Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 22

We have seen in this series of articles that the Evangelical Church of today has fixated on sentimental, experiential, overly-romanticized worship songs, to the detriment of doctrinal and objective worship music. We have examined the historical and theological developments that has led to this imbalance in modern worship, tracing the rise of experiential emotionalism as the evidence of conversion, all tied to an escapist anti-Incarnational view which sees the spiritual and physical aspects of the world as being opposed to one another.

We then spent some time considering the Implications of the central Biblical truths of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ for our view and exercise of worship, Implications which emphasized the facts that our worship should be both physical as well as spiritual, embodying continuity as well as change, and recognizing that both past and future should equally dictate the parameters of the shape of how and why God wishes to be worshipped.

Recently, we began to examine the implications of the Bible's glimpses into the Heavenly Worship (Is 6; Ezek 1 and 10; Heb 12:22-24; Rev 4-5) and its interior logic for redressing the imbalance in today's Evangelical worship, seeing that the Church actually worships in Heaven spiritually, beyond (yet within) time and space through the Ascended Humanity of Christ, Who is seated at the Father's Right Hand.

The passages in Revelation all describe, as we've seen, the same Place also written of in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Hebrews: the Courts of Heaven in the Throne-room of God, where the Heavenly Worship eternally takes place in His Presence. These Heavenly glimpses in the book of Revelation, which is one long vision of that worship, contain songs used to praise God by the angels, the elders, and the other redeemed saints, and, like everything else in Scripture, these songs have much to teach us, especially as to the focus and content of our worship.

Last week, we looked at three of the songs sung in the worship of God, the texts of Revelation 5:8-10, 14:1-3; and 15:2-4, noting that all of these, in balanced fashion, gratefully praised God for Who He is, by recounting the things He has done redemptively for His People, and by recounting what He has done subjectively for His People (i.e., what His action has effected from the perspective, and in the experience of, the Redeemed themselves). This last, of course, is what has dominated the perspective of modern contemporary worship to the near-exclusion of the other categories of worship demonstrated in the Heavenly Worship. This certainly demonstrates that, though these categories include songs from a subjectively thankful perspective, these must be balanced by those which thank God for both Who He is and what He has done objectively for believers. 

This is, at the least, an implication that only one-third of our song of worship are to be subjective, as well as demonstrating, as the songs in Revelation do, that the categories can meaningfully be intertwined (indeed, a danger of not including objective doctrinal elements in our music is that our experience of redemption becomes either dislodged from the very objective content that gives it meaning, and/or that it denigrates the importance of the Objective Acts of Redemption Which are the ground of our subjective experience in the first place, as we've seen in past articles in this series).

In the last article, we also looked at Revelation 14:1-3, and began to consider the songs in Revelation that are not sung by all the worshippers present in the Heavenly Service, and concluded that that reality implied a justification of both what are generally thought of as performance pieces and instrumental pieces in Christian worship.

We turn now to a consideration of a number of passages in the book of Revelation in addition to Revelation 14: 3, the song of the 144,000 which no one else could sing. Revelation 4:10 and 11:16-18 record the worship of the 24 Elders alone. Revelation 4:8 records the worship of the Cherubim, the 4 Living Creatures, alone. Revelation 15:2-4 records the song of those martyred by the Beast for their faithfulness alone. Revelation 7:9-10 records the song of a great multitude of the Redeemed from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue, but not by the Cherubim or the 24 Elders. Yet Revelation 5:9-10 records a song sung by the Cherubim and 24 Elders alone, joined in 5:11-12 records the song as further joined by "ten thousands time ten thousands, and thousands of thousands" of angels, a song to which every creature on earth and under the earth and in the sea responds in worship in Revelation 5:13, to which only the 4 Cherubim alone respond with the Amen. Revelation 7:11-12 records the concerted worship of the Cherubim, 24 Elders, and all the myriads of angels around the Throne.

The perspective of each of these groups of worshippers (Cherubim, 24 Elders, angels, martyrs, the entire Church, and even all creatures) are represented in songs and worship expressions particular to each group, in various combinations, and even altogether. The perspectives of each of these groups is expressed, takes front and center, intertwine to support each other in varied combinations, and even join together in harmonious accord, all of this, the varied songs and worship expressions in differing and concerted perspectives, serving a unified worship in God's Presence.

This complex and varied, yet unified, worship practice which defines the Patterns of Heavenly Worship in which the Church participates through Christ (Hebrews 10:19-22; 12:22-24) is reflective of the God Who is the Focus of our worship, the Triune God Who is Both Unified (One God in Essence) and Diverse (Three Persons Who Each differ from Each Other in Function and Perspective).

This, of course, is deliberate, since God Himself defines the Patterns of His Heavenly Worship, and the varied perspectives of the different worshipping groups reflect the Differing Perspectives and Functions of the Father, Son, and Spirit, which intertwine and interpenetrate, while all the worshipping groups are yet unified in one overarching purpose, the worship of God, reflecting the Unity of God's Essence and Substance.

This truth should be embodied in our worship today by expressions (songs and verbal responses and actions) which reflect the varied perspectives of those who have been redeemed, the varied perspectives on what the Lord has done (e.g., Who He is, What He has done objectively, and What He has done for us subjectively, as we've seen in past articles), all in balanced perspective to represent the Triune God even in the forms of our worship here on earth.

For additional teaching, visit my patreon page.

Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 21

We have seen in this series that the Evangelical Church of today has fixated on sentimental, experiential, overly-romanticized worship songs, to the detriment of doctrinal and objective worship music. We have examined the historical and theological developments that has led to this imbalance in modern worship, tracing the rise of experiential emotionalism as the evidence of conversion, all tied to an escapist anti-Incarnational view which sees the spiritual and physical aspects of the world as being opposed to one another.

