http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/tracts/CAT050_ChristianWorship.pdf
[Church Society] 15 Jul 2006--“The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.” “God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”
These words institute a contrast between the worship of the Old Testament and the worship of the New. Our Lord does not mean that no true worship had ever been offered to God before, or that He had been satisfied with an unreal service, or that priests, and prophets, and kings, and holy men of old had rested in the letter which killeth, “having the form of godliness and not the power.” What God is now He always has been. What the spirituality of His nature requires now it always has required. But the Jewish system placed an emphasis on the sanctity of particular places and persons, upon the obligation of daily, weekly, and yearly sacrifices, and on the forms of an elaborate ceremonial. This was to be laid aside as having served the end for which it was
ordained. Henceforth an external ceremonial was not to be interposed between man and God.
Man’s homage “to the High and Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity” was no longer to be
authoritatively united to an elaborate form of service. The true idea of worship, as the faith, the
hope, the joy of the soul in God, was to be clearly and fully recognized. “God is a spirit, and they
that worship Him must worship Him in spirit,”–not with a worship material, sensuous, rudimentary,and imperfect,–“and in truth;” not with a typical shadowy worship such as that enjoined by the Mosaic law, or with a merely external service.
Now this statement of our Lord, of what Christian worship ought to be, presents us with an
argument for the simplicity of Christian Ritual....
No comments:
Post a Comment