JESUS OUR WORSHIP LEADER
The Mediating Work of the Son in Worship
Ron Man
“For there is one God,
and one mediator also between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Tim. 2:5)
“We have a great priest over the house of God.”
(Heb. 10:21)
For believers it is often
easier to conceptualize the present ministry of Christ in terms of His deity, which is understandable, given the fact of His glorified state, having
“ascended far above all the heavens.” (Ephes. 4:10) Yet it is just as true that
there is a Man who is now seated at
the Father’s right hand, a fact which (as we will see) has profound
implications for our worship.
Part of the paradox of the
hypostatic union (the perfect fusion in Christ of undiminished deity and
complete humanity) is that we have in one Person both Recipient and Giver of
worship. In His perfect condescension and by virtue of the plan forged in
eternity past among the members of the Trinity, the Son (as well as the Holy
Spirit) have willingly given over to the Father the right to be the primary
focus and recipient of worship; in fact, all through the earthly ministry of
Jesus we find Him constantly in communion with the Father (whom He called His Father)[1] in worship
and prayer. In that way He fulfilled the Law and modeled for us unsullied,
untainted, full-orbed Manhood in relationship with the Creator.
Too often, however, we tend to unconsciously
compartmentalize Christ and focus either on His deity or on His humanity--
largely because it is so difficult for our finite minds to grasp this perfect
admixture of God and man. Hence, in His birth and earthly ministry we usually
focus on His (albeit perfect) humanity, though of course punctuated here and
there with hints of divine omniscience and miracle-working power. In His
resurrection, ascension, current session in heaven, and coming victorious
reign, we see profound expressions of His deity and glory. To be sure, we often
make reference to the fact that our Savior intercedes for us before the Father
(Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25); but is it not true that our concept is often that of a
divine Savior who by grace has become our Advocate before the throne? All of
this is true enough, but it is also true that His intercession is not only one
of divine sympathy towards human creatures, but one of empathy by “One who has been
tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15) We have a High
Priest who has not only made an offering of
Himself once of all for our redemption (Heb. 7:27; 10:12,14), but who continues
in His mediating High Priestly ministry (“we have [not had] a
High Priest” [Heb. 4:14,16; 8:1; 10:21], indeed “holds His priesthood permanently”
(Heb. 7:24; cf. 5:6; 6:20; 7:7,17,25,28).
It is Thomas Torrance’s
contention that, in reaction to Arianism (which affirmed the humanity but
denied the deity of Christ), the early church began to emphasize the deity of
Christ and to downplay, or virtually ignore, His humanity.[2] To that
trend in the patristic and medieval church Torrance attributes the rise both of
an overly centralized Eucharist (in some senses substituting in people’s focus
and devotion for the living Christ Himself); the rise of prayer to Mary and the
saints (since in the practical denial of a truly human Mediator in Christ,
Christians were compelled to look to others , who in essence mediated between
the worshiper and Christ!); and the
development of a full-blown human priesthood to lead in worship (to substitute
for Christ in that role).[3]
We still tend to give little
attention to the humanity of Christ and the role it plays in our worship. We
lift our praise to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as well we should; our
songs and litanies of worship are addressed primarily to the Father and to the
Son, as the Spirit would expect and enable in His self-effacing role. But do we
really understand that Jesus Christ in His glorified state continues to be the
Perfect Man, and thus still embodies all that man was created to be? Since it
is obvious that God made man to be preeminently a worshiper of Himself (Rom.
1:21), since worshipers are what the Father seeks among mankind (John 4:23), it
should be evident that in Jesus Christ as Perfect Man God has likewise found
the True Worshiper: the Man who can truly approach God on His own merits, with
a completely pure heart and conscience (Psalm 15:1-2), and offer up worthy
praise.