We then spent some time considering the Implications of the central Biblical truths of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ for our view and exercise of worship, Implications which emphasized the facts that our worship should be both physical as well as spiritual, embodying continuity as well as change, and recognizing that both past and future should equally dictate the parameters of the shape of how and why God wishes to be worshipped.

Recently, we began to examine the implications of the Bible's glimpses into the Heavenly Worship (Isaiah 6; Ezekiel 1 and 10; Hebrews 12:22-24; Revelation 4-5) and it's interior logic for redressing the imbalance in today's Evangelical worship, seeing that the Church actually worships in Heaven spiritually, beyond (yet within) time and space through the Ascended Humanity of Christ, Who is seated at the Father's Right Hand.

The passages in Revelation all describe, as we've seen, the same Place also written of in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Hebrews: the Courts of Heaven in the Throne-room of God, where the Heavenly Worship eternally takes place in His Presence. These Heavenly glimpses in the book of Revelation, which is one long vision of that worship, contain songs used to praise God by the angels, the elders, and the other redeemed saints, and, like everything else in Scripture, these songs have much to teach us, especially as to the focus and content of our worship.

Last week, we looked at three of the songs sung in the worship of God, the texts of Revelation 5:8-10, 14:1-3; and 15:2-4, noting that all of these, in balanced fashion, gratefully praised God for Who He is, by recounting the things He has done redemptively for His People, and by recounting what He has done subjectively for His People (i.e., what His action has effected from the perspective, and in the experience of, the Redeemed themselves). This last, of course, is what has dominated the perspective of modern contemporary worship to the near-exclusion of the other categories of worship demonstrated in the Heavenly Worship. This certainly demonstrates that, though these categories include songs from a subjectively thankful perspective, these must be balanced by those which thank God for both Who He is and what He has done objectively for believers. 

This is, at the least, an implication that only one-third of our song of worship are to be subjective, as well as demonstrating, as the songs in Revelation do, that the categories can meaningfully be intertwined (indeed, a danger of not including objective doctrinal elements in our music is that our experience of redemption becomes either dislodged from the very objective content that gives it meaning, and/or that it denigrates the importance of the Objective Acts of Redemption Which are the ground of our subjective experience in the first place, as we've seen in past articles in this series).

We also looked at the song not recorded in Revelation 14:1-3, sung only by the 144,000, the only ones who could learn it, which taught us that music is important to God in the worship formation of His People, even in the distinct formation of specific individuals and groups, and that God Himself composes music for worship purposes (since He undoubtedly composed the Song of the 144,000, as no person who was not one of them could even learn, much less compose, the song). We might also draw the conclusion from the inclusion of this song that only some could sing, that there is a place in worship for what are now known as performance pieces, song offerings which, though meant primarily as an offering to the Lord, nonetheless are also intended (as when a minister prays on behalf of a gathered congregation) to be a representative offering on behalf of all those present, which perforce must be observed and heard if it is to be assented to and appreciated by those not singing it for it to be a meaningful representative offering (similarly to the minister's prayer on behalf of gathered worshippers).

This (though not directly germane to our observations on the failure of the perspective and content of much modern worship music) also speaks to the practice of instrumental worship offerings (or even to the inclusion of instrumental passages in our worship songs, correspondent to traditional "organ interludes and preludes" in hymn arrangements) as legitimate, since, if there are legitimate songs which can be appreciated and made part of our corporate worship which are only sung by specific groups of the congregation, the principle certainly seems to be applicable to instrumental musical expressions as well.

This would also give expression to obedience to the Biblical commands such as those given in Psalm 150:3-5, which says: “Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; Praise Him with the lute and harp! Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes! Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with clashing cymbals!” 

Again, though not directly pertinent to the series focus, we should take note that not only is instrumental musical expression commanded (and is thus integral to the worship in Heaven in which the Church is to take part by emulating its patterns on earth), but loud and rhythmic instrumental expression is to be a part of our worship. This, of course, is a stark refutation of those who oppose electric guitar and drums in worship. (And don't even get me started on the admonition in Psalm 150:4 to praise the Lord in dance...). Selah.

The existence in the Heavenly Worship of different assigned songs (or parts of songs) not only reinforces the concepts we looked at earlier concerning "performance pieces" as offerings, but also illustrates deeper truths as well. It is to those implications we will, Lord willing, turn in the next article.

For additional teaching on Worship, visit my patreon page.

Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for This Urgent Time

By Dawn, Marva J.

Buy on Amazon

Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 20

We have seen in this series of posts that the Evangelical Church of today has fixated on sentimental, experiential, overly-romanticized worship songs, to the detriment of doctrinal and objective worship music. We have examined the historical and theological developments that has led to this imbalance in modern worship, tracing the rise of experiential emotionalism as the evidence of conversion, all tied to an escapist anti-Incarnational view which sees the spiritual and physical aspects of the world as being opposed to one another.

We then spent some time considering the Implications of the central Biblical truths of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ for our view and exercise of worship, Implications which emphasized the facts that our worship should be both physical as well as spiritual, embodying continuity as well as change, and recognizing that both past and future should equally dictate the parameters of the shape of how and why God wishes to be worshipped.

Last post, we began to examine the implications of the Bible's glimpses into the Heavenly Worship (Isaiah 6; Ezekiel 1 and 10; Hebrews 12:22-24; Revelation 4-5) and its interior logic for redressing the imbalance in today's Evangelical worship, seeing that the Church actually worships in Heaven spiritually, beyond (yet within) time and space through the Ascended Humanity of Christ, Who is seated at the Father's Right Hand.

