Why Do We Worship?

One of the things I hear again and again in popular Christian literature is the following statement: “Worship is a response to God’s grace to us through Jesus Christ.”  While this is true, I was challenged this morning as I read the following excerpt from Created for Worship: From Genesis to Revelation to You by Noel Due:

…worship is not simply (or even primarily) our response to grace.  So often it seems that Christian worship, especially in the evangelical tradition, focuses on the act of redemption.  While this is not to be rejected, the Scriptural testimony is much wider than this.  The worship and service of God is to be engendered by both creation and redemption, and as much by the former as the latter.

Due goes on to explain his position:

It may be true, theologically, that we cannot see God as Creator without first seeing him as Redeemer, but Jesus’ (as with the First Adam’s) role was to worship God as his Father, and he stood in no need of redemption….While worship may arise as a response to the gracious action of God in redemption, for example, it actually belongs more fundamentally to the structure of human beings as sons of God.  God the Creator is worthy of worship by virtue of his own being, irrespective of any gracious work on his part to redeem fallen humankind. It is this worshsip for which human beings were created, and it is this which brings added poignancy to the thought that human beings may say to some other, so-called god, ‘You are my father’ (Jer. 2:27 cf. 3:4, 19). [itallics mine]

This truth should be meditated upon.  Our understanding and worship of God is most certainly heightened and fully clarified for us who have sinned by means of Redemption, but God is worthy of worship apart from Redemption.  He is by virtue of being Creator worthy of all of our worship.  How much greater is our praise to think that that God who was already worthy of worship while we were destined for Hell sent his only Son to die in our place so that we might come into fellowship with Him!  Praise be to God our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ!