Worship. (It’s not just music.)

WORSHIP 'wər.ʃəp noun. Reverence and adoration suitable for a deity; also often demonstrated to a certain principle, person, or institution.

2. Feeling or expression of such reverence and adoration; the acts or rites which make up a formal expression, such as religious ceremonies.

3. verb. To perform acts and rites of worship.

[Worshiper/worshipper 'wər.ʃəp.ər noun, worshipful 'wər.ʃəp.fəl adjective.]

When Christians pray, frequently we worship God at the same time.

The ancients defined worship as acts of reverence and devotion, same as we do. Middle easterners would usually get in the “downward-facing dog” yoga pose, putting their heads to the floor before before their gods and kings. That’s how they showed obeisance, an old-timey word for ceremonially humiliating yourself in honor of somebody else. Kings got off on that.

From the Black Obelisk of Šulmānu-ašarēdu 3: Northern Israeli king Jehu ben Jehošafat of Samaria worships Assyrian king Šulmānu-ašarēdu bar Aššur-nasir-apli, to whom he paid tribute. Probably took place in 833BC; the stone dates from 827. Wikipedia

For convenience (and partly out of pride), westerners simplified this: You could kneel and bow, but head to the floor isn’t necessary. Or you needn’t go all the way down to the ground. Or at least bow or curtsy. Whatever satisfies the person you’re worshiping… and isn’t too difficult a posture for you to get into.

Westerners also added another definition to worship: We might feel worship. That is, we feel like someone’s worthy of reverence and adoration… but we don’t assume the position before them. This meaning was also invented for convenience; somebody might get caught not performing the appropriate acts of worship, but could claim they certainly felt worship, and shouldn’t this count just as much?

The United States banned nobility in our Constitution, so most Americans have the attitude we don’t worship anyone but God. Yet we still stand when presidents, governors, judges, or mayors enter the room. Some of us bow to visiting royals… and rock stars. We don’t always identify this as worship, but that’s exactly what it is.

But this wouldn’t be enough for ancient middle easterners: They expected you face down on the ground, doing obeisance to the king or gods. Or you’d suffer consequences. And in the case of the LORD, doesn’t he totally merit this level of respect? It’s why Muslims still get down and put their heads to the floor five times a day: God is most holy, most worthy.

Some of us Christians pray the very same way: On the floor, face down, honoring God. Posture’s important.

Worship versus service.

Christians figure bowing or prostrating isn’t the only form of worship. We figure service is a form of worship. When we do good works on God’s behalf, and love our neighbors like he commanded us, that’s worship too.

Well… we might’ve added that definition to worship, but the scriptures didn’t. They distinguish between worship and service.

Luke 4.8 NIV

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

And no, this isn’t just Hebrew poetry, where we’re repeating the same idea with different words. Because there are plenty of instances in the Old Testament which contrast the two. Namely how people worshiped the LORD, but insteada serving him, they served pagan gods. The Samaritans, fr’instance:

2 Kings 17.33, 41 NIV

33 They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought.

 

41 Even while these people were worshiping the LORD, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their ancestors did.

The New Testament too. Jesus pointed out the hypocrisy of people who worshiped the LORD in temple and in public, but privately bent his commands beyond the breaking point, and taught it was okay to do so.

Mark 7.7 NIV

“‘They worship me in vain;

their teachings are merely human rules.’”

Y’know, kinda like certain Christian hypocrites do: They’ll perform acts of reverence and honor to Jesus, but outside the church building they’ll only serve Mammon.

True, if we worship God we should likewise serve him. And prioritize our service to him instead of prioritizing our jobs, bosses, family members, public approval, our finances, our convenience, or our comfort. One should follow the other, just like good works is the Spirit’s fruit, and evidence of salvation. But they’re not the same thing—same as good works don’t save.

Good deeds and obedience aren’t worship. They’re the result of worship. If we worship God, if we truly revere and adore him, we’re gonna want to obey him; we’re gonna want to be good like he is. These things prove we’re not just going through the motions of worshiping God, but that we authentically worship him. “In spirit and in truth,” as Jesus put it; Jn 4.23 it’s not half-hearted or hypocrisy, but full-hearted and real.

Worship versus music.

Christian music which praises God, usually which praises him second-person with a lot of “you” statements (“You are holy, you did such-and-so, I love you,” etc.) tends to get called worship music, and for a lot of Christians it’s called “worship” for short. The unfortunate side effect is Christians, particularly newbies, get the idea worship music is worship: We worship God by singing Christian songs.