 The passages in Revelation all describe, as we've seen, the same Place also written of in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Hebrews: the Courts of Heaven in the Throne-room of God, where the Heavenly Worship eternally takes place in His Presence. These Heavenly glimpses in the book of Revelation, which is one long vision of that worship, contain songs used to praise God by the angels, the elders, and the other redeemed saints, and, like everything else in Scripture, these songs have much to teach us, especially as to the focus and content of our worship.

The first song listed as such is in Revelation 5:8-10:

And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are You to take the scroll and to open its seals, for You were slain, and by Your Blood You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth." 

The second song recorded in Revelation is not actually recorded, as Revelation 14:1-3 tells us:

Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. They sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures, and the elders; and no one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth.

The other song recorded is in Revelation 15: 2-4:

And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who have the victory over the beast, over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, "Great and amazing are Your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of the nations! Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are Holy. For all nations shall come and worship before You, for Your judgments have been manifested." 

The song not recorded in Rev 14: 1-3, sung only by the 144,000, the only ones who could learn it, still teaches us that music is important to God in the worship formation of His People, even in the distinct formation of specific individuals and groups, and that God Himself composes music for worship purposes (since He undoubtedly composed the Song of the 144,000, as no person who was not one of them could even learn, much less compose, the song. There is more, of course, to be learned here, but not as it relates to our topic, so much, so we're passing over this (but, hey, it is a song, so, for completion's sake, I included it...).

Turning to Revelation 5:8-10 and 15: 2-4, we note that both the songs recorded there, the first sung by angels and the 24 Elders, and the second by saints who had victory over the Beast, covered the same three basic categories: (1) praising God objectively for Who He Is, (2) praising God objectively for What He Has Done, and (3) the Effects He has had by His Being and Acts.

The first category, the worship of God for Who He is, is addressed in Rev 5:9 by telling the Lord Jesus (the Lamb) that "You are Worthy," and in Rev 15:3, God is called "Lord God Almighty," and "King of the Saints," and "Lord" (a title of lordship) in Rev 15:4.

The second category, praising God for What He has done objectively, is addressed in Rev 5:9 as Jesus the Lamb is worshipped because "You were slain, and have redeemed...to God" people from "every tribe and tongue and nation," having made those redeemed saints "kings and priests to...God" (Rev 5:10), which also recognizes  that those saints are also enabled by Jesus' Redemption to "reign on the earth."

In Rev 15:3, God is hymned for being a Performer of "Great and Marvelous...Works," for His Ways being "Just and True," and in Rev 15:4 for Alone being Holy, and having manifested His Judgments.

The third category, praising Him for the Effects He has had by His Being and Acts, is seen in Rev 5:9 as Christ is lauded for His Worthiness (via His Redemptive Sacrifice) "to take the scroll, and to open its seals," and in Rev 5:10 for having "made us kings and priests to our God," and effecting the redeemed saints' "reign on the earth.," which Actions also affect us subjectively, since we are the recipients personally of those Saving Acts. 

In Rev 15:3, the fact that His Works are seen as "Great and Marvelous," and His Ways as "Just and True" speak to the effect that they have subjectively upon the worshippers, who are able to discern these qualities about the Lord's Actions and be driven to delineate those qualities in their paean of worship in His Presence. These Effects can be further seen in the lyrics of Rev 15:4, where the singers also point out that His Works and Ways wrought through Jesus the Lamb will result in the fear of the Lord and the glorification of His Name by the nations, who further are seen resultantly as coming to worship before the Lord because of the Manifestation of His Judgments.

 I've gone into such detail here because these paradigmatic worship models enacted in the Heavenly Worship should inform the music we use in our services, since we actually are taking part in the Heavenly Service at the same time we are gathered to worship, as we've seen. The three emphases embodied in the lyrical content of these hymns form the basis of traditional lyrics of the Church in ages past, which emphases, as we've just seen, are found side by side with each other in the hymn-texts.

There is justification here for some subjectivity lyrically, but those subjective aspects are intertwined with a more objective detailing of Who God Is and What He Has Done. In other word, there is a balance here, which is frequently missing in today's worship music perspectives. We'll look more at the meaning of the worship texts in the Book of Revelation in the next post, Lord willing.

For more on Worship and Art, visit my patreon. 

For a helpful book on this subject:

Worship Old and New

By Webber, Robert E.

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Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 19

We have seen in this series of articles that the Evangelical Church of today has fixated on sentimental, experiential, overly-romanticized worship songs, to the detriment of doctrinal and objective worship music. We have examined the historical and theological developments that has led to this imbalance in modern worship, tracing the rise of experiential emotionalism as the evidence of conversion, all tied to an escapist anti-Incarnational view which sees the spiritual and physical aspects of the world as being opposed to one another.

We then spent some time considering the Implications of the central Biblical truths of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ for our view and exercise of worship, Implications which emphasized the facts that our worship should be both physical as well as spiritual, embodying continuity as well as change, and recognizing that both past and future should equally dictate the parameters of the shape of how and why God wishes to be worshipped.

We turn now to begin a consideration of what we can learn about healing the current imbalance in our worship practice from the implications of Scripture's Revealed glimpses into Heavenly Worship and the interior logic of what the Bible presents as descriptions of our worship together.           

The Bible tells us that we worship spiritually in the Presence of Christ with all the saints beyond the end of our time, yet still in our time, on the earth, yet also, simultaneously, in heaven. We see that Hebrews 12:22-24 tells us:  

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.”

