The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Regulative principle

Agreed.




Agreed.



No, God desires to be worshipped at all times and in all settings. Your error is that you are interpreting what the Bible says about worship in accordance with your compartmentalized concept of worship. The principles that were taught regarding the Temple worship have application today but they have a much wider application than you are ascribing to them.

For example, the story about Nadab and Abihu. They were slain by God because they offered strange fire before the Lord. What was their sin? Those who profess to adhere to the so-called "regulative principle of worship" say that their sin was that they added to the worship of God. That is, they added something to the ceremonial law which was not prescribed therein. This is true. But their sin was not just that they added to the ceremonial worship, it was that they added to the commandments of God. The story does not teach us only that it is wrong to add to the Bible's doctrine regarding what is to be practiced during church meetings. It teaches us that it is wrong to add to the Bible's doctrine. Period.

It is true that the Bible should regulate what Christians are to do in church assemblies, but those assemblies are not "worship services." The Bible does not support the definition that worship is the performing of rituals (even God-ordained ones) at certain times and in particular places, and the delineation, which many maintain, that there are times when a Christian is in worship and other times when he is not in worship, is a delineation which is not made in the Scriptures. Christians are not in a state of worship any more or less when they obey scriptural principles to gather themselves together on the Lord's Day to practice God-ordained functions (such as to hear preaching, sing psalms, exhort and teach one another, etc.) than they are when they obey scriptural principles on the other six days of the week by, for example, laboring diligently (Pro. 13:4, 22:9), submitting themselves to the ordinances of civil government (1 Pet. 2:13), or treating their wives as their own flesh (Eph. 5:28), and their behavior is no more or less biblically-regulated at any one time than it is at another.

The idea that worship consists of performing outward rituals only for brief periods at certain times and in particular places is an Old Testament concept which only applied to the sacrificial rites performed primarily in the Tabernacle, and later in the Temple at Jerusalem. These rites were only symbolic of the true spiritual worship and they have been abolished. In the New Testament, the only times that the word "worship" is used in connection with the performance of particular outward actions at certain times and places, is when referring to the Temple worship in Jerusalem (John 4:20, 12:20, 24:11, Acts 8:27). Neither the term worship, nor any synonymous word or phrase, is ever applied to New Testament church gatherings, nor is it applied to the individual functions performed in church gatherings. The reason that Christians are to gather on the Lord's Day is not to perform "worship services," as if they are meeting in a localized version of the Jerusalem Temple and offering ritual sacrifices. The primary purpose of the church meeting is to instruct, and be instructed, in how to worship God throughout everyday life. Again, the true worship of God is not the performing of devotional rituals only at certain times and places. The true worship is, and always has been, to love God "in spirit and in truth." And this love is manifested by diligently applying His commandments to all of life.