And it can be. Worship’s about acts of reverence and devotion, and of course the feelings of reverence and devotion—and few things trigger feelings like music. Some of us are easily gonna get whipped into a lather for God with some really rockin’ worship music.

Others not so much. Which is why they hate worship music; they see it as emotionally manipulative. And let’s be blunt: It is. Is this a bad thing? Depends on why music pastors wanna make us emotional, and since most of ’em simply want us to worship God, I don’t see this as a problem whatsoever. (Now if their goal is to make us think they’re awesome musicians, or want us to lower our defenses so they can preach bulls--- and heresy without question, big problems.) You want people to adore and revere God, music’s a useful shortcut. One God is fully aware of—and endorses! Didn’tcha notice the five-volume book of Psalms in the bible?

But again, music isn’t worship. Music inspires worship. People sing about how awesome God is, and it reminds us and gets us to love and honor him. If it’s good music, performed well, people won’t be distracted by the music and musicianship itself, and can solely focus on God. If the words are good content, and accurately describe God instead of naïvely distorting him, we’ve got a good picture of God in our minds instead of the usual pop-culture junk, and love him for who he is instead of what we project upon him.

And if you wanna do it facing the floor, or waving your hands in the air, praising Jesus like y’just don’t care—hey, do whatever honors God.

Ritual worship.

Obviously the bible describes a bunch of ritual acts of worship. Like ritual cleanliness, ritual sacrifice (largely stuff we as Christians needn’t do anymore), and various sacraments. When pagans think of worship, that’s generally what they think of: Us doing weird church rituals.

And yeah, we can do rituals as part of our worship. But back to Jesus’s idea of worshiping in spirit and truth: Do we practice these things in reverence and devotion to God, or are we doing them because “that’s just what we do”? (Or, in the story where Jesus spoke of worship in spirit and truth, “that’s where we oughta do it”?) Yeah we should do sacraments, ’cause God thinks sacraments are important. But more important is our attitude during these sacraments. We’re doing ’em out of love, not duty; with grace, not with nitpicking how other Christians don’t do ’em the same way we do ’em.

The core of our worship, the spirit and truth of our worship, should always and only be our love of God. It’s the whole point. Otherwise why do it? Why go through the motions? Why get on the floor, go to singalongs on our day off, eat tasteless crackers, or otherwise make these efforts?—and it’d better not be to make others think we’re holy or superior. If we love God, we worship him.

And from there, all else follows.

666, the Beast’s number.

In Revelation John was given an apocalyptic vision of two animals. The first is a leopard with bear paws, seven heads, and 10 horns; and it fights the saints and gets the people of earth to worship it. Christian popular culture tends to call it the Beast, as the KJV translates θηρίον/thiríon; or the Antichrist, ’cause too many of us speculate it’ll claim to be Christ. (Even though Revelation says no such thing. Go look.) The second animal has horns like a lamb, performs “miracles” in support of the first animal, and forces everyone to worship the first animal and its talking ikon.

And this:

Revelation 13.16-18 KWL

16 It made it so everyone—small and great, rich and poor, freemen and slaves—

might give themselves a stamp on their right hand, or on their forehead.

17 Thus no one was able to buy nor sell unless they had the stamp:

The first animal’s name, or the number of its name.

18 Here’s some wisdom: Those with a brain, calculate the animal’s number.

It’s a person’s number, and its number is 666.

The UBS Greek New Testament spells it out as ἑξακόσιοι ἑξήκοντα ἕξ/exakósiï exíkonta ex, “six hundred sixty six.” The Textus Receptus instead uses the Greek letters ΧΞϚ, which is how ancient Greeks wrote numbers before they discovered Arabic numerals: They borrowed letters from their alphabet. The first nine letters were the first nine numbers; the next nine were the numbers 10, 20, 30, and so on up to 90; the next nine were the numbers 100, 200, 300, till they ran out of letters. So chi was used for 600, xi for 60, and stigma for 6.

There’s a textual variant in some ancient copies of Revelation which says the number is 616. So a lot of bibles mention that in their footnotes… just in case. Y’never know.

So if you have a brain, and wanna know who the leopard with seven heads represents, its number is 666. Figure it out!

Here’s the problem: Too many people don’t have a brain, and aren’t gonna bother to figure it out. They’re just gonna connect the dots, then panic. Fear makes people stop thinking, y’know: Fight-or-flight kicks in, and that’s all they do from that part onward. It’s why John addresses those of us who pursue wisdom: Don’t squander this clue.

First we gotta learn what a person’s number is. And no, I’m not talking about your social security number, your employee ID number, your credit card number, your PIN number, or any of the other numbers arbitrarily or deliberately connected to you.

Gematria.

