treat others with justice and mercy, you bring an extra dimension to worshiping God.
True worship begins with what’s going on in your heart.
How do you worship God in your heart?
What is worship?
And by the way, have you ever stopped to ask, “What does the word worship mean anyway?” Well, it simply means the acknowledgement of the worth or worthiness, or value, of something or someone.
In this sense, God is certainly worthy of our love, honor, and reverence. God’s value is beyond human comprehension. It’s infinite and eternal.
To worship God in your heart, whether at church, at home in your prayer chair, at work, at school, on a hike, in a traffic jam, or anywhere you might find yourself, is experiencing God’s presence and expressing God’s nature.
There are so many ways to do this.
Many ways to worship
My wife encourages people to make a list of 300 qualities and attributes of God, then to ponder them and express them in daily life.
To me, this is a wonderful way to worship God.
Another way that has helped me is to think about the spiritual essence of something and see how it comes originally from God.
For example, one day I was on the subway in New York City. I started being grateful for the platform to wait on for the next subway car.
I was grateful for the sliding doors on the cars and the windows, the seats, and everything about the subway cars, especially the fact they could move so many people quickly to so many different places in the City.
But then I started thinking about the spiritual essence of what doors, windows, seats, etc. were. Doors can represent opportunities provided by God. Windows became to me the way God lets in spiritual light to show us what we need to see. You get the idea.
I was taking my gratitude for these things on the subway and turning it into gratitude for the spiritual idea behind the thing.
In the process, these spiritual ideas all pointed back to God. I was rejoicing in God’s presence. I was worshiping God in spirit and truth.
These are just a couple of ways to worship in spirit and in truth. And I would add that if I just repeated doing them the same way over and over, it could easily become a ritual and cease to be worshiping spiritually.
How do you worship?
I encourage you to take an honest look at how you worship God. Even if you don’t have a specific material ritual, have you ever become ritualistic in the way you say your silent prayers, for example?
Jesus has some pretty harsh words to say about just repeating a bunch of words and thinking this is prayer. (See Matthew 6:7 below)
Be fresh in your prayers. Be inspired in the way you worship God.
When we go through the outward motions of worship with rituals, ceremonies, or whatever form it might take, the human mind may be satisfied and think it has worshiped God. But we are no different than we were before.
Worship transforms
True, spiritual worship transforms us. We are more spiritual. We are more loving.
Paul says, and think of this in light of how we worship,
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Romans 12:2 NLT
The more we worship in spirit and in truth, the more we will experience God’s presence and love in our own lives and the more others will feel this love.
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James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and podcaster. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by embracing the mindset of Christ in daily life. Contact him here.
Bible References:
John 4:20 NLT
20 So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?
John 4:21, 23, 24 NLT
21 Jesus replied, “Believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem.
23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way.
24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Psalm 51:16, 17 NLT
16 You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one.
You do not want a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.
You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.
Michah 6:6-8 NKJV
6 With what shall I come before the LORD,
And bow myself before the High God?
Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
With calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
Ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?
John 8:50 KJV
50 And I seek not mine own glory:
Matthew 6:7 NKJV
7 And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.
Romans 12:2 NLT
2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
