All of life is worship, but not all of life is Lord's Day worship

Because of what man was made for, every one of us has a faith that controls our hearts—and we spend our lives continually in service of this faith.

Contrary to the popular saying, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” Scripture teaches us that man—even secular man—is inherently religious.

This sounds confusing on the face of it. How can everyone be really very religious, when many people today are atheists or agnostics, and many others have just a fuzzy kind of spirituality with no real beliefs, and certainly no clear doctrines?

How can these people be considered religious, especially, when they do not practice any religious rituals?

The answer is simple: religion does not find its existence in doctrine or ritual. Doctrine and ritual are expressions of religion—not definitions of it. Religion does not consist in doctrine or practice, but in man himself. It starts in the heart, and regardless of whether or not it overflows into any kind of orthodoxy or orthopraxy, man remains in every way very religious, because God made him for a religious purpose: to serve his creator.

This means that there is a clear and crucial distinction between being irreligious and being unreligious. Religion has to do with worship, and we have come to associate worship with certain kinds of beliefs and rituals. So we think that since irreligious people don’t do anything like what we do on the Lord’s Day, surely they do not worship.

But the Bible does not have only a narrow view of worship. It also has a broad view.

This broad view defines worship primarily in terms of service, because service is what man was created for—to do that which God requires of him. And man’s service extends far beyond performing rituals in certain times and places. The word that we translate as “worship” means literally to prostrate or bow down low in the original languages of scripture. But scripture also places this word into parallel with service. This is most obvious in Deuteronomy, which repeatedly draws a parallel between serving and worshiping (or prostrating):

And it shall be, if thou shalt forget Yawheh thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and prostrate unto them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. (Dt 8:19)

Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and prostrate unto them. (Dt 11:16)

If there be found in the midst of thee, within any of thy gates which Yawheh thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that doeth that which is evil in the sight of Yawheh thy God, in transgressing his covenant, and hath gone and served other gods, and prostrated unto them, {and he goes on to give the penalty:} then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, who hath done this evil thing, unto thy gates, even the man or the woman; and thou shalt stone them to death with stones. (Dt 17:2–5)

Then men shall say, Because they forsook the covenant of Yawheh, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods, and prostrated unto them, gods that they knew not, and that he had not given unto them: therefore the anger of Yawheh was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curse that is written in this book… (Dt 29:25–27)

But if thy heart turn away, and thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and prostrate unto other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish… (Dt 30:17–18)

Scripture also clarifies what service to God looks like, by drawing a similar parallel between worship/prostrating, serving, and obeying God’s statutes. For instance, speaking to Jeroboam, it says:

thus saith Yawheh, the God of Israel, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee (but he shall have one tribe, for my servant David’s sake and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel); because that they have forsaken me, and have prostrated unto Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Milcom the god of the sons of Ammon; and they have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in mine eyes, and to keep my statutes and mine ordinances, as did David his father. (1 Ki 11:31–33)

Or Second Chronicles 7:

But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and prostrate unto them; then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them. (2 Ch 7:19–20)

Here the service is explained in terms of walking in God’s ways, keeping his statutes, and obeying his commandments. It is through our service that we are supposed to glorify and enjoy God forever, and we can hardly do that if we do not walk in his ways. Romans 12:1–2 says:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

This is not just referring to gathered worship—although more on that in a minute. Consider the parallel with James 1:27, which describes—not exhaustively, but by way of summary or example—that our spiritual service looks like:

Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

This is not something we do in gathered worship. Yet it is religious. Religious service is built into us; we can’t not do it, because we are images, symbols, physical expressions of God. We are like little compasses designed to point to God and to his creative work. If we reject him, we don’t stop doing what we were made to do; we don’t stop pointing—we simply point in the wrong direction. You cannot make a compass stop pointing. You can only make it stop pointing north. It can tell you the wrong direction—but it can’t tell you no direction. Even in our fallen state, we are unwittingly groping for God, as Paul says in Acts 17, like blind men in the dark.

