When we worship the true God, it is fundamentally not about what we get out of it, but rather glorifying Him. Yet as we worship Him, we are gradually being conformed more and more to His image. This benefits us as well as being honouring to Him. Meanwhile, our understanding of what God is like cannot but shape the manner in which we worship Him. When we have a true grasp of who He truly is, the consequence for our worship will be that it truly reflects what He is like. The way we worship God should tell a story about the kind of God He really is. These interconnected themes stand out in the following excerpt from Hugh Binning’s discussion of John 4:23–24 (“…true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth…”).

Our worship should correspond to the God we are worshipping.

The right manner of worshipping God is so as our worship carries the stamp of His image on it, such that it is like a mirror in which we may behold God’s nature and properties.

What He Himself is, that is what He wants to be acknowledged to be, and I think it would really be true worship if it had engraved on it the name of the true and living God, and if it proclaimed of itself: God is, and He is a rewarder of them that seek Him diligently.

Most part of our service speaks of an unknown God. Its inscription is, “To the unknown God.” There is so little reverence, or love, or fear, or knowledge in it, that it’s as if we did not worship the true God at all, but an idol. I fear that our worship is sometimes such that no one could conclude from it that it had any relation to the true God!

But this is true worship, when it renders back to God His own image and name. In water from a pure and clean fountain, you may see your reflection distinctly, but a troubled or muddy water, he cannot see himself. So, pure worship is worship which receives and reflects the pure image of God, but impure and unclean worship cannot receive it and retain it.

Christians, please consider this, for the Father seeks a certain kind of worshipper —and why? Because in them He finds Himself (so to speak) — His own image and superscription is on them, His mercy is engraved on their faith and confidence, His majesty and power are stamped on their humility and reverence, His goodness is to be read on the soul’s rejoicing, His greatness and justice in the soul’s trembling.

O, how little true worship there is, even among them whom the Father has sought out to make true worshippers! We stay at the first principles of religion, and do not go on to build on the foundation. Sometimes our worship has a stamp of God’s holiness and justice, in the fear and terror of such a majesty which makes us tremble before Him — but where is the stamp of His mercy and grace which should be written in our faith and rejoicing? Tremble and fear indeed, yet rejoice with trembling, because there is mercy with Him. Sometimes there is rejoicing and quietness in the soul, but it quickly degenerates into carnal confidence, and makes the soul turn grace into wantonness, and think of itself above what is right, because it is not counterpoised with the sense of His holiness and justice.

O, to have these jointly written on the heart in worship — fear, and reverence, and confidence, and humility, and faith! That is a rare thing. It is a divine composition and temper of spirit that makes a divine soul. For the most part, our worship reflects nothing of God, neither His power, nor His mercy and grace, nor His holiness and justice, nor His majesty and glory. A complacent, faint, formal way, void of reverence, of humility, of fervency, and of faith!

I beseech you, let us consider, as before the Lord, how much effort and time we lose, and how we please no one but ourselves, and profit no one at all! Stir up yourselves as in His sight! For it is the fixed and constant meditation of God and His glorious properties that will beget the resemblance there should be between our worship, and the God whom we worship, and imprint His image on it. Then it would please Him, and profit you, and edify others.

Our worship should be spiritual.

Our worship must have the stamp of God’s spiritual nature, and be conformed to it in some measure, else it cannot please him.