A lot of people correctly figure “the number of a man” Rv 13.18 KJV is figured out by taking their name, converting the letters into numbers, and adding up all the numbers. Or if you’re really desperate to find a connection, doing some other stuff to the numbers: Multiplying ’em, bunching ’em together; anything which adds up to 666. Anything which connects the dots.

So how do we convert letters into numbers?

Well, most of us learned to cypher when we were kids. Cypher is to substitute something else for the letters of our alphabet. Sometimes another letter; sometimes a number; sometimes a symbol. (Some daily newspapers still publish cyphers, give you a few hints as to which letter meant what, and let amateur codebreakers have a little fun trying to crack the cypher.) The most basic cypher we learned was the simple letter-to-number substitution cypher: A=1, B=2, C=3, and so on till Z=26.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught Christians trying to use this cypher to figure out if someone’s the Beast.

When John wrote Revelation, was he thinking about the English alphabet? Or its predecessor the Latin alphabet? (Same alphabet, but I was split into I and J, and V was split into U, V, and W.) Not even close. For that matter the Latins didn’t even do this themselves. They decided I=1, V=5, X=10… you know, Roman numerals. (As you’ve seen on clocks, Super Bowls, and Star Wars episodes.)

John wasn’t speaking of calculating “the number of a man” with the Latin alphabet. Nor even the Greek alphabet. He had Hebrew in mind. Because calculating a person’s number was a Jewish practice. They called it gematria—from a bad translation of γεωμετρία/geometria, “geometry.” Many Jews still practice it, as part of Kabbalah.

Same as the Greeks, the Hebrew alphabet assigns a numeric value to each Hebrew letter. Today’s Hebrew-speakers still use it sometimes, same as we do with Roman numerals.

LETTER	NAME	VALUE
א	alef	1
ב	beit	2
ג	gimel	3
ד	dalet	4
ה	he	5
ו	waw	6
ז	zayin	7

LETTER	NAME	VALUE
ח	khet	8
ט	tet	9
י	yod	10
ךכ	kaf	20
ל	lamed	30
םמ	mem	40
ןנ	nun	50

LETTER	NAME	VALUE
ס	samek	60
ע	ayin	70
ףפ	pe	80
ץצ	chadë	90
ק	qof	100
ר	resh	200
ש	sin	300
ת	tav	400

So alef is 1, bet 2, gimel 3, and so forth till 10; then they go up by tens, then hundreds till you’re out of alphabet.

Notice kaf, mem, nun, pe, and chadë have two letters. The second letter (usually the one with the tail) is a sofít, a final-case letter. You know how we have uppercase letters at the beginning of some words? Final-case is the form which goes at the end of words. Since some folks wish Hebrew had 27 letters instead of 22 so they could count up to 900, they claim those final-case letters have extra values:

LETTER	NAME	VALUE
ך	kaf sofit	500
ם	mem sofit	600
ן	nun sofit	700
ף	pe sofit	800
ץ	chadë sofit	900

But nearly every Jew gives the final-case letters the same value as usual.

So every Hebrew letter has a numerical value. And in gematria, every Hebrew word also has a numerical value. Add up the value of its letters, and there y’go. Jesus’s name ישוע consists of yod (10), shin (300), waw (6), and ayin (70). Add ’em up and you get 386. That’s Jesus’s number.

(Yeah, there are folks who insist Jesus’s number is 777. That’s because somebody told them so… and they really like sevens. But obviously they’ve never double-checcked. Few do. And no, we don’t get 777 any other legitimate way. “Messiah Jesus” is 744. “King Jesus” is 411. “Jesus of Nazareth” is 1166. “Jesus son of Mary” gets 618 in Hebrew and 838 in Aramaic. The only way you can squeeze 777 out of “Jesus” is to use the wrong alphabet, or a mishmash of wrong alphabets. And gematria isn’t that hard.)

I should point out: Both Christians and Jews are really leery of gematria. For good reason. It’s not just used to figure out the numerical values of words for fun. In Kabbalah, a sect of rabbinical Judaism which specializes in mystery, they claim any word can be swapped for any other word with the same numerical value: If they share a numerical value, they share a spiritual value too. So if you wanna have a “new revelation,” it’s simple: Pick any verse from the bible, swap a few words with their numerical “equivalents,” and presto: A new teaching!

Take lo tináf, “Don’t adulter.” Ex 20.14 Tináf is worth 531. And so, coincidentally enough, is Florence Henderson. So if you don’t really feel like watching Brady Bunch reruns, there y’go: “According to Kabbalah, Exodus 20.14 can also mean ‘No Florence Henderson.’ So I’m sorry; I just can’t watch that.”Which is all kinds of wrong to both bible and to national treasure Florence Henderson.

