More Than My Response
By Glenn Packiam

"Jesus rose from the grave, and you, you can't even get out of bed!"

It's been a few decades since Keith Green sang those words, but the sentiment is alive in worship leaders all over the world. Every Sunday, when our eyes happen to catch the lazy stares of hollow faces with folded arms, we feel a not-so-holy anger rise up. As much as we try to resist it, some version of the "I can't believe you're not more into it" speech comes out. Blank looks turn into offended smirks and the worship moment is effectively lost.

Even when we don't give in to the urge to smack people around for not being more fervent in their worship, there is still this underlying belief that we owe God something in response to His extravagant love. Call it a gratitude ethic. Put it on a bumper sticker as the catchy "Live for the One Who died for you" phrase. It's the same core belief: God has done much for me, I've got to now do much for Him. Because of this theology of a God who acts and then awaits our action, pastors often berate sinners and lecture the lazy.

Much has been made of how worship is a response to what Christ has done for us. Certainly there is truth in that. It is "in view of God's mercy" that we offer our "bodies as living sacrifices," our "spiritual act of worship." Worship is a response. But it is more than our response.

Offered in the One
In the Old Testament, there were three primary pieces of Jewish worship: Temple, Priest, and Sacrifice. All the way up until the Exilic Period, the way God had instructed Israel to encounter Him was through priest and sacrifice, and in a temple or tabernacle. In the New Testament, the book of Hebrews serves as our chief expositor of Old Testament worship and how it is fulfilled in Christ. Hebrews argues that Christ is now our great High Priest who offered up His life before heaven's mercy seat as a perfect sacrifice once for all (Heb 7:27). Jesus, speaking of His body, talked about the temple being destroyed and then rebuilt in three days (John 2:19-21). So, Jesus is Temple, Priest, and Sacrifice.

But there's more. Paul calls us "God's temple" (1 Cor. 3:16); Peter calls us a "royal priesthood" (1 Pet. 2:9); and Paul urges us, as mentioned earlier, to offer our "bodies as living sacrifices" (Rom. 12:1). But we are not these things on our own; Jesus is at the heart of it. Because Jesus is the Temple, we are a temple; because Jesus is the Great High Priest, we are priests; because Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, our sacrifice is acceptable. Because Jesus is and because we are in Jesus, we are.

It Goes Both Ways
Christ does more than mediate God to us; He mediates us to God. God demonstrated His love for us in Christ, by paying for our sins and making us new, alive to God. But it's not as if we say, "Thanks, I'll take it from here." We demonstrate our love for God as we offer our lives in Christ.

So how does this change the way we think, and talk about worship? How does it change the way we lead worship? Find out by following this link to read the rest of the article at Song Discovery.

Along with being a columnist for Song DISCovery, Glenn loves teaching, writing, and leading worship, most of which happens at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. His new book, Secondhand Jesus: Trading Rumors of God for a Firsthand Faith is available everywhere, but you can find out more here: glennpackiam.com.