“Well, what's wrong with saying that worship is for God? For starters, it implies that worship is purely our response to God. It presents this picture: Somewhere, outside a worship service, God saved me. Having been saved, I have a duty to gather with God's people to thank him for his mercy and praise him for his greatness. Outside the church door, I sought and found God's grace. Once inside, I am not a seeker after grace, but a giver of praise. It is impossible, however, for any human action to be a response pure and simple. To entertain that possibility is to assume we can be autonomous, independent of God: once God has worked in us, we can respond to him without having to rely on his continual working in us. That, of course, is exactly what Reformed theology denies.Scripture does not merely say that God works first, and then we respond. It says that our response is yet another work of God. It says that even when we give, we are simultaneously, and primarily, receiving. Thus, it is not as if we are recipients of grace until we walk through the door. We rely on God's work in us in worship as much as anywhere else, and it is only because we are acting by the power of the Spirit that our actions in worship bring honor to God.”
Peter Leithart from the OPC’s New Horizons magazine, April 2002
G. Mark Sumpter
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