We may not know what direction to point, and we may refuse to point north, but when we do that, we don’t stop glorifying and serving and enjoying something. We simply exchange the glory of the invisible God for the glory of created things.

We will always be serving and representing and magnifying something.

And this is all worship, in the broad sense of that term: spiritual service.

This is not to discount the particular, special nature of Sabbath worship. On the Lord’s Day, we are called into God’s throne-room to present ourselves before him, and learn from him, and eat with him. That is worship in the narrow sense, and it is distinct and unique, entirely unlike the rest of our spiritual service (indeed, it is God’s spiritual service to us, rather than vice versa).

But what is the relationship between this narrow kind of worship, and the rest of our lives?

To put it in the simplest terms, the Bible doesn’t just treat worship as something done in the throne-room. It is not just something done on your face, before God’s face. It is also something done on your feet, before God’s footstool. Worship is done out in the world. This is why Paul instructs the Ephesians:

Slaves, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not in the way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers; but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as unto the Lord, and not unto men… (Eph 6:5–7)

He is even more explicit in Colossians:

Whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that from the Lord ye shall receive the recompense of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3:23–24)

In our work, our six days of labor, we serve the Lord Christ. This is the reason that Paul also tells the Colossians that covetousness is idolatry (Col. 3:5). Doug Wilson comments rightly on this passage:

It is a rare occurrence when such an idolater lights votive candles in front of his bank book, or leaves baskets of fruit in front of his investment portfolio. But service is still rendered, and that service is still idolatry. The idolater’s life is lived in the service of that god, and he does what that god demands of him. (Preparing for the Savage Gods)

For Christians, our weekly service looks like visiting widows and orphans in their affliction, working faithfully for our employers, raising our children in the discipling and instruction of the Lord, and everything else which God commands of us in order to rightly represent him and his interests in the world.

But for non-​Christians, it looks like whatever they do instead. Look at how Jesus draws the contrast in the gospel of Matthew:

But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? or athirst, and gave thee drink? And when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brothers, even these least, ye did it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry, and ye did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me. And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life. (Mt 25:31–46)

Although it is easy to think that people who don’t engage in religious ritual are not worshiping, this isn’t how religion and worship works according to the Bible. Again, the way that Paul tells us that greed is idolatry makes this perfectly plain. There is no non-religious activity—not even even with money. Greed is idolatry, and idolatry is worship. Do you know any people who never engage in overtly religious rituals—yet spend eight hours a day in a cubicle just to make money for the weekend, coveting some new purchase or some new experience? What are they serving? What are they glorifying? What are they enjoying? Answer those questions, and you will also discover what (and how) they are worshiping.

Connection to Lord’s Day worship

So this is worship in the broad sense. But what is the connection between this, and worship in the narrow sense—Lord’s Day worship? Exodus 32:8 speaks of the people sacrificing and worshiping:

they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have prostrated unto it, and have sacrificed unto it, and said, These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

If prostrating and service are paralleled, as we have seen—worship and weekday work—and prostrating and sacrificing are also paralleled—worship and church—then clearly these things are connected somehow.

It is not too hard to understand how.

Lord’s Day worship, our gathered Sabbath liturgy, is the capstone, the summit, of our larger spiritual service to our God. Our worship doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We are drawn up the heavenly mountain, into the center of the world—but we do not stay there. By the Spirit, we come up to the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22)…and then we descend again, because there is more to creation than just the peak. Creation is held together at the center, it is governed from the highest point, God’s throne. But there is a vast world that extends out from this point, and much of it still needs to be properly “attached” to it; to be brought under God’s government, to be integrated into the heavenly reality that we enter every Lord’s Day; to be summed up in Christ, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 1.

This idea of the world as a mountain, with worship flowing down, is actually modeled for us from the very first chapters of scripture. Think of Eden. God forms and divides and fills this great world, this wild world, and then he plants a garden sanctuary in the middle of it—a temple on a mountain (Ezekiel 28:13–14). God places Adam into this temple to guard it and tend it—the same language used of the work of the priests in Israel’s temple—but he also instructs him to take dominion over the whole world. So Adam is to start in the garden, to cultivate and glorify it, and also to build in it a place to live, surely. But he isn’t to stop there. He is to fashion the whole world after the pattern of the garden.