John’s advice in Revelation obviously refers to gematria. So we’re permitted to use it to figure out the Beast’s number: Take a given person’s name. Convert it into Hebrew. (Google Translate will do that job for you easily.) Add up the numerical value of the letters.

And once that person’s name adds up to 666, he or she might be the Beast. Might not be. But if they start doing anything Beast-like, the number of their name confirms they’re a valid suspect.

I had a student once who was worried she might be the Beast. So I taught her how to calculate the number of her name. Wasn’t even close. Was that a load off her mind.

Okay. So that’s the proper use of 666: It’s a checksum to make sure someone isn’t the Beast. That’s all. That person who is the Beast will be the person to worry about. The number itself isn’t the problem.

Various other irrational fears.

Of course, I tell people about gematria and they look at me sideways: “I’ve never heard that before. I don’t think that’s right.” And they go back to their other favorite, tried-and-never-proven methods of Beast detection.

Or, more commonly, superstition. Pure pagan, didn’t-come-from-God, never-would-come-from-God, superstition. Any time they come across the number 666, they flinch in fear. Won’t abide it in their phone numbers, their serial numbers, their license plates, anything. If they’re buying groceries and the total comes to $6.66, they quickly buy something else to bump it up to $7.65.

True, the second beast uses the stamp in relation to commerce. Rv 13.17 So Christians are particularly sensitive to 666 in financial transactions. After all, that’s the most likely place the number will come up. There used to be some rumor going round of the word “Visa” secretly representing 666: The VI is obviously the Roman numeral 6; the ancient Greeks used stigma, which kinda looks like an S, for six; and presumably A becomes a six in some other culture, though I’ve yet to see a satisfactory explanation for it. (Ask whichever friends of yours post the most conspiracy theories on Facebook. They’ll know.)

But out of context, the number’s nothing to fear. It only exposes fearful Christians as lacking wisdom.

The Spirit empowers us to speak.

Mk 13.9-10, Mt 10.17-20, Lk 21.12-15.

When Jesus warned his students about the coming tribulation in his Olivet Discourse, he told ’em he (or the Holy Spirit, depending on the gospel) would have their back when it came time to testify before kings and leaders. He put it this way.

Mark 13.9-11 KWL

9 “Now look at you yourselves. They’ll turn you in to the Senate. They’ll cane you in synagogues.

They’ll stand you before leaders and kings because of me, to witness to them.

10 You have to first declare the gospel to all the gentiles.

11 When they turn you in, don’t premeditate what you might say:

Instead whatever’s given you at that hour, say it, for you aren’t speaking; the Holy Spirit is.”

 

Matthew 10.17-20 KWL

17 “Watch out for the people: They’ll turn you in to the Senate and their synagogues. They’ll flog you.

18 They’ll take you to leaders and kings because of me, to testify to them and the gentiles.

19 When they turn you in, don’t worry about what you might say at the time you give a defense:

20 It isn’t you speaking, but your Father’s Spirit in you speaking.

 

Luke 21.12-15 KWL

12 “Before all these signs they’ll lay their hands on you and persecute,

turning you in to synagogues and prisons,

dragging you before kings and leaders, because of my name:

13 This will become your chance to testify!

14 So make up your minds to not pre-prepare your defense:

15 I’ll give you a mouth and wisdom which they can’t withstand,

which contradicts everything brought in opposition to you.”

Jesus is speaking of when we’re put on trial—or not, ’cause if you weren’t a citizen, Romans didn’t bother with due process, and a lot of countries behave the same way. (Too often Americans don’t either. We don’t always recall that rights aren’t granted by our Constitution but by our Creator—so due process isn’t an American right but a human right.) If given the chance to defend ourselves, or simply speak for ourselves, don’t have a premeditated, canned answer. Speak off the cuff. It’ll sound authentic… for it’ll be authentic. And he and the Holy Spirit will help.

Now this was considered a risky idea in Jesus’s day, and in the Roman Empire. Because if you were a politician or attorney back then, you were expected to know the art of public speaking; in other words classical forensic rhetoric. It was expected of every public speaker, especially if you were in government. If you had to stand before a court, a senate, a praetor, an emperor, or the general public, you had to know and follow Roman standard expectations for public speaking. If you didn’t, and spoke for yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it for you, you were considered uneducated, amateurish, stupid, and not to be taken seriously or listened to.

The rules of rhetoric.

Aristotle of Athens taught there were three things every public speaker oughta have.

