Theological Framework

The Church of God is the place of his special presence. 

Matthew 18:20 says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Now, it is true that this passage is in the context of Church discipline. And I have often been critical of those who use it out of its proper context for the sake of making people feel better about a small turnout to a prayer meeting. This notwithstanding, the context of 18:15-20 is the church. Church discipline can only happen within the context of the church, and Jesus also says in verse 17 “. . . tell it to the church . . .” and so there is much to extrapolate from this passage, as it pertains to the special presence of Christ with his church. “Where two or three are gathered” is a graphic way for Jesus to explain that in the smallest possible manifestations of a local church, even they possess this great promise from Christ to be amongst them. In 18:20 the words “are gathered” is one Greek word, sunagō. This is the word from which in English we derive the word synagogue. In addition to this, the Christian church is called a synagogue in James 2:2 when the word “assembly” is used. This gives a clear implication that Jesus is speaking of the formal gathering of the church. Lastly, Jesus says the phrase “in my name,” indicating further the purpose of the gathering/assembly and the power given to that assembly. For these reasons, we can safely say that the church is the place of God’s special presence, and this passage gives us comfort and hope with clear and abundant evidence.

The implication of this is the exact reason for having written it: The eternal Son of God resides with every single solitary manifestation of his body around the entire globe when they gather together on the Lord’s day to worship the one true living God! In the same way in the Old Testament, the tabernacle was a special place where God resided. This was a holy place where no one could enter except upon certain appointed times. This was the place that the eternal God allowed himself to interact with his people. This being the case, when we read in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth,” (emphasis mine) we realize that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament types and shadows. Jesus is now the greater tabernacle and the greater temple where God dwells among his people. So when we read Matthew 18:20, we can happily conclude that although God is everywhere present in the world and all creation simultaneously, he has promised to be with his church in a very special way; the church gathered is a holy place. 

The consequence of this special presence is that since Christ is especially present in the midst of his people on the Lord’s day as they gather together. He must therefore be worshiped by those people. Although we do not find in the New Covenant a specified place for worship, we understand that this does not nullify or abolish the formal or public worship of God. In John 4:21-24 Jesus was clear with the Samaritan woman saying, “Jesus said to her, 

“Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (emphasis mine).

Here he is making clear that there is not a proper place for worship, but now because Christ has “tabernacled” among us, wherever “two or three” gather Christ is among them. But likewise, the consequences of his special presence requires true worshipers, identified by their right worship of God in spirit and truth. 

Biblical Support

God alone has the right to determine how he is worshiped

WCF 1.6 says, “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men . . .” This statement by the divines makes clear that God has given us all things necessary to glorify himself from his own word. In the first instance, we see from Paul that there is nothing other than the gospel recorded in scripture that is allowed to be proclaimed, and departure from the proclamation of that one and only message is cause for being repelled from existence and made an awful stench (Galatians 1:8-9). Likewise, in the second instance, we see Paul tell Timothy that it is the scriptures alone that are able to make a person mature and lacking in nothing (2 Timothy 3:15-17). Furthermore not only is the Bible clear that God has the right to determine how he is worshiped, but he also exercises that right, and this is made abundantly clear in the second commandment. 

Extra-biblical practices inevitably undermine and nullify the worship of God

Waldron writes, 

2 Kings 16:10-18 is a marvelous illustration of the way in which extra-biblical practices inevitably, but often with great subtlety, displace the appointed worship of God. King Ahaz in his apostasy from God [1] and alliance with Assyria[2] set his heart on having an altar-like that which he saw in Damascus. He ordered the construction of such an altar and that it should be placed in the ventral place occupied by the old bronze altar. This altar displaced the old altar as the place upon which the regular morning and evening offerings shall be offered. The old, God appointed altar is, however, not destroyed. Of course not! It is simply placed in a corner[3]. In a footnote to his decree on this matter, King Ahaz assures his more ‘traditional’ subjects that no insult was intended to the old God appointed altar. That decree concluded, “but the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire[4].” Human innovators pay lip service to the God-appointed elements of worship in the very act of nullifying them. How strikingly this illustrates the subtlety with which extra-biblical practices have the tendency to displace the divinely appointed altars of Biblical worship![5]

This event illustrated in 2 Kings is found in the majority of evangelical churches today. There are “mundane or silly announcements, special music, testimony times, mime, liturgical dance, and Christian movies . . .”[6] replacing or severely hindering the ordinary and ordained parts of worship. 