This was written to a church community to be read to them during the sermon-time of the worship service, and it described their position together during worship. The Spirit tells them that they are in the Presence of God and Christ, and of hosts of angels decked out for joyous celebration, as well as "the general assembly and church of the firstborn" and "the spirits of just men made perfect." This gives us a clue as to what beyond the natural is going on here.

The spirits of "just men made perfect" can only mean those who have already died, e.g., dead people. Furthermore, the "general assembly and Church of the Firstborn who are registered in Heaven" refers not only to those Christians who were alive at the time of their worship, but to allthose whose names are written in the Book of Life (Rev 3:5; 20:12-15; Phil 4:3), to all those who will ever be members of the Church across time and space. As the Early Church (and the Church for centuries after) understood, this passage teaches that a congregation of the Church, though worshipping in a particular time and place, nevertheless, by the Power of the Spirit of God, simultaneously is drawn into the Throne-room of God Which both transcends and interpenetrates all time and history, and worships spiritually with all the Church across time and space at the accomplished end of time.

This frequently sounds hincky to modern theologically-challenged Christians, but I would point out that Eph 2: 4-6 tells us:

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”

This means that, even at present, Christians are already spiritually present in Christ, Who is seated at the Right Hand of the Father in Heaven (referred to as well in Col. 2:10-13). We are seated in Him, both present in our bodies on earth and spiritually in Christ in Heaven. 

We have access to God through Christ into the Throne-room of Heaven, as Hebrews 10:19-20 tells us:

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh...”

Through Jesus' Ascended Humanity, we come before the Throne of Grace (Heb. 4:16) to worship with our brothers and sisters across space and time.

This is why, when we gather to worship, the Holy Spirit fuses Heaven and Earth, so that, as Jesus told us in Matt. 18:20, He is with us in our corporate worship (in the context of public worship for Church discipline, no less, cf. v. 18-19):

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

The Church worships both on earth and in Heaven simultaneously (and Scripture gives us pictures of the worship in the Heavenly Throne-room in Isaiah 6; Ezekiel 1 and 10; and the entire Book of Revelation, especially chapters 4-5, which we'll look at directly). These truths have massive implications for how we are to understand and embody our worship together. Let's keep these things in mind as we consider those implications in future weeks.

For additional teaching on worship visit my patreon.

Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 18

We’ve seen in this series that contemporary worship music has become dominated by songs modeled on romantic, experiential, subjective musical expressions. We’ve further seen that, though such songs are a legitimate stream of Biblical worship expression, they have been historical and Biblical worship models (such as the Psalms or the Book of Revelation) held in balance with objective, doctrinal song content.

We then began to investigate how and why such an imbalance has occurred in arriving at such an experiential overemphasis. We began by seeing that the deep alienation between God and mankind engendered by the Fall leads men to see the world dualistically, as split between the “pure” spiritual realm and the flawed and imperfect physical world, a view which is a result of the simultaneous and inescapable knowledge that men have rebelled against their Holy Creator while they attempt to suppress that inescapable knowledge (Rom 1:18-32).

This split was institutionalized in Platonic thought, which hugely influenced monastic thought, which shaped to a certain extent the way the Medievals viewed Reality, resulting in a Late Medieval and Renaissance perspective which located emotion and instinct in a "religious" zone, while reason and normative life were seen as belonging to the "secular" sphere. 

Christian reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment fused with Victorian and pietist viewpoints to produce a feminized, experientially-fixated Evangelicalism whose worship music institutionalized these attitudes for that branch of the Church. This was all the easier because there is a legitimate strand of subjective and emotional aspects included in Biblical worship paradigms (for instance, in Psalms 51, 56, 3, 6, etc.).

We also saw, as well, that the Tri-Unity of God speaks to all aspects of the life of the Image-Bearers of God, humanity, including their worship of the Lord, which is to enact both objective and subjective thanksgiving, and to express both change and continuity as the Church gathers before her Maker and Redeemer.

There are further implications for worship in the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus, Who, as the Scriptures and the Creeds teach, was both Fully God and Fully Man simultaneously. As we've seen before, this Fact has massive implications for the expressions of continuity and change in our worship. His Simultaneously Divine and Human Person, as we've seen, means both that our worship is to be both physical and spiritual (as He Himself is both Spiritual in His Divinity as well as His Created Human Spirit, and Physical in His Body) and that our worship should enact both continuity (as Jesus is Eternally Unchanging in His Divinity) and change (as He is also Human, having undergone human mutability until His Resurrection), so that, in both these implications, our worship correctly images the Natures and Persons of Christ.

This last implication, that continuity and change should shape our worship, we've also seen as a corollary implication of the Holy Trinity (Continuity in the Undifferentiated Unity of the Essence of God and Change in the Diverse and Variegated Perspectives of the Three Persons of God). These Aspects of the Trinity and the Incarnation are, of course, to be held in balance in our worship, just as they are in the Reality of the Trinitarian Godhead and the Incarnate Lord Jesus. This perspective helps us to hold a balanced value of both continuity and change in our lives and worship.

Last week, we saw that the Lord Jesus, though Fully God, was also Man simultaneously, and that, in His Humanity, He experienced growth, but in His Perfect and Complete Divinity, had no need of growth, again demonstrating the continuity and change which should characterize our worship of Him.

Every aspect of the Persons and Attributes of the Creator Who has become our Incarnate Redeemer, and Who is the Object and Ground of our worship, has continuing implications for the form and structure of the corporate expression we owe to the Lord. We have seen that, both in the Economy of the Interrelationships of the Persons of the Holy Triune God, and in the Two Natures of the One Person of Christ Jesus, there are Aspects Which correspond to human continuity and change, to past and future, to growth and development in the realm of time.

