WORSHIP

Look at any instance of human life. Every man is related to God in some fashion. God created us and uses us. We depend on Him. God has His purpose for each of us and we respond to a greater or less degree. God woos us and we respond with a glimmer of love to Him. But here in Christ we have an instance of human life which from the first moment, and at every point, was an agent of God -- a vehicle for God’s expression that is entirely His own. His human life was not lived sporadically or spasmodically with God, but was always and at every moment linked with God. Here we see how One who is truly a man can also be a true instrument and agent of God’s presence -- God’s very self in human experience. If we let our right hand stand for God and the left hand stand for man, and then bring the two together, but part them again and again, this broken and temporary union is a fact of all human life. We are touched by God for a moment, obedient to God for a time, loving and serving God just a little bit. Suppose that the hands are clinched tight, the two as one and remaining as one, God working through man and man ever obedient to God. That is Christ -- He in whom God and man are in union, one with another, now and forever. This tells us why we worship Christ. We can worship God, and God only. We may venerate the saints, but worship belongs to God and to Him alone. Unless we can say that in and through Jesus Christ, God is at one with men through this Man, we shall be guilty of idolatry if we worship Him. But if God and man are one in Him, we can and must worship Him.

Only because of that which Christ does can the Christian affirm:

Only because of that can we dare to worship Him.

We do worship Him. When we worship Him we do not feel at all that He comes between God and us, as if a wall were erected between our Creator and our little selves. We feel when we worship Him that we are worshiping God in Him and Him in God, for they are as one. We look at Him and say of Him, as St. Thomas did, "My Lord and my God!"

All this can be summed up in a story from William Hazlett’s "Table Talk." A group of friends were discussing great men they would like to have known. At the end, Charles Lamb said in his stammering voice: "After all these I can think of but one other and that is Jesus Christ. If Shakespeare were to come in we should all of us rise to our feet and wish to take his hand. If Jesus should come in we should all of us fall on our knees and seek to kiss the hem of His garment."

Why do we worship Christ? Because we cannot help it.

Jesus Saves