“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” – John 4:24
We often think that what God requires for us to do is to handle special occasions and celebrations for Him. We think that God wants religious festivals to fully worship Him. We have a very wrong mindset about whether it takes to have a fun mass or a fun praise and worship to fully say that we are indeed worshiping God. However, God wants us to remember that it doesn’t take any of this to fully worship Him or to really say that we are giving God glory and praise.
We don’t need any religious festivals, special occasions and fun worship service just to please and worship God. In our verse today, we are reminded that God is Spirit and we must worship Him in spirit and truth. But, what does God mean by this? When He says that we must worship Him in spirit and in truth, did He mean that we should not handle any religious festivals or man-made rituals? Indeed! We have to understand that God deserves all our attention and all our praises.
Although God will not be changed without all of this, as people who are already saved by grace through faith in Christ, we now found out the true way for our salvation. These religious festivals and even man-made rituals were all from the old age when the people didn’t know that Christ is the way and the truth and the life. These activities are not even close to saving us and giving true worship to God. However, when we remember that Paul also mentioned in his book of Romans that we should offer our lives as living sacrifices for this is the true act of worship (Romans 12:1). This has been a confusing teaching for us, but with our verse today, we will be able to understand it.
Why did Paul write that reminder? It is because Jesus said that we must worship God in spirit and in truth in the first place. What Paul wrote was only the specific answer on how to achieve what Jesus said. So, since Christ came and saved us from our sins, we don’t have any contribution. Thus, the only response we can do is to bring back all the glory and honor to God and the only way to do that is to worship Him in spirit and in truth.
God is Spirit and when we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, He has given us His Holy Spirit and it is He who testifies that we are children of God. Through that also, we will then desire to worship God in spirit and in truth also. How can we do this though? It is by offering our lives as living sacrifices. We must live our lives according to the life Jesus lived. We are ought to worship God truthfully by syncing our lives with Christ. We must always look ahead and imitate Christ for God is only pleased through Christ.
God will not be pleased and fully worshipped by our own efforts for we only commit sin and we only desire to dwell in darkness but with Christ in our lives, we can then live our lives holy and pleasing to God. For God will not see us anymore but it is Christ who He will see. Thus, as we live our lives in-sync with Christ, obeying God, submitting to His glory and meditating on His Word— we are worshiping Him in spirit and in truth already.
Therefore, we don’t need religious festivals, man-made rituals or fun worship service because God does not measure our worship from there. Instead, He looks at our hearts, our lives and our daily activities for these events will show Him more if we are worshiping Him in whatever we do or only when there is a fun worship service. So, as Christians, we should not just base our worship to God in fun praise and worship or rituals, but we should see and use our lives as a way to worship God in spirit and in truth. Whatever we do, we should always make sure that it is glorifying our gracious God who made the heavens and the earth; who died for all of us in the cross; and who comforts and increases our faith everyday.