We've seen the influence of these Creedal Aspects of the Lord in any number of areas relative to our worship in past articles; those Aspects also directly impact the type of songs and music utilized in our assemblies in His Presence. As we've noted before, our worship should reflect in all its varied elements Who He Is and What He has done; this is, of course, equally true for music.

Unlike God, of course, we don't experience all of time simultaneously, and must structure our actions, as the Lord Jesus did in His Human Nature, across time. In our worship music, we can do so symbolically and actively by the very songs we utilize. Older songs and hymns (from across the history of God's Old and New Covenant People) both embody and remind us of the Ways that the Lord has interacted with and upheld His People across the ages. Current/contemporary songs record and celebrate how God is presently involved with us today. Finally, new songs, ones which are being composed at present and are yet to be written point to the Surety of His Love and Promise in days and years to come.

These together communicate the Presence and Actions of a Lord Who has been, is, and will be intimately involved with His Church. The diversity of expressions musically, lyrically, and perspectivally remind the worshippers that they are part of a People wrought by the Hand and Will of God across time past and into the future, a musical collation of testimonies which also bears witness before the Face of God that we recognize that He is the Same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8). Our music must bear witness to the Church, the world, and the Lord of Who He is, not only with what it says, but with what it expresses symbolically and historically.

Join us for the current teaching series on patreon, Apologetics.

Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 17

We’ve seen in this series that contemporary worship music has become dominated by songs modeled on romantic, experiential, subjective musical expressions. We’ve further seen that, though such songs are a legitimate stream of Biblical worship expression, they have been historical and Biblical worship models (such as the Psalms or the Book of Revelation) held in balance with objective, doctrinal song content.

We then began to investigate how and why such an imbalance has occurred in arriving at such an experiential overemphasis. We began by seeing that the deep alienation between God and mankind engendered by the Fall leads men to see the world dualistically, as split between the “pure” spiritual realm and the flawed and imperfect physical world, a view which is a result of the simultaneous and inescapable knowledge that men have rebelled against their Holy Creator while they attempt to suppress that inescapable knowledge (Rom 1:18-32).

This split was institutionalized in Platonic thought, which hugely influenced monastic thought, which shaped to a certain extent the way the Medievals viewed Reality, resulting in a Late Medieval and Renaissance perspective which located emotion and instinct in a "religious" zone, while reason and normative life were seen as belonging to the "secular" sphere.

Christian reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment fused with Victorian and pietist viewpoints to produce a feminized, experientially-fixated Evangelicalism whose worship music institutionalized these attitudes for that branch of the Church. This was all the easier because there is a legitimate strand of subjective and emotional aspects included in Biblical worship paradigms (for instance, in Psalms 51, 56, 3, 6, etc.).

We also saw, as well, that the Tri-Unity of God speaks to all aspects of the life of the Image-Bearers of God, humanity, including their worship of the Lord, which is to enact both objective and subjective thanksgiving, and to express both change and continuity as the Church gathers before her Maker and Redeemer.

There are further implications for worship in the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus, Who, as the Scriptures and the Creeds teach, was both Fully God and Fully Man simultaneously. As we've seen before, this Fact has massive implications for the expressions of continuity and change in our worship. His Simultaneously Divine and Human Person, as we've seen, means both that our worship is to be both physical and spiritual (as He Himself is both Spiritual in His Divinity as well as His Created Human Spirit, and Physical in His Body) and that our worship should enact both continuity (as Jesus is Eternally Unchanging in His Divinity) and change (as He is also Human, having undergone human mutability until His Resurrection), so that, in both these implications, our worship correctly images the Natures and Persons of Christ.

This last implication, that continuity and change should shape our worship, we've also seen as a corollary implication of the Holy Trinity (Continuity in the Undifferentiated Unity of the Essence of God and Change in the Diverse and Variegated Perspectives of the Three Persons of God). These Aspects of the Trinity and the Incarnation are, of course, to be held in balance in our worship, just as they are in the Reality of the Trinitarian Godhead and the Incarnate Lord Jesus. This perspective helps us to hold a balanced value of both continuity and change in our lives and worship.

Last week, we saw that the Lord Jesus, though Fully God, was also Man simultaneously, and that, in His Humanity, He experienced growth, but in His Perfect and Complete Divinity, had no need of growth, again demonstrating the continuity and change which should characterize our worship of Him.

His Humanity not only experienced change, but grew to a particular point in time, when Christ, having lived a Full Human Life, offered It on the Cross for His People, and resurrected to change no more (as Hebrews 13: 8 tells us). Thus, His Earthly Life was headed toward a particular goal, a Work to which Jesus was called, and which, as He told us, He fully accomplished (John 17:1-4).

The Accomplished Work of Christ was itself aimed at another end: the Apocalypse and Restoration of all things, the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Renewal of the Heavens and the Earth (Eph 2: 4-7; Rom 8:19-23; Rev 21:1-5). Without Christ's Accomplished Work, the end-goal of history would not have been accomplished. 

The Bible tells us that we worship spiritually in the Presence of Christ with all the saints beyond the end of our time (Heb 12:22-24; Matt 18:20): our worship together should reflect the fact both that we worship in space and time, and that we worship spiritually simultaneously at the accomplished end of time, as those who follow the Christ Who both moved toward a Godly Goal and accomplished it. Our worship should always, again, reflect in emphasis and form the One we worship and all that He accomplished.