Christ and the sufficiency of scripture are made suspect 

John Owen comments on how churches eventually allow for unappointed elements of worship saying, 

'“Three things are usually pleaded in the justification of the observance of such rites and ceremonies in the worship of God: First, that they tend unto the furtherance of the devotion of the worshippers; secondly, that they render the worship itself comely and beautiful; thirdly, that they are the preservers of order in the celebration thereof. And therefore on these accounts, they may be instituted or appointed by some, and observed by all.”[7]

This line of reasoning, as Waldon says, “impugns the wisdom of Christ.”[8] It is a foolhardy thing, to assume that with all the weaknesses, sins, and failures we possess as humans, that Christ would leave us destitute to do nothing else other than what we invent for the highest form of praise to our God, the supreme and divine worship of himself! Not only this, but the assumption that we are to devise our own strategy for worshiping God is to assume that the scripture is utterly insufficient to give us what we need. Second Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” No doubt this is in the context of corporate worship, but even more so, this fact is given with the backdrop of Paul instructing Timothy on how to govern the church of Christ. Paul is writing to him another letter of encouragement for his ministry as he battles against false teachers who were perverting not only the word of God but undermining its significance in the church. When the word of God is undermined and its value amongst a people is lost; when it ceases to be faithfully adhered to, loved, and highly regarded, this is when we see the degradation of the church and subsequently the society and nation at large (Jeremiah 5). Furthermore, this being instruction for Timothy for how he ought to govern and structure the church, we have to ask the question: Is ordering the church for the glory of God a good work of which the man of God (the elder/teacher) is particularly and peculiarly required to perform? If the answer is yes, then the scriptures are able to thoroughly equip him to perform this supreme task.

The Bible condemns extra-biblical worship i.e. worship that is not commanded by God

Passages of consideration: Leviticus 10:1-3; Deuteronomy 17:3; 4:2; 12:29-32; Joshua 1:7; 23:6-8; Matthew 15:13; Colossians 2:20-23.

Deuteronomy 12:29-32,

“When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’ You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (emphasis mine).

 

This passage of scripture is, in no uncertain terms, in the context of worship and how God should be worshiped. Verse 31 says, “You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way . . . ” indicating a clear line of demarcation that the Lord is establishing for his people against that of all the nations surrounding them. Then in verse 32 the Lord says “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.” This implies two things: 1) that the people of God are greatly tempted to follow the worship practices of the people/nations that surround them, and 2) the Lord has given his people explicit instruction on how he is to be rightly worshiped by way of his explicit commands. 

Colossians 2:23 says,

“These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (emphasis mine).

 

This passage is crucial. Paul is here condemning what is called “self-made religion” and is translated in other versions as, “will-worship,” defined as follows: 

“will-worship — arbitrarily invented worship: would-be worship, devised by man’s own will, not God’s. So jealous is God of human will-worship, that He struck Nadab and Abihu dead for burning strange incense (Lev 10:1-3). So Uzziah was stricken with leprosy for usurping the office of priest (2Ch 26:16-21). Compare the will-worship of Saul (1Sa 13:8-14) for which he was doomed to lose his throne. This “voluntary worship” is the counterpart to their “voluntary humility” (Col 2:18): both specious in appearance, the former seeming in religion to do even more than God requires (as in the dogmas of the Roman and Greek churches); but really setting aside God’s will for man’s own; the latter seemingly self-abasing, but really proud of man’s self-willed “humility” (Greek,“lowliness of mind”), while virtually rejecting the dignity of direct communion with Christ, the Head; by worshipping of angels.”[9]

Finally, let us look at  Leviticus 10:1-3,

“Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’ And Aaron held his peace” (emphasis mine).

 

Here we see unauthorized worship or literally “worship which God had not commanded them” to perform. This was not fire that God had merely forbidden; this was fire that God did not command. They did what they were not commanded to do. In other words, they were not breaking a command of God, they were usurping his sovereign rule by going beyond his instruction and doing that which they “felt' ' like doing. Understanding this difference is crucial in the distinction between the NPW and the RPW.

[1] 2 Kings 16:1-2

[2] 2 Kings 16:7-9

[3] 2 Kings 16:14

[4] 2 Kings 16:15

[5] Waldron, Samuel E. 1995. pg 15 The Regulative Principle of The Church. N.p.: Wisdom Publications.

[6] ibid

[7] Owen, John. 1960. pg 467 The Works of John Owen. N.p.: The Banner of Truth Trust.

[8] Waldron, Samuel E. 1995. pg 16 The Regulative Principle of The Church. N.p.: Wisdom Publications.

[9] Fausset, A. R., David Brown, and Robert Jamieson. 1961. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown's commentary on the whole Bible. N.p.: Zondervan.