It is not often recognized
that Jesus Christ plays a crucial mediatorial role in our worship services; an active role, not just one as the subject and
recipient of worship. As James Torrance has observed,[4] we
are well aware that, through the Holy Spirit, Christ mediates the truth of
God’s revelation to us through the reading of the Word, preaching, and other
forms of proclamation; the Son has a mediatorial role in the communication of
truth from the Father. But James Torrance also points out how neglectful we are
of the other half of the mediatorial equation in worship: that Christ, as man, as the Perfect Worshiper, is the conduit-- nay, the embodiment of our worship in response to the truth of God. Christ’s
perfect worship, His continual self-offering to the Father in adoration and
communion, becomes the basis for our expressions of praise and worship;[5] we
are “accepted in the Beloved” (Ephes. 1:6),
and likewise in the Beloved’s perfect offering of worship our offerings
of worship are accepted as well.[6]
The Holy Spirit actuates our participation in Christ's
perfect worship: “In the Spirit our prayer and worship participate in ways
beyond our understanding in the prayer and worship of the glorified Christ.”[7]
“The Holy Spirit enables us to enter through the veil of the flesh of Christ
into the holiest, and connects us with Christ as He dwells in the immediate
presence of God in unbroken communion.”[8]
And, conversely, “the presence of His Spirit in us means that Christ’s prayer
and worship of the Father are made to echo in us and issue out of our life to
the Father as our own prayer and worship.”[9]
In light of these truths, it
is a very serious error to follow a revivalist style of worship service, where
the sermon is considered the raison
d’etre for the entire undertaking, and all other constituent parts of the
service serve merely to prepare for or to transition out of that proclamatory
event.[10] In fact,
the public proclamation and exposition of God’s Word is a crucial part of public worship (though, as White has pointed
out, it is no excuse for the virtual disappearance of the reading of Scripture
in most free church services[11]);
preaching is a primary context in which Christ mediates the Father’s revealed
truth to man. But if we neglect or downplay the importance of corporate response (singing, praying, reading,
meditating, etc.), we do not only rob the people of God of a necessary and
appropriate means of giving back to God a grateful reflection of His glory which
they have apprehended in His word-- we actually
risk interfering with a critical aspect of the mediating work of Jesus Christ!
Not we could ever in any way interrupt or hinder the Son’s perfect communion
with the Father; but we can indeed stand in the way of the complete expression
of that communion in corporate worship.
The wonderful fact is that when God’s people join their hearts and
voices in common acclamations of praise and thanksgiving, they are indeed expressing
their redeemed humanity in its most pristine sense-- for it is then that we
come closest to Christlikeness, as we emulate His constant orientation towards
the Father. But more than that, it is in Christ that our worship is dressed in
His righteousness (sullied and imperfect in nature though we may be) and thus
become an acceptable sacrifice to our Lord God (Rom.12:1).
We need to remember that in the New Testament’s emphasis
on worship being life-pervading and decentralized (Rom.12:1; Jn.4:21-24; 1
Cor.10:31), it is merely reflecting the reality of Christ’s earthly walk and
continued heavenly existence. He was
(and is) the True Worshiper for which the Father sought (Jn.4:23). He did (and does) all to the glory of
God.
And so Christ our Worship Leader (as James Torrance[12]
refers to Him) stands before us as we lift our praise to the Father; we
actually are allowed through the Spirit to participate in Christ’s ongoing
communion with the Father. This is true
not only because Jesus the perfect sacrifice bought our redemption with His blood;
but also because He always lives to make intercession for us (Heb. 7:25); and
because as Perfect Man He represents us in continuing worship before the
Father’s throne. A sort of “Protestant
transubstantiation” takes place as our feeble expressions of worship are taken
up by Christ and transformed by Him and subsumed into His perfect offering of
praise to the Father. Christ is a
Perfect Worshiper, and in Him we reap the benefits and blessings of joining in
Perfect Worship--because we are dressed in Christ and in His perfect
worship.
This
brings new meaning to the idea of “praying in Jesus' name” or “through Jesus
Christ,” when we understand that our worship and prayer is made part of His
own. Praying in His name is merely a recognition of that fact, that “He is the
Offerer of all our worship to God.”[13]
“Our worship of God takes place . . . through Jesus Himself as a worshipper of
God, and worshipper in our place. Unless that is kept central, the liturgical
language ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’ or even ‘through Jesus Christ our
Mediator and High Priest’ can easily degenerate into mere formulae to which we
attach our own self-erected worship without the actual mediation of Christ in
His vicarious humanity.[14]
“It
is in this light that we are surely to understand the Lord's Prayer, Our
Father, which He prayed as one of us and which He now puts into our mouth
that we may pray with Him to His Father and our Father, and to His God and our
God.”[15]
“Really to worship God,
therefore, is to worship with Christ who worships with us and for us, and to
worship with Him is to present His worship, the worship of His life which He
offered in our place and on our behalf, and in which though with Christ in the
one Spirit we are continually participant.”[16]
Implications for Our Worship
There are at least three
enormous implications which may be drawn from this fresh perspective on what
actually goes on in our worship services:
The first implication has
already been discussed: We dare not shortchange or downplay those portions
of the service where in fact Christ mediates our worshipful responses to the
Father and makes them part of His own.
