ON EARTH, ONLY MAN HAS CAPACITY FOR WORSHIP

“And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image….” (GENESIS 1:26, 27”

The one mark which forever distinguishes man from all other forms of life on earth is that he is a worshiper: he has a bent toward and a capacity for worship.

 

Apart from his position as a worshiper of God, man has no sure key to his own being; he is but a higher animal, being born much as any other animal, going through the cycle of his life here on earth and dying at last without knowing what the whole thing is about.

 

If that is all for him, if he has no more reason than the beast for living, then it is an odd thing indeed that he is the only one of the animals that worries about himself, that wonders, that asks questions of the universe.

 

The very fact that he does these things tells the wise man that somewhere there is One to whom he owes allegiance, One before whom he should kneel and do homage.

 

The Christian revelation tells us that that One is God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, who is to be worshiped in the Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

That is enough for us. Without trying to reason it out we may proceed from there. All our doubts we meet with faith’s wondering affirmation: “O Lord God, Thou knowest,” an utterance which Samuel Taylor Coleridge declared to be the profoundest in human speech.

 

Bible Christianity needs to recapture the spirit of worship, with a fresh revelation of the greatness of God and the beauty of Jesus!

 

 

  1. W. Tozer