I want to try to make a connection for you now between yesterday and today. Yesterday’s focus was on Romans 3:25–26, and the statement that the deepest meaning of the cross is that God put Christ forward as a propitiation, or as an expiation, in order to demonstrate the righteousness of God, because he had passed over sins in past times, which translates like this: Your being forgiven jeopardizes the righteousness of God. It creates a crisis in the Godhead. God is unrighteous to forgive sinners, unless there is something that can happen that would set things right while letting you go scot-free. And what happened was the death of Jesus in your place.

Center of Your Universe

So the fundamental meaning of the death of Jesus is that God vindicated his glorious righteousness in letting you go free. God is jealous to be known as an all-glorious, all-righteous God who exalts himself infinitely. Another way to say it would be that the forgiveness of your sins is grounded not in your puny work or worth, but in the infinitely valuable work and worth of God vindicated in Christ. Or another way to say it would be that the essence of God’s love reaches its climax or its essence or its apex — its highest point — in the cross. We know that because that’s what the Bible says. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Nevertheless, what we learn now from the cross is that the essence of the love of God for us is not an exaltation of our value but a freeing of us and an enabling of us to enjoy God exalting his value. It’s a Copernican Revolution of the ordinary way people think: putting themselves constantly at the center And when they become Christians in name, many of them don’t cease putting themselves at the center, but develop many theologies that keep man square at the center and make much of God to the degree that he makes much of them.

So concealed in many worship songs is man-centeredness, lifting God on high precisely to the degree that he makes much of me and puts me at the center of his universe. That is not worship. It’s a Christianized form of secularism and the mindset of the world. The love of God is the relentless pursuit of your joy in him. If he were to make you the center of your universe, he would be a cruel God. That was yesterday.

Now I was asked by a young woman last night whether or not this was a proper translation of that message. She said, “I told the students that Christ died to win worship for himself; that’s the point of his death.” And I said, “That’s a good translation,” and it’s a good transition from yesterday to today. So the question I want to ask today is: How do we join God in the goal of the cross? If the goal of the cross is not to make much of you but to give you the eternal joy of God’s making much of God, and allowing you to join him in that, how do you join him in it? How do you get on board with the purpose of God in the central act of history — namely, the execution of his Son for the glory of his name? How do you do that? And that’s what I want to talk about today?

Inner Essence of Worship

So our goal is to ask, What is the inner essence of worship? Making much of God, magnifying God, glorifying God, whatever words will click. Sometimes we’re prone to think that words like glorify are in-house “God words” that won’t really work on the campus or at the office. That’s really not true, I believe. You listen to sportscasters, and they’ll talk about glory. They know what glory is. What is the inner essence of glorifying God or of worship?

Now let me give a little bit of background here as far as the New Testament understanding of worship goes. I am amazed and stunned in recent years, as I’ve looked at this, at the silence of the New Testament concerning corporate worship. The main word for worship, used hundreds of times in the Old Testament (proskuneo in Greek), is virtually absent from the New Testament epistles where the life of the church is regulated. It’s prevalent in the Gospels because people ran up to Jesus and fell down and worshiped when he was there in person. It’s prevalent in the book of Revelation because you have this portrait of the saints constantly in the presence of the risen Christ falling down in worship. But in this intervening period of history where Christ is absent in the flesh, that word is gone.

And is it not amazing to you that what we are doing here in this corporate setting and what you do Sunday morning after Sunday morning is never, in the New Testament, called worship? That’s stunning to me because in our vocabulary, we use the word worship almost only for what we’re doing here and what we do on Sunday morning. And the New Testament never uses it in the Epistles during this season. Isn’t that remarkable? Rather, what the New Testament does, in the letters of Paul and Peter and James and so on, is to radically intensify worship as an inner experience making its way out not in services, primarily, but in life, primarily.

Spirit and Truth

Let me give you a few pointers to this so you can check it out for yourself. In John 4, you remember Jesus meeting the woman at the well, and she says to him in a kind of diversion from the real issue,

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship” (John 4:20).

And Jesus says,

The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. (John 4:21–23)

Did you get the change of categories? Not this mountain. Spirit. Not Jerusalem. Truth. You kind of scratch your head and say, “Whoa, I thought you might say, ‘Austin.’” But he doesn’t. In other words, there is a radical disjunction of worship from locality, and a driving of worship toward inner reality — wherever you are. That’s the first clue.

Lip Service

Another clue is Matthew 15:8–9. Jesus says, I hope not referring to us here but probably to some,

This people honors me with their lips,
     but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me.

In other words, worship is empty and vain when it’s only on the lips — that is, when it’s only a form, when it’s only a worship song, when it’s only a genuflection, or a sacrament, or a sermon. If it isn’t here in the heart, if it isn’t felt, if there isn’t an affection and a delight in the heart, it isn’t worship. That’s the second clue of the move from locality and form to reality and intense inner heart-work experience.

Present Yourselves

A third pointer is that in Romans 12:1, Paul said,

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

The New Testament is not against Passion ’98 and its corporate worship, nor against what I’ll do tomorrow morning with my people in Minneapolis in corporate worship. However, the main meaning of worship in the New Testament is presenting your bodies — that means your sex life, your eating habits, the television programs you watch, the music you listen to, the vocation you choose — presenting your bodily life on planet Earth to God as a spiritual service of worship. That’s the main meaning of worship in the New Testament.

And so, the question I’m asking now in this message is: What makes that worship? What is the inner, God-ward experience of the heart that constitutes worship at its essence, and finds its way out into services of praise and a life of glorifying God?

Gain in Life and Death

Now to answer that question, if you have a Bible, I invite you to go with me to Philippians 1:20–21.

It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

What we see here in verse 20 is that Paul’s passion is to magnify Christ. You see that. That’s not Passion ’98 talking. That’s not John Piper talking. That’s the inspired word of God. The passion of this man’s life in his body is that Christ be exalted. Whether he lives or whether he dies, his passion is in living and in dying, so that Christ would be seen as magnificent. Do you want a goal for your life? Take it from Philippians 1:20. So live on your campus that people will see that Jesus is magnificent.

Now I’m asking how this morning. I’m asking how that comes about. The answer is given in the next verse 21. Note the connecting word for, which means because.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Notice a connection. Do you see the word life in verse 20 at the end, corresponding to the word live in verse 21? Do you see the word death at the end of verse 20 corresponding to the word die in verse 21? That’s no accident. In verse 21, Paul is giving the ground, or the reason, for why his body magnifies Christ in living and dying. How is that? Well, let’s take the pairs one at a time.

Death Is More

Let’s do the death pair first and then we’ll do the life pair.

So in verse 20 he says, “My passion, my expectation and desire, is that my body, when it dies, will die in a way that Christ is seen to be magnificent in my dying.” And then the way that works is given in verse 21: “For to me, to die is gain.” Now think about that. How is Christ shown to be great or magnificent or exalted in your dying? Answer: when your dying is experienced by you as gain. But why is it gain?

Now let’s look at verse 23. It’s a very simple reason. “My desire is to depart [that is, to die] and be with Christ.” The reason death is gain for Paul is because death is more of Christ. Now let’s put it together. Let’s put the death pair together. The question I’m asking is: What is the inner experience of the heart that is worship — that is, which makes much of God and Christ and that works its way out into bodily experiences, including death, such that Christ is seen to be magnificent? What is this?

Now the answer is: it is the experience of death as gain because death is more of Christ, which is, to shorten it down even further: I will magnify Christ in my dying to the degree that I cherish Christ as gain in my dying. Which means worship is fundamentally cherishing Christ as gain. Magnifying Christ is basically treasuring, valuing Christ as superior to life and all that life offers you in the next sixty years, including a spouse and job and health and career and fame and retirement. If any of you dies this week, you will magnify Christ if you embrace it as gain. And if you shun it and hate it and get angry at it as loss of all you value, you will magnify the world and everything in it.

Life Is Christ

Let’s take the life pair. The message is the same. “I want Christ to be magnified in my body, whether I live — in my life.” And now verse 21 says, “For to me to live is Christ.” Now what does that mean? He’s arguing this way. He’s saying, “My goal is that in my body, whether I’m preaching, whether I’m in prison, whether I’m being beaten, whether I’m happy with a few of my friends and an evening meal, I want my body to magnify Christ in my living for [now here’s the explanation of how it works] to me to live is Christ.”

Surpassing Value

Let’s go to Philippians 3:8. Here’s the answer. Notice the repetition of the word gain, but here it’s not gain in death; it’s gain in life.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.