Adam must subdue and form and fill the world until it is entirely integrated into the pattern of heaven established in the garden temple.

This is the origin of the city of God.

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads. (Ge 2:10)

These heads, these rivers, water all the lands around Eden. Four rivers going out to the four corners of the earth.

So what? Well, how does Psalm 46 describe the dwelling of God?

There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved:
God will help her at the turning of the morning.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved:
He uttered his voice, the earth melted.

The Psalm goes on to describe all the things God has done in the earth. It depicts God’s temple as the center of the world, the top of the world, the place from which he reigns—and even though things seem to fall apart outside, this will not last, because the center will always hold, and from the center, God acts to bring order to even the furthest reaches. God will integrate all things into himself eventually: he is summing up all things in Christ.

What does this have to do with the waters flowing out of the temple? Think of the river that flows from the temple in Ezekiel 47. What does it do?

Then said he unto me, These waters issue forth toward the eastern region, and shall go down into the Arabah; and they shall go toward the sea; into the sea shall the waters go which were made to issue forth; and the waters shall be healed. 9And it shall come to pass, that every living creature which swarmeth, in every place whither the rivers come, shall live; and there shall be a very great multitude of fish; for these waters are come thither, and the waters of the sea shall be healed, and everything shall live whithersoever the river cometh. (Eze 47:8–9)

Obviously this is not referring to actual fish—we are fishers of men. Have you ever noticed that fish and fishing and the sea go basically unmentioned in the Old Testament, which is all about Israel, but are a central focus of the New Testament, which is all about the gospel which will go out to the nations? The seas are the gentile nations. Here is a simple comparison to illustrate the point:

And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Re 22:1–2)

The waters from the temple in Ezekiel heal the seas; the fruit fed by these waters in Revelation heal the nations.

So what?

Think of the world as scripture depicts it, with a mountain at the middle. On Sunday, we come to the center and top of the world, to a heavenly summit, in order to participate in, and be shaped by, the spiritual pattern from which all reality extends. We come up into heaven to learn what it means when Jesus says, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We learn liturgy, that is, ordering the form and timing of our worship to resonate with heavenly realities. The Lord’s Day is the place where God wears the heavenly grooves into our souls, the heavenly patterns into our behavior, the heavenly sequences into our routines, the heavenly categories into our thinking, the heavenly contours into our intuitions. He orders and structures our thoughts and actions so that they make spiritual sense and reflect spiritual realities.

In other words, he fashions us into proper divine symbols who are capable of expressing in the physical world the mystical realities that lie behind it.

That is what he does in Sunday worship. Liturgy concentrate. But then that worship, that heavenly pattern, flows back down the mountain. Throughout the rest of the week, his liturgy, his ordering of the form and timing of what we do, is mixed into our everyday work, our everyday service of God.

Liturgy does not begin and end at the door of the church. All of life is liturgical. All of life is worship, all of life is service to God, which means that all of life must be ordered to reflect the heavenly reality—so that God’s will may be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

If all of life is to participate in, be integrated into, be summed up in, Christ himself, then all of life must be liturgical. Not that all of life must look like Sunday worship—but that the form and timing of everything we do must be continually transformed from one degree of glory to another to more accurately reflect the heavenly reality. And the Lord’s Day liturgy is where this starts, by teaching us, and by shaping us, to instinctively follow the right patterns in everything we do. The Lord’s Day liturgy—if it really does reflect heavenly realities—teaches us how to say and do the right things in the right order and the right way throughout all of our lives.

Christ transforms us on Sunday, in order to transform the rest of the world through us during the week.

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This article was last updated on March 15, 2023, to expand and clarify the distinction between weekday service of God, and Lord’s Day worship.