This is a crucial part of Christ’s continuing mediatorial work; and the
Father is glorified no less by His Son’s living communion with Him in
expression of believers’ praise, than by the Son’s work of mediating His truth
to man. It is by no means a matter of
elevating man’s part above God’s; for it is only in Christ that man’s response
becomes whole and holy and acceptable.
“Christ mediates the word of God to man and the word of man to God, and
ministers the immeasurable love of God to man and the answering love of man to
God.”[17] But of course it all originates with the
Father and is all perfectly mediated by Christ, so God is glorified in and
through it all.
The second implication is that
our
worship does not need to be perfect.[18]
Ultimately there is nothing about the quality or excellence of our presentation
which makes the worship any more acceptable to God. Of course, one’s heart attitude is of great importance to God--and a
sincere heart of worship will indeed strive to offer to God’s one very best as
a means of glorifying the God of beauty.
But in the final analysis our
worship becomes acceptable to God because Christ offers it up a part of
His own worship to the Father.
“Our worship of God takes place . . . through Jesus
Himself as a worshiper of God, and worshiper in our place.”[19] That is why we can approach in
confidence (Heb. 10:19-22)—not because of the perfect choice of music or blend
of styles or quality of performance; not because we presume to come completely
devoid of impure motives or thoughts—but because we come in Christ: He stands in for us, as it were. “Through, with and in
Christ we turn away in penitent self-denial from our own acts of worship and
prayer in order to rest in the worship and prayer which our Savior has already
offered and continues to offer to the Father on our behalf. . . . We come to God with empty hands, stretching them out to receive what He
puts into them, and so draw near to worship the Father with no other oblation
than that of Christ Himself.”[20]
A the hymnist William How put it, “we give Thee but Thine own . . .” All that
we have to give Him to God in worship is what He has already given us in grace;
and above all what He has given us, what is “His own” preeminently, is Christ Himself.
The point is that the quality
(whatever that may mean) of our worship commends us to God no more than the
quality of our redemption does. We are
not on a performance basis on one area any more than in the other--praise God!
Rather it is Christ’s righteousness and Christ’s worship which is acceptable
and perfect. “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the
flesh?” (Gal.3:3). How easy it is to
ship in a sort of Pelagian approach to worship[21], and
forget that God must be sovereignly involved if we are to present anything at
all which will glorify Him. And we must
likewise beware of the idolatry of striving for excellence as an end in itself or for the sake of “good Taste.”[22]
It is not the excellence of
our worship, but the excellence of Christ
which makes our sacrifices of praise worthy and acceptable offerings!
The third implication is that
there is no one right style or form for worship. Jesus Christ our Worship Leader has taken
innumerable forms of worship across the centuries and across the world and made
them His own; He has been pleased to call men of “every tribe and tongue and
people and nation” (Rev. 5:9) His brethren (Heb. 2:11), and hence to take up
their expressions of praise into His own continuing and eternal communion with
the Father. That communion, and Christ’s
mediatorial role in drawing true believers in to join Him in that relationship
with the Father, are then constants of worship-- the true “regulative
principle,” if you will. “Worship and
prayer are . . . primarily forms of Christ’s vicarious worship and prayer
offered on behalf of all mankind in all ages.”[23] Because
all true worship is in reality the worship of and by Christ, who is “the same
yesterday, today, and forever,” (Heb. 13:8) the essence of worship never
changes.
