Two Pressing Questions
Two questions are pressing on us for answers.
First, what is the worship that the Bible says is
the ultimate aim of all God’s work and word?
Second, why is God not a megalomaniac in
demanding this kind of worship for himself?
I pose these two questions together because the
answer to the first is key in answering the
second.
SEE ALSO: If We Were Created for God's Glory,
is God Merely Using Us?
C. S. Lewis on the Consummation of Praise
I first saw the relationship between these two
questions with the help of C. S. Lewis. Before he
was a Christian, God’s demand for worship was
a great obstacle to Lewis’s faith . He said it
seemed to him like “a vain woman who wants
compliments.” But then as he discovered the
nature of worship, the question about God’s
seeming vanity (or megalomania) was also
answered. He wrote:
But the most obvious fact about praise—whether
of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I
thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or
the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all
enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. .
. . The world rings with praise—lovers praising
their mistresses, readers their favorite poet,
walkers praising the countryside, players praising
their favorite game—praise of weather, wines,
dishes, actors, horses, colleges, countries,
historical personages, children, flowers,
mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even
sometimes politicians and scholars.
My whole, more general difficulty about the
praise of God depended on my absurdly denying
to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what
we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help
doing, about everything else we value.
SEE ALSO: How Can You Know the Bible is
True?
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy
because the praise not merely expresses but
completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed
consummation. It is not out of complement that
lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful
they are, the delight is incomplete till it is
expressed.
In other words, genuine, heartfelt praise is not
artificially added to joy. It is the consummation
of joy itself. The joy we have in something
beautiful or precious is not complete until it is
expressed in some kind of praise.
The Answer to God’s Seeming Megalomania
Lewis saw the implication of this for God’s
seemingly vain command that we worship him.
Now he saw that this was not vanity or
megalomania. This was love. This was God
seeking the consummation of our joy in what is
supremely enjoyable—himself.
SEE ALSO: How to Read the Bible for Yourself
If God demeaned his supreme worth in the name
of humility, we would be the losers, not God.
God is the one being in the universe for whom
self-exaltation is the highest virtue. For there is
only one supremely beautiful being in the
universe. There is only one all-satisfying person
in the universe. And because of his supreme
beauty and greatness, what the psalmist says in
Psalm 16:11 is true: “In your presence there is
fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures
forevermore.” If God hides that, or denies that,
he might seem humble, but he would be hiding
from us the very thing that would make us
completely happy forever.
But if God loves us the way the Bible says he
does, then he will give us what is best for us.
And what is best for us is himself. So if God
loves us fully, God will give us God, for our
enjoyment and nothing less. But if our enjoyment
is not complete until it comes to completion in
praise, then God would not be loving if he was
indifferent to our praise. If he didn’t pursue our
praise in all that he does (as we have seen!), he
would not be pursuing the fullness of our
satisfaction. He would not be loving.
So what emerges is that God’s pervasive self-
exaltation in the Bible— his doing everything to
display his glory and to win our worship—is not
unloving; it is the way an infinitely all-glorious
God loves. His greatest gift of love is to give us
a share in the very satisfaction that he has in his
own excellence, and then to call that satisfaction
to its fullest consummation in praise. This is why
I maintain that the supremely authentic and
intense worship of God’s worth and beauty is the
ultimate aim of all his work and word.
Supremely Authentic and Intense
But what about those words “supremely
authentic and intense”? And what about that
phrase “white-hot worship”? Our ultimate aim in
reading the Bible, I am arguing, is that God’s
infinite worth and beauty would be exalted in
everlasting, white-hot worship. When I use the
phrase “white-hot worship,” I am calling out the
visceral implications of the words “supremely
authentic and intense.” The reason words like
these are important is that there is a correlation
between the measure of our intensity in worship
and the degree to which we exhibit the value of
the glory of God. Lukewarm affection for God
gives the impression that he is moderately
pleasing. He is not moderately pleasing. He is
infinitely pleasing. If we are not intensely
pleased, we need forgiveness and healing. Which,
of course, we do.
We know this because Jesus said to the church
at Laodicea, “Because you are lukewarm . . . I
will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16). The
opposite of being lukewarm in our affections for
Jesus is what Paul commands in Romans 12:11 ,
“Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit . .
.” The word fervent in the original (Greek
ζέοντες, zeontes), means “boiling.” The intensity
of our worship matters. Jesus indicted the
hypocrites of his day by saying, “This people
honors me with their lips, but their heart is far
from me” (Matt. 15:8). Authentic worship comes
from the heart, not just the lips.
Undivided and Fervent
A key measure of a heart’s worship is whether it
is authentic and intense or divided and tepid.
Authentic means undivided, genuine, real,
sincere, unaffected. Intensity implies energy,
vigor, ardor, fervor, passion, zeal.
The Bible does not leave us wondering what kind
of worship God is aiming at in all his work and
word. Over and over God calls for our hearts to
be authentic and undivided in our worship. “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your strength
and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27 ). You shall
“search after him with all your heart and with all
your soul” (Deut. 4:29); and “serve the Lord your
God with all your heart” (Deut. 10:12); and turn
to him with all your heart (1 Sam. 7:3); and
“trust in the Lord with all your heart” (Prov. 3:5);
and “rejoice and exult with all your heart” (Zeph.
3:14); and give thanks to the Lord with your
whole heart (Ps. 9:1). No competitors. No
halfhearted affections.
And the Bible makes clear what level of worship
intensity God is pursuing. When Peter wrote to
the churches of Asia Minor, he did not consider
inexpressible joy to be exceptional, but typical:
“Though you do not now see him, you believe in
him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and
filled with glory” (1 Pet. 1:8). The psalmist had
tasted this kind of joy and made it his lifelong
quest. “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so
pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for
God, for the living God” (Ps. 42:1–2). “O God,
you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul
thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a
dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps.
63:1).
Similarly, the early Christians had tasted the joy
set before them, and when they were called on
to suffer with their imprisoned friends, they
showed how intensely they cherished their
heavenly treasure by the way they responded to
losing their earthly one: “You had compassion on
those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the
plundering of your property, since you knew that
you yourselves had a better possession and an
abiding one” (Heb. 10:34; cf. 11:24-26; 12:2).
God is not pursuing lukewarm worship, but
worship that is supremely authentic and intense
—everlasting, white-hot worship. It will never
end. “To him who sits on the throne and to the
Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might
forever and ever!” (Rev. 5:13). Whitehot and
without end. That’s the goal of creation and
redemption.
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