Every Aspect of the Incarnation of Christ and of the Triune Creator have implications for every aspect of our worship, and this includes the music (in both form and content) which we use to praise Him. The majority of our modern worship music ignores these truths.

For additional teaching on worship visit my patreon page.

Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 16

We’ve seen in this series that contemporary worship music has become dominated by songs modeled on romantic, experiential, subjective musical expressions. We’ve further seen that, though such songs are a legitimate stream of Biblical worship expression, they have been historical and Biblical worship models (such as the Psalms or the Book of Revelation) held in balance with objective, doctrinal song content.

We then began to investigate how and why such an imbalance has occurred in arriving at such an experiential overemphasis. We began by seeing that the deep alienation between God and mankind engendered by the Fall leads men to see the world dualistically, as split between the “pure” spiritual realm and the flawed and imperfect physical world, a view which is a result of the simultaneous and inescapable knowledge that men have rebelled against their Holy Creator while they attempt to suppress that inescapable knowledge (Rom 1:18-32).

This split was institutionalized in Platonic thought, which hugely influenced monastic thought, which shaped to a certain extent the way the Medievals viewed Reality, resulting in a Late Medieval and Renaissance perspective which located emotion and instinct in a "religious" zone, while reason and normative life were seen as belonging to the "secular" sphere.

Christian reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment fused with Victorian and pietist viewpoints to produce a feminized, experientially-fixated Evangelicalism whose worship music institutionalized these attitudes for that branch of the Church. This was all the easier because there is a legitimate strand of subjective and emotional aspects included in Biblical worship paradigms (for instance, in Psalms 51, 56, 3, 6, etc.).

We also saw, as well, that the Tri-Unity of God speaks to all aspects of the life of the Image-Bearers of God, humanity, including their worship of the Lord, which is to enact both objective and subjective thanksgiving, and to express both change and continuity as the Church gathers before her Maker and Redeemer.

There are further implications for worship in the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus, Who, as the Scriptures and the Creeds teach, was both Fully God and Fully Man simultaneously. As we've seen before, this Fact has massive implications for the expressions of continuity and change in our worship. His Simultaneously Divine and Human Person, as we've seen, means both that our worship is to be both physical and spiritual (as He Himself is both Spiritual in His Divinity as well as His Created Human Spirit, and Physical in His Body) and that our worship should enact both continuity (as Jesus is Eternally Unchanging in His Divinity) and change (as He is also Human, having undergone human mutability until His Resurrection), so that, in both these implications, our worship correctly images the Natures and Persons of Christ.

This last implication, that continuity and change should shape our worship, we've also seen as a corollary implication of the Holy Trinity (Continuity in the Undifferentiated Unity of the Essence of God and Change in the Diverse and Variegated Perspectives of the Three Persons of God). These Aspects of the Trinity and the Incarnation are, of course, to be held in balance in our worship, just as they are in the Reality of the Trinitarian Godhead and the Incarnate Lord Jesus. This perspective helps us to hold a balanced value of both continuity and change in our lives and worship.

In the Lord Jesus' Incarnation, in His Humanity, He experienced growth, as Luke tells us in his Gospel (2:40). Jesus had no need to grow in His Divinity, Which had never changed from eternity; however, in His Humanity, Jesus did grow, and was "perfected," (Heb 5:9; 7:28), not in a moral sense, because, as an UnFallen Man, He was Sinless (Heb 4:15; 1 Peter 2:21-22; 2 Cor 5:21), but rather in terms of being fitted to offer a full human life to atone for our sins (the Greek word teliotes, which means something like "to be made mature" or "to be brought to maturity" or "to be perfectly fitted for a designed purpose," is used of Christ throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews).

This was a process which took time, occurring across the Life of Jesus, and which prepared Him to be our Savior. We rightly value not only His Incarnation and Birth (in Advent and Christmas), but also His Death and Resurrection (in Lent and Easter), as both Poles of His Life, the Perfect and yet still Immature Potential of Christ in His Humanity at Birth, as well as His Fully Mature and Completely Fulfilled Human Actuality in His Passion, Resurrection, and Ascended Rule from the Father's Right Hand.

Thus, our seasonal worship reflects what should also be true of our corporate worship Sunday to Sunday, that we worship not only the State in Which Jesus was born, but also the State in Which He died, and into Which He has been Resurrected to rule, States Which represent Continuity (His Original Immature Human State) and Change (His Fully Matured Human State).

Besides this, the Fact that Christ Jesus is Simultaneously Both the Unchanging God and the Humanity Which underwent Change and Growth means, again, and on a further level, that He also, in the Difference between the two Natures of His One Incarnate Person, embodies continuity and change, again a reality which should be reflected in our corporate worship of the Lord Jesus.

Once again, this underscores the importance of our worship (including, of course, our worship forms, such as our songs and music) reflecting both continuity and change in balance (as Christ is balanced in His Simultaneously Divine and Human Natures in One Person), so that our worship reflects and balances both the continuity of worship expressions from the past and the change of new worship expressions from the present. This practice (which should be reflected and embodied in our worship music) will faithfully speak to the worshipper as to the Lord Jesus' Incarnational State and Redemptive Work, and symbolically represent that State and Work in the Presence of the God Whom we worship.

Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 15

We’ve seen in this series that contemporary worship music has become dominated by songs modeled on romantic, experiential, subjective musical expressions. We’ve further seen that, though such songs are a legitimate stream of Biblical worship expression, they have been historical and Biblical worship models (such as the Psalms or the Book of Revelation) held in balance with objective, doctrinal song content.