The forms, the music, the prayers may be long or short,
complex or simple, traditional or contemporary or blended; as long as they are
sincerely offered up, there is an incredible latitude (short of overtly sinful
forms or styles) as to what materials our Worship Leader can draw into His
mediatorial act of worship. Like the loaves and fishes, our music and other
offerings are basic elements which the Master can choose to multiply to serve
His own purposes. He can transform all kinds of raw materials into a fragrant
aroma pleasing to the Father.
And so the message in our culture, and on every mission
field in every era, must never be an invitation to join a particular group, or
to dress a certain way, or to sing a set collection of songs—but must always
and ever be an invitation to trust Jesus
Christ and to worship the Father in
spirit and truth through Him. There is much which is subjective and cultural
about the practice of corporate worship in any age or place;[24] but the
role of Christ as Mediator and Leader of our worship never changes. “When
worship and prayer are objectively grounded in Christ in this way, we are free
to use and adapt transient forms of language and culture in our worship of God.
. . . Our worship and prayer are finally shaped and structured by the invariant
pattern of Christ’s mediatorial office.”[25] That
pattern consists of Christ’s mediating of God’s truth to the worshippers as
well as His mediating of their response back to the Father.[26]
The greatest compliment ever paid to me as a worship
leader (alas, only once or twice) was that I seemed to disappear, and only
Jesus could be seen. Were that were ever so! But in a sense that is always the reality. Jesus Christ is
not only present in our worship; He leads our worship. This transforming
truth should surely change the way we view our participation in worship, our
leadership in worship, our preparation for worship, and our esteem for worship.
Jesus Christ is our worship: our
Basis, our Means, our Leader, our Subject, our Strength, our Focus. “Worship
and prayer are not ways in which we express ourselves but ways in which we hold
up before the Father his beloved Son, take
refuge in his atoning sacrifice, and make that our only plea.”[27]
Perhaps we can now see more of the depths of Paul’s
familiar statement in Galatians 2:20, as applying “both to our new life in
Christ through Jesus, and to our new life of worship and prayer in Him”[28]:
“I have been crucified with
Christ; and it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me; and the life
which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me,
and delivered Himself up for me.”[29]
“Through Him, then,
let us continually offer up
a sacrifice of praise to God.”
(Hebrews 13:15)
from Reformation and Revival
© 2000 Reformation and Revival Ministries
[1] Even after the resurrection He could speak in this
way in a continued identification with His brethren (cf. Heb. 2:11): “I ascend
to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.” (John 20:17)
[2]
“Arianism tended to force a heretical gloss upon the concept of the
mediatorship of Christ, to which the Church became so sensitive that there was
a widespread reaction against it, with the result that the human priesthood and
mediation of Christ were pushed further and further into the background of
worship.” Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation (Grand
Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1975), pp. 198-99. He draws on the work of
Josef Jungmann, The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer.
[3] T.
Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation,
pp. 142, 202-4.
[4]James A. Torrance, Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace (Downers Grave IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1996), pp. 88-89.
[5] Ibid., pp. 15,17,20-21,43-67.
[6] The
appellation of Christ in Hebrews 3:1 as “the Apostle and High
Priest of our confession” may point to this two-way mediatorial ministry
of Christ: God to man, and man to God, respectively (T. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation, p. 210).
Hebrews 2:12 gives an even clearer picture of Christ's twofold mediating
ministry in worship:
“I will
proclaim Your name to My brethren,
[God to man]
In the midst of the congregation I will sing Your praise.” [man to God]
[7] T.
Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation,
p. 184.
[8] Ibid.,
p. 140.
[9] Ibid.,
p. 209.
[10] Actually this tendency has arisen from at least two
sources. One, as White points out, developed out of nineteenth-century
revivalism in this country, from the formula used successfully in camp meetings
and other evangelistic gatherings, where the speaker was indeed the main
attraction and all that went before was consciously intended to “warm up” the
audience. This approach was carried over (both consciously and unconsciously in
different places, it would seem) more or less intact in to the worship services
in what White calls the “Frontier” tradition of American Protestantism-- where
it is still alive and well in many churches! (James F. White, “The Missing
Jewel of the Evangelical Church” in Christian Worship in North America, A
Retrospective: 1955-95 [Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997], pp.
