Answer: The true worshiper MUST worship God in spirit and in Truth, (verse 24).
NOTE: The word "worship" here means "to give honor, praise, reverence, respect, appreciation, service," etc. (Please see Glossary for more information.)
MORE INFORMATION AND/OR OTHER SCRIPTURE REFERENCES:
- True worship must be in keeping with God's nature, which is SPIRIT. A person's soul has contact with God through his/her spirit. This contact of our spirit to God's Spirit makes us righteous--right in the sight of God. The Spirit of God is in the believer--the Holy Spirit gifted at the time of baptism. He works in us through the inspired Word of God (Who is Christ).
Isaiah 26:9: "My soul yearns for You in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for You. When Your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness."
Hebrews 4:12-13 tells of the power of the Word to affect the soul and spirit of a person and why the "façade"--false front or mask (also called hypocrisy)--of worship is spurned by God:
"For the Word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to Whom we must give account."
- And Truth IS Christ. Christ IS the WORD of God--the Way we learn how to offer true worship to the Father so that we may have spiritual Life:
John 1:14: "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, Who came from the Father, full of grace and Truth."
John 14:6: "Jesus answered, ‘I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'"
John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning."
Truth is always associated with Christ. He IS the Truth, and this fact has great importance for the proper understanding of Christian worship.
- Worship to God is done with "intent." We must "intend" to worship God with our whole being. We cannot "accidentally" worship Him. The intent to worship is carried out in His believers meeting together on the first day of the week to offer worship to Him through the remembrance of His Son's sacrifice in the Lord's Supper, our offer of praises to Him through the singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, our reading and learning from the Scriptures, our prayers and our benevolent act of giving back to Him part of the blessings He gives to us. We "intend" to meet at other times of the week to offer worship to God, to learn more of His Word and to fellowship with like-minded believers. We "intend" to offer our bodies daily as spiritual sacrifices to God by conforming ourselves to--becoming more and more like--Christ and not to the pattern of the world; we "intend" to be transformed daily by the renewing of our minds, (Romans 12:1-2). We are constantly in the act of doing God's Will, thus trusting in Him completely and seeing in our lives the results of a life in Christ.
- The Lord looks on the heart of man. He is not pleased with the outward signs of worship that do not engage a man's whole being:
Isaiah 16:7: "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."