So it’s the same argument as the death pair, only now it’s life. When he says, “To me to live is Christ,” he means, “I have experienced Christ in such a way that I now live as though, in comparison with Christ, everything is rubbish.” Have you lived that way?

I assume that the hundreds of you who stood last night were saying something like — and I invite you to say it in your heart again right now — “I have not lived that way, and I want to live that way.” I think that’s what you were saying, wasn’t it? “I haven’t lived in such a way that to me, to live is Christ — that is, Christ is so much gain that everything is loss but Christ, and people around me see it in the way I watch television. They see it in the way I watch Bowl games. They see it in the way I eat. They see it in my sex life. They see it in my money dealings. They see it in the courses I choose. They see it in my vocational aspirations. They see it in what I wear and what I drive. Christ is all to me.” That magnifies Christ in life. So say that again in your heart right now, if you were missing it last night.

The inner essence of worship is a cherishing of Christ as gain. Prizing Christ is the key to gaining Christ and praising Christ. Prizing him is the key to praising him. If you don’t prize him, cherish him, treasure him, delight in him, he’s not honored by anything you do. It can’t be worship; it’s vain.

Four

If this is true, if the inner essence of worship that makes its way out authentically into services of praise or makes its way out into a chaste life of sexuality and continence in your eating and circumspection in your financial dealings, if the inner essence of worship is satisfaction in Christ, then there are serious, serious implications.

1. Duty-Bound to Delight

The pursuit of this satisfaction is your number one duty in life that is not optional. There is a popular ethic and a sophisticated philosophical ethic in the world today that says, “Morality is defective to the degree that it is motivated by the quest for your joy.” You’ve all heard it said: “Do right because it’s right. Don’t do right because it’ll make you happy, in God, because if you do right in pursuit of your joy, the morality, the virtue, of your choices are compromised and are defective.”

Do you know what I call that? Atheism. “Leave the pursuit of joy in God out of the picture when you choose your acts.” I say this: blasphemy. Rather, virtue and worship consist essentially in an unrelenting pursuit of joy in God in every song you sing, in every sacrament you take, and in every good deed you perform — or it isn’t good and it isn’t worship.

2. What God Gives

Thinking of the essence of worship as being satisfied in God, authentically in the heart, preserves the radical God-centeredness of worship. Nothing makes God more supreme, whether in a worship service or in a life, than to say with your heart, “Money, prestige, leisure, family, job, health, sports, toys, friends, computers cannot satisfy my soul; only God can. And therefore, I am on a quest for God.” Nothing makes God more central in your life than for the heart to say that authentically.

If, in our worship services, our giving to God, rather than getting from God becomes the center — if you go to church and your mindset is, “I’ve got to give. I’ve got to give. I’ve got to give because I’ve been criticized for coming to get,” subtly, what will happen in your life and in that congregation is a shifting off of the centrality of God onto the centrality of our performances in worship. Singing — are we doing it with excellence worthily of the Lord? Instrument-playing — is it good enough? Preaching — does it hang together? Is it articulate? Is it worthy of the Lord?

And subtly, we are no longer cherishing, valuing, delighting in God himself, and we are starting to define worship in terms of the quality of our performances. And I’m saying that keeping in clear focus that the essence of worship is satisfaction in God guards you from that tragedy.

3. Worship as an End

Saying and believing that the essence of worship is the experience of satisfaction in God preserves worship as an end in itself, and keeps it from being a manipulative means to something else on Sunday morning. You cannot, with authenticity, say to God, “I am satisfied in you in order that I might get ‘that’” — even if “that” is my mother’s salvation. Satisfaction in God, if it is real, terminates on God and nothing else.

And yet, tragically, all over America, we are being taught and models are being given that we are to worship so that the church will grow, worship so that we can heal human hurts, worship so that we can recruit workers, worship so that the morale will be good in the congregation, worship so that we can keep marriages together, and all other good things as an end to this putative thing called worship. And to the degree that we think that way, we do not know what worship is.