103-8)
The other strain comes from a quite
different direction, namely the Reformed tradition. Here the exposition of the
Scriptures has received due emphasis and honor, but sometimes to the extent
that “we neglect the rest of the worship service (sometimes demeaningly called
the preliminaries), and rest content, as the reformers never were, with
infrequent communion.” (Stephen Farris, “Reformed Identity and Reformed
Worship,” Reformed World 43:1&2 [Mar. & June 1993], p. 71)
Hageman points out that Zwingli banned all music whatsoever from worship, and
that were it not for Calvin instituting Psalm-singing, Reformed churches might
still have none! Hageman offers a reasonable rationale for its use: “What is
the proper place of music in a service of Reformed worship? To provide a
suitable opportunity for the congregation to respond to the Word of God.”
(Howard Hageman, “Can
Church
[11]White,
“The Missing Jewel,” pp. 108-9; John D. Witvliet, “At Play in the House of the
Lord,” Books & Culture Nov./Dec.
1998, p. 25. “The sermon in no way replaces God’s word read for its own sake. .
. . It is an amazing contrast to go from a Roman
Catholic Sunday Mass with three full lessons from Scripture plus a psalm to a
so-called ‘evangelical’ service with only a few verses read as a sermon text. .
. . This ‘when convenient’ use of Scripture in most evangelical services is
hardly different from similar use of Scripture in many liberal Protestant
churches.” (James F. White, “The Missing Jewel,” p. 108)
[12] Thus translating leitourgos in
Hebrews 8:2. James Torrance, Worship,
Community and the Tirune God of Grace, pp. 16, 63.
[13] T.
Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation,
p. 184.
[14] Ibid.,
p. 211.
[15] Ibid.,
p. 208.
[16] Ibid.,
p. 209.
[17] Ibid., p. 210.
[18] How easy it is for professionally trained
musicians to fall into this trap—especially those trained at secular
institutions, where excellence of performance is usually the ultimate goal.
[19] T. Torrance, Theology
in Reconciliation, p. 211.
[20] Ibid., p. 212.
[21] J.
Torrance, Worship, Community and the
Triune God of Grace, p. 20. (There he also refers to such worship as
“unitarian.”) Elsewhere he states that our worship can be “far more Pelagian
than anything in Rome ,
by its all too inclusive emphases on what we
do.” (“Covenant or Contract? A Study of the Theological Background of
Worship in Seventeenth-Century Scotland ,”
Scottish Journal of Theology 23
[1970]: 75)
[22] By no
means should this be taken as an argument against good music in worship, or
careful planning and purposeful for worship.
But these so easily take on a life of their own that we must always be
vigilant that the means toward the end of worship not becoming an end in itself.
See this author’s “Excellence in Worship: A
Means Rather than an End” (www.firstevan.org/music_for_worship.htm).
[23] T.
Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation,
p. 213.
[24] Calvin
himself addressed this issue: “The Master . . . did not will in outward
discipline and ceremonies to prescribe in detail what we ought to do (because
He foresaw that this depended upon the state of the times, and He did not deem
one form suitable for all ages). . . . Because He has taught nothing
specifically, and because these things are not necessary to salvation, and for
the upbuilding of the church ought to be variously accommodated to the customs
of each nation and age, it will be fitting (as the advantage of the church will
require) to change and abrogate traditional practices and to establish new
ones. Indeed, I admit that we ought not to charge into innovation rashly,
suddenly, for insufficient cause. But love will best judge what may hurt or
edify; and if we let love be our guide, all will be safe.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion [Philadelphia : Westminster
Press, 1960], 4:10:30 (p. 1208).
[25]T.Torrance,
Theology in Reconciliation, p. 213.
[26] These
two aspects of the dynamics of worship are sometimes referred to as revelation and response. See Gary Furr and Wilburn Price, The Dialogue of Worship: Creating Space for revelation and Response (Macon
GA: Smyth & Helwys, 1998).
[27]Thomas
F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1983) pp. 97-98.
[29] Christ
Himself comes to dwell in us through His Spirit, associating Himself with us as
worshippers of God, while remaining our Mediator, Advocate and High Priest in
the heavenly sanctuary, and associating us with Himself in assimilating our
prayer to His which has already ascended to the Father and continues to avail
for us in His presence. Ibid., p. 182,
drawing on the writings of the fifth-century Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on the Gospel of John).
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