We then began to investigate how and why such an imbalance has occurred in arriving at such an experiential overemphasis. We began by seeing that the deep alienation between God and mankind engendered by the Fall leads men to see the world dualistically, as split between the “pure” spiritual realm and the flawed and imperfect physical world, a view which is a result of the simultaneous and inescapable knowledge that men have rebelled against their Holy Creator while they attempt to suppress that inescapable knowledge (Rom 1:18-32).

This split was institutionalized in Platonic thought, which hugely influenced monastic thought, which shaped to a certain extent the way the Medievals viewed Reality, resulting in a Late Medieval and Renaissance perspective which located emotion and instinct in a "religious" zone, while reason and normative life were seen as belonging to the "secular" sphere.

Christian reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment fused with Victorian and pietist viewpoints to produce a feminized, experientially-fixated Evangelicalism whose worship music institutionalized these attitudes for that branch of the Church. This was all the easier because there is a legitimate strand of subjective and emotional aspects included in Biblical worship paradigms (for instance, in Psalms 51, 56, 3, 6, etc.).

We also saw, as well, that the Tri-Unity of God speaks to all aspects of the life of the Image-Bearers of God, humanity, including their worship of the Lord, which is to enact both objective and subjective thanksgiving, and to express both change and continuity as the Church gathers before her Maker and Redeemer.

There are further implications for worship in the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus, Who, as the Scriptures and the Creeds teach, was both Fully God and Fully Man simultaneously. As we've seen before, this Fact has massive implications for the expressions of continuity and change in our worship. His Simultaneously Divine and Human Person, as we've seen, means both that our worship is to be both physical and spiritual (as He Himself is both Spiritual in His Divinity as well as His Created Human Spirit, and Physical in His Body) and that our worship should enact both continuity (as Jesus is Eternally Unchanging in His Divinity) and change (as He is also Human, having undergone human mutability until His Resurrection), so that, in both these implications, our worship correctly images the Natures and Persons of Christ.

This last implication, that continuity and change should shape our worship, we've also seen as a corollary implication of the Holy Trinity (Continuity in the Undifferentiated Unity of the Essence of God and Change in the Diverse and Variegated Perspectives of the Three Persons of God). These Aspects of the Trinity and the Incarnation are, of course, to be held in balance in our worship, just as they are in the Reality of the Trinitarian Godhead and the Incarnate Lord Jesus.

And therein lies the difficulty for us contemporary worshippers, who have been so influenced and conditioned by our modern culture, that we overvalue the new (change) and de-value the old (continuity), resulting in an imbalanced worship which distorts its reflection of the Triune God and the Incarnate Christ we are to worship, and consequently misshape the worshippers (which is to say, ourselves).

The great scholar and apologist C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to Benedicta Ward's translation of Athanasius'On the Incarnation of the Word of God(which, for anyone interested in a greater Biblical understanding of Christ's Incarnation, is the place to begin), made the observation that, if we ignore the perspectives of the believers who came before us (and Athanasius wroteOn the Incarnationin the 300's A.D., almost 1700 years ago), we will inevitably be trapped in the perspective of our time, with all its blind-spots and incorrect prejudices, by not having been exposed to the very different ideas and outlook of believers facing historical situations very different from our own, as we see how our spiritual forebears applied the Scripture to their times, and learn expanded concepts of how to do so in the present.

This idea applies not only to theological writings, but to poetry, sculpture, paintings, architecture, and, to the point of this series, music and songs. The current Evangelical worship model, dominated as it currently is by experiential, subjective-oriented songs, ignores to its spiritual peril the worship songs of prior centuries, with their much more massively balanced combination of objective and doctrinal content with experiential and personal themes, as a corrective to our present imbalance.

God is the Lord not only of the present and the future, but also of the past, which, as a record in its teaching, artistic expressions (including its worship music), and practices, is a corrective template for today's Church, to be overlaid upon our contemporary approaches as a Trinitarian and Incarnational balancing reorientation.

To despise the past is to despise the record of how the Holy Spirit interacted with His People before us, a history which belongs to all of us in the present as a heritage, a tradition we will continue into the future, as a part of the history of God's People, the Church of Jesus Christ. We must not despise the lessons to be learned from those who have come before us, valuating their actions by the Eternal Standard of Scripture (which, to our great surprise, we will find in many ways more faithful to that Standard than those of our own time), and adopting those actions to our own time.

Next week we will continue to consider the implications of Jesus' Incarnation for our worship.

For additional teaching, visit my patreon page.

Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 14

We’ve seen in this series that contemporary worship music has become dominated by songs modeled on romantic, experiential, subjective musical expressions. We’ve further seen that, though such songs are a legitimate stream of Biblical worship expression, they have been historical and Biblical worship models (such as the Psalms or the Book of Revelation) held in balance with objective, doctrinal song content.

We then began to investigate how and why such an imbalance has occurred in arriving at such an experiential overemphasis. We began by seeing that the deep alienation between God and mankind engendered by the Fall leads men to see the world dualistically, as split between the “pure” spiritual realm and the flawed and imperfect physical world, a view which is a result of the simultaneous and inescapable knowledge that men have rebelled against their Holy Creator while they attempt to suppress that inescapable knowledge (Rom 1:18-32).

This split was institutionalized in Platonic thought, which hugely influenced monastic thought, which shaped to a certain extent the way the Medievals viewed Reality, resulting in a Late Medieval and Renaissance perspective which located emotion and instinct in a "religious" zone, while reason and normative life were seen as belonging to the "secular" sphere.