I cannot say to my wife, “I delight in you so deeply — so that you will make me dinner tonight.” Why? That’s not the way delight works. Delight, if it is real, terminates on her — not dinner. I can’t say to Barnabas, my 14-year-old, “Barnabas, I love playing ball with you in the afternoon — so that you’ll cut the grass on Saturday.” Why can’t I say that? I can’t say it because that’s not the way delight works. If I delight in being with Barnabas, it terminates on Barnabas. And so it is with God. We cannot say to him with any authenticity at all, “I delight in you, O God, on Sunday morning — so that this church will grow. I delight in you, O God, this morning — so that my marriage will be kept together.” You can’t say that. God is the end and not the means. And worship, understood as essentially satisfaction in God, guards us from the tragedy of making God a stepping-stone to good idols in the world.

Now lest I be misunderstood, it is absolutely true that where people meet God in authenticity, and delight in God because he is God, and find the end of all their questing at the fountain of life in God, everything else is made better — even our suffering is made better. But if you choose to try to do this thing called worship in order to get well from cancer, you love getting well from cancer first.

Keep Pursuing Joy

The last implication I’ll mention: if it’s true that being satisfied in God is the essence of worship, this explains why, as we saw earlier, the New Testament is so radical in saying that not just worship services are worship, but life is worship. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The reason is this: everything in life, not just Sunday morning acts — everything in life — is supposed to be motivated by your pursuit of more and more joy in God. So the thing that is the root of Sunday morning’s worship songs is the root of every act you perform if you understand what worship really is.

Now I wrote a whole book to try to defend that, called Desiring God. In fact, everything I’ve ever written is written to defend that. And so I can’t make a big, long case for it, that everything you do should be motivated by a desire for more pleasure in God, but I’ll close with one text:

Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail (Luke 12:33).

Look at the connection here between the first half of the verse and the second half. The first half says, “Strip down. Be simple. Have a radical wartime lifestyle. Sell things. Don’t amass things, so that you have something to give to people in need. Be a loving person.” In other words, spend yourself for others. And in doing that, what will you accomplish? And this is a command. The second half of the verse here is a command. It’s not just an incidental result: “Provide yourselves with purses that don’t grow old and with a treasure in the heavens.” That’s God, folks. That’s not golf in the kingdom. That’s not streets of gold. That’s not reunion with my mother, who was killed in 1974. That’s God, and more and more and more and more and more of God forever and ever and ever, because he’s an infinite God and will never let me get bored with himself.

Now, this is just a paradigm of the whole Christian life, isn’t it? I’m just taking one verse. You can spread out over the whole New Testament and all the commands in it. Be loving people, and thereby, get yourself a treasure in heaven: more of God and more of God. So, I argue this: all of life is motivated by the quest for more joy, more treasure in God.

Now if you ask (and it’s a reasonable question), Is that love to a person? Does that sound like love to you? Does a person feel loved if you tell them, “I’m doing this to you so that I can get treasure in heaven”? They might not, and you will have to say something like this. “I love God so much. God is more important to me than all the money and all the possessions that I have given away to give them to you. I don’t need those things; I have God. And I am giving these things to you in your need so that you will see what satisfies me: God satisfies me and frees me to give you what you need. And I’ll tell you very honestly, poor person, hurting person: what you need more than me and this money is God. And my whole goal right now is for you to join me in enjoying God. And if you do, my joy in God, in you, will be bigger.” Is that selfish?

Real Love

What does it mean when Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”? (Matthew 5:16). Not themselves as worthy of your good deed. Do you see what’s happening here? Love, at the horizontal level between you and your campus, is not making much of them. That’s a way to cultivate idolaters in the world. You don’t love people by making much of them. Thousands of books are written on how to build self-esteem into your kids. Build God-esteem into your kids. Build God-esteem. The way you love people is not by making much of them but by sacrificing your life if you must, selling your possessions if you must, in order to show them that the only hope in life is to make much of God. That’s love.

Anything else is cruelty to them. Hell is on the way. Suppose you give them high self-esteem and they go straight to hell. The only thing that rescues people is making much of God. Love, whether it’s coming to us through the cross, is not a making much of us; it’s enabling us to enjoy making much of God forever. And love from you to your family and to your classmates is not making much of them but enabling them, by the sight of your own wartime allegiance to God, to see and enjoy and make much of an infinitely glorious God forever and be satisfied in him.

This is Passion ‘98, and I love the vision of this place and this event: My heart’s desire, O God, is your name and your renown — whether I live or whether I die.