CREDIBILITY (Greek ἔθος/éthos, “[good] habits”). Speakers gotta sound like they know what they’re doing. They have to have practiced in front of enough crowds to where they’re comfortable in speaking. This’d help them come across as sincere, knowledgeable, confident, trustworthy—in short, believable. ’Cause if the listeners don’t believe you, there’s no point in speaking.

If you aren’t actually sincere, knowledgeable, confident, or trustworthy, you gotta fake these things—although Aristotle preferred you actually have a good character, instead of faking one. (Word will get out, y’know.)

So speakers had to prove they knew what they were talking about. And y’notice the folks who gave their testimonies in the bible, tended to talk somewhat knowledgeably about their subjects. Stephen’s big long speech about Israeli history, given during his trial, tends to strike people as unnecessary, but it absolutely wasn’t: It was so the Judean senate would recognize Stephen knew his bible. So when Stephen came to his conclusions—that God didn’t need a temple, plus the senate had assassinated their Messiah—these conclusions couldn’t be dismissed as if they came from some babbling moron. It’s no wonder they wanted him dead.

PASSION (πάθος/páthos). Speakers have to be passionate about their causes. They gotta connect with the audience, and evoke strong emotion in their listeners.

Yes, to manipulate them. ’Cause if your logic and reasoning isn’t strong enough to make your case, you can at least gain the audience’s sympathy, and maybe tip a ruling towards your favor. So tell a heartwarming story. Tell a joke. Use puns. Exaggerate. Shout a little. Cry a little. Pause dramatically. Shock ’em with the unexpected.

Nowadays we consider emotional manipulation, in public speaking, to be wrong. Logic, not emotion, should rule the day. And to a large degree the ancient Greeks and Romans agreed. But the reality is, we humans are emotional creatures, and a lot of us do let our emotions rule. So rhetoricians figured it’d be stupid to ignore this tactic. They taught their students to do it… so everybody did it. Audiences even expected speakers to do it: It wasn’t considered a good speech unless it tugged your heartstrings a little.

So this is what Paul did in his own trials: Spoke of his past as a prosecutor. Spoke of his dramatic conversion. Spoke of his new zeal for the gospel and God’s kingdom. Then took a shot at evangelizing his hearers—as Agrippa Herod realized, and Paul totally admitted.

LOGIC (λόγος/lóghos, “message”). By lóghos Aristotle meant a well-reasoned message, explained with a little inductive or deductive reasoning.

Inductive thinking takes common knowledge (whether there’s any truth to it or not, which is the usual flaw with inductive reasoning) and try to base our conclusions on it. Deductive takes a statement, finds exceptions to it (“If my client were poor he’d rob a bank, but he’s not poor”), and whittles away at the statement till you can’t help but reject it. Rhetoricians shrewdly advised their students to not finish their chain of reasoning (“…therefore he didn’t rob that bank!”), because the audience usually had enough sense to figure that part out… plus they felt clever for doing so, and making ’em feel good keeps ’em on your side.

We see the apostles practice inductive logic by quoting bible, which their listeners trusted, and drawing conclusions from it. As for deductive logic, this appears far more often in the apostles’ letters than their speeches, but we see it pretty clearly in Peter and John’s defense:

Acts 4.19-20 KWL

19 In reply Simon Peter and John told them, “Decide, by God, if it’s right to heed you or God:

20 We can’t not talk about what we saw and heard.”

Supernatural public speaking.

Paul had been to academy, the ancient equivalent of university, studying under Rabban Gamaliel the Elder. Jesus’s students, particularly the Twelve, had not. They’d only been to synagogue. (Though their rabbi was Jesus of Nazareth, which counts for an awful lot!) So while Paul definitely received training in rhetoric, as other accounts of Gamaliel make clear, it wasn’t something you’d expect to find in synagogue lessons. Jesus was an out-of-the-ordinary teacher, so he might’ve taught basic rhetoric to his students… or they might’ve picked up some of it by listening to him speak.

Either way, it startled the Judean senators when they saw Peter and John’s παρρησίαν/parrisían, “speaking ability” (KJV “boldness”). These guys were comfortable with public speaking. Yet they had no rhetorical training the senators were familiar with; they’d never been to academy; they only studied under Jesus. Either Jesus slipped ’em some advanced subjects, or (which Jesus makes clear in the Olivet Discourse) they’d been gifted by the Holy Spirit.

’Cause God can do that. When we have the ability to hear the Spirit—and we do!—and we practice listening to him, he tells us what to say. No, he won’t take over our lips and work us like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He simply tells us what to say, and it ends up being just the right thing. It’s supernaturally good.

Is it therefore guaranteed the Spirit will get us an acquittