The fight for God’s favorite kind of worship

Those who didn’t grow up in the church or don’t currently attend a local place of worship may be surprised to learn that not a few followers of Jesus are prone to fight about what style of music is appropriate for praising Him. We veteran church-goers are easily sucked in to what some call “worship wars,” debating whether the musical style of this or that generation is better suited to singing our love songs to God.  So, what type of worship does God like?

Consider Genesis 4:1–26, the story of Cain and Abel. Each man brought an offering to worship God according to his vocation. Cain brought grain. Abel brought meat. God rejected Cain’s offering while He accepted Abel’s. Cain killed Abel in a jealous rage, violently ending the world’s first “worship war.”

Some have suggested that God’s rejection of Cain’s worship had to do with the kind of offering he brought, while Abel seemed to be accepted because he offered the right kind of worship. They argue that only a blood sacrifice is pleasing to God, so God rejected Cain because he worshipped the wrong way.  But this took place long before God had given any specific instructions about sacrifices, and the word used in Genesis 4 is “offering,” not “sacrifice.”  When the Lord did lay down guidelines later in the Law, those directives allowed for first fruit offerings from field and flock (Leviticus 2:1-16; Numbers 18:14-17).

No, God accepted Abel’s gift over Cain’s because Abel offered his gift to God out of a heart full of faith. The kind of worship that is acceptable to God is faith-full worship. The author of Hebrews explains: “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks” (Hebrews 11:4).

Abel’s offering of worship was more acceptable, not because of its style or kind, but because of its source and character. It overflowed from a heart that trusts and loves the God it worships.  The source of God’s favorite kind of worship is a heart that embraces Him by faith and therefore expresses that faith in a passionate vertical love for God.  But because “faith expresses itself through love,” God’s favorite worship style also shows its character in compassionate horizontal relationships with other people (Galatians 5:6).

Cain made plain the condition of his heart and the character of his worship by the way he treated his brother after the worship service was over. He was furious, refused to heed God’s warning, and killed his fellow worshiper. The quality of our worship can be measured by the quality of our relationships with fellow worshipers. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:20-21).

C. S. Lewis tells a story from his own life about how we make plain the true heart behind our so-called worship by the way we treat the brothers and sisters with whom we worship.

When I first became a Christian . . . I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls . . . I disliked very much their hymns which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit. (God in the Dock, pp. 61-62, bold emphasis mine).

Lewis looked past what he believed were inferior hymns and saw the superior hearts that sang them, hearts overflowing with devotion to God and benefit to people, whose boots he was not fit to clean.

Cruciform worship
The world’s first worship war and Abel’s faith-full worship teach us a timeless lesson about God’s preferred style of worship. God likes cruciform worship.  God wants worshipers who are so full of the love of Christ that we overflow with love vertically back to God and horizontally out to our fellow worshipers, so that the offerings of our lips and lives take the shape of the cross.

God’s favorite kind of worship is one that transcends personal tastes, crosses generational boundaries and never goes out of style.  The kind of worship God commends comes from hearts that embrace the cross of Christ and express that faith in love for God and others (Galatians 5:6).  If God’s people are going to fight about worship, let us “wage the good warfare” and “fight the good fight” for worship that is full of faith (1 Timothy 1:18, 6:12).

JIMMY DAVIS is an Associate Pastor at Metrocrest Presbyterian Church in Carrollton, TX, an Associate Editor for the Worldview Church, and maintains the Cruciform Life Blog and can be followed on Twitter at @cruciformlife.

Suggested Colson Center Store resource: Christ Centered Worship by Brian Chappell.

Suggested Article: “The Real Worship War” at ChristianityToday.com explores the connection between our worship of God and love for others by examining the link between worship and justice.