What is “Worship”?

I love having my thinking challenged. Recently my understanding of the word “worship” has been stretched, thanks to the work of an independent scholar named Tom Wadsworth. Dr. Wadsworth earned a PhD in New Testament and he specializes in Christian assembly practices in the first century.

After studying the 265 times where the Greek word proskuneo (worship) is found in the New Testament and the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament), Wadsworth arrives at some startling conclusions:

• The word refers to a specific physical act—prostration. For example, “Then David said to the whole assembly, ‘Praise the Lord your God.’ So they all praised the Lord, the God of their fathers; they bowed down, prostrating themselves before the Lord and the king” (1 Chron 29:20 NIV).

• Bible translators should not use the word “worship” to translate proskuneo because it causes much confusion. Instead they should use “prostrate.” For example, “When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, ‘He is good; his love endures forever’” (2 Chron 7:3). The physical indicators—”knelt,” “faces to the ground” show that the word indicates a specific physical act—prostration.

• The New Testament never uses proskuneo to refer to activities conducted in Christian assemblies. Hence, “worship” does not refer to liturgy, singing praise songs, or corporate prayer. Obviously, this may ruffle a lot of feathers in traditional churches, which have worship leaders, worship services, and worship songs. Should we replace worship services with prostration services?

• The answer to the previous question is no. Wadsworth writes, “But in the NT, Christians did not construct temple buildings or holy places. In the NT, Christians did not go to holy places to perform sacred rituals before a God that resided there. In the NT, Christians did not regard prostration as an obligatory assembly activity.” In other words, after the destruction of the temple, there was no place to “worship” (to prostrate). And Christians felt no need to create a new place for prostration.

It would take me a long time to analyze every occurrence of proskuneo, so I can’t say for certain if I agree with all of Wadsworth’s conclusions. It took him years to compile and analyze the data for his dissertation.

However, I agree that the word “worship” is not used in the New Testament to refer to something Christians do when they gather. That in itself is a startling realization in comparison with its prevalent use in contemporary churches.

What was the purpose of first-century Christian gatherings? Edification or building up the believers (see 1 Cor 14). Wadsworth contends that traditional churches have lost sight of the horizontal dimension of building one another up when we gather.

Since Wadsworth is an “independent scholar” who participates in a house church, he has the freedom to arrive at fresh conclusions without fearing for his salary or role in a traditional church. This is the kind of thinking we need.

But we must always remember to search the Scriptures for ourselves and verify every conclusion with Scripture. Even Paul was subject to this kind of scrutiny: “they [the Bereans] received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11).

For more information on Wadsworth’s conclusions on worship, here are three resources:

• YouTube video – If you are crunched for time, scroll down to his second comment, where he provides a summary of the video.
• Article – the meaning of “worshiping in spirit and truth”
• Paper – how the church returned to temple worship in the fourth century

Les Bridgeman

I have served as a high school Bible teacher and counselor in Asia and the U.S. I am passionate about understanding and teaching the Bible. Here’s a link to my book page.