Christian reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment fused with Victorian and pietist viewpoints to produce a feminized, experientially-fixated Evangelicalism whose worship music institutionalized these attitudes for that branch of the Church. This was all the easier because there is a legitimate strand of subjective and emotional aspects included in Biblical worship paradigms (for instance, in Psalms 51, 56, 3, 6, etc.).

We also saw, as well, that the Tri-Unity of God speaks to all aspects of the life of the Image-Bearers of God, humanity, including their worship of the Lord, which is to enact both objective and subjective thanksgiving, and to express both change and continuity as the Church gathers before her Maker and Redeemer.

There are further implications for worship in the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus, Who, as the Scriptures and the Creeds teach, was both Fully God and Fully Man simultaneously. As we've seen before, this Fact has massive implications for the expressions of continuity and change in our worship. 

We saw in the last article that the Lord Jesus' Simultaneous Divine and Human Natures showed us that our worship, like the Divine-Human Person we worship, should involve both spiritual and physical aspects together, as Jesus' Person was.

We turn now to a further consideration of the implications of the Lord Jesus' Divine-Human Person for our worship. As a Human, with a Beginning (the Conception by the Holy Spirit and Virgin Birth from Mary), Development and Growth in His Humanity (as Luke 2:52 tells us, "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men"), and even the experience of Death and Resurrection (Rom 8:11; John 19:30), Jesus, like all humans, experienced change.

However, in His Divine Nature, the Lord Jesus has never changed (and will never change, as Mal 3:6 tells us). This all means, of course, that just as Christ Jesus experienced both change and unchanging continuity, so our worship should reflect this by static parts and aspects of worship and parts which do change.

As it relates to the use of music in the worship of the Lord, we should, as a reflection of the Unchanging Continuity of Jesus in His Divinity, retain older songs that the People of God have used for long and long (some songs the Church has sung for centuries, like the "Te Deum Laudamus" and the "Gloria Patri," not to mention that the lyrics that quote Scripture utilize the Unchanging Word of God; cf. Is 40:7-8; 1 Peter 1:24-25).

Yet also, just as Jesus experienced change in His Humanity, the music of our worship should also embody change, not only in terms of completely new music, but even in terms of the musical styles and settings of the ancient worship expressions.

Both are necessary to a balanced Incarnational worship of the Lord Jesus, Who embodies both change and continuity in Balance. So should our worship, as a Biblical reflection of the One we worship.

For additional teaching on the Covenantal principles of continuity and discontinuity, visit the Genesis series on my patreon page.

Jesus Is My Girlfriend, Part 13

We’ve seen in this series that contemporary worship music has become dominated by songs modeled on romantic, experiential, subjective musical expressions. We’ve further seen that, though such songs are a legitimate stream of Biblical worship expression, they have been historical and Biblical worship models (such as the Psalms or the Book of Revelation) held in balance with objective, doctrinal song content.

We then began to investigate how and why such an imbalance has occurred in arriving at such an experiential overemphasis. We began by seeing that the deep alienation between God and mankind engendered by the Fall leads men to see the world dualistically, as split between the “pure” spiritual realm and the flawed and imperfect physical world, a view which is a result of the simultaneous and inescapable knowledge that men have rebelled against their Holy Creator while they attempt to suppress that inescapable knowledge (Rom 1:18-32).

This split was institutionalized in Platonic thought, which hugely influenced monastic thought, which shaped to a certain extent the way the Medievals viewed Reality, resulting in a Late Medieval and Renaissance perspective which located emotion and instinct in a "religious" zone, while reason and normative life were seen as belonging to the "secular" sphere.

Christian reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment fused with Victorian and pietist viewpoints to produce a feminized, experientially-fixated Evangelicalism whose worship music institutionalized these attitudes for that branch of the Church. This was all the easier because there is a legitimate strand of subjective and emotional aspects included in Biblical worship paradigms (for instance, in Psalms 51, 56, 3, 6, etc.).

We also saw, as well, that the Tri-Unity of God speaks to all aspects of the life of the Image-Bearers of God, humanity, including their worship of the Lord, which is to enact both objective and subjective thanksgiving, and to express both change and continuity as the Church gathers before her Maker and Redeemer.

There are further implications for worship in the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus, Who, as the Scriptures and the Creeds teach, was both Fully God and Fully Man simultaneously. As we've seen before, this Fact has massive implications for the expressions of continuity and change in our worship.

Another implication for worship is grounded in the Fact that, in His Divine Nature, the Lord Jesus is Uncreated; He has always existed as the Second Person of the One Triune God, and, as such, He has always been existent as a Spirit.

However, in His Created Human Nature, He had a Beginning, and is both Physical and possesses a Created Human Spirit. Thus, simultaneously, the Lord Jesus is both Matter and Spirit (and therefore Physical and Spiritual, both Created and Uncreated, both Divine and Human).

What this means is that we should understand (and attempt to enact symbolically and otherwise) the truth that our worship is like unto the Lord Who is the Focus of our worship, simultaneously both spiritual and physical, that the Uncreated God condescends to join His Creatures, humanity, meeting us in bread and wine, the spoken and written Word, not only meeting with us corporately in formal worship, but also permanently indwelling believers through His Spirit. 

Our spiritual worship (like our bodies, cf. Rom 12:1), should never lose sight of the realization that our physicality is always inextricably tied into that worship. To deny, or attempt to reduce or denigrate the physicality of the worship of God is thus to implicitly deny the Nature of Jesus' Incarnation. So don't do that.

Next week, we'll consider yet another Aspect of the Incarnation for worship.

For additional teaching, visit my patreon page.

A helpful book:

The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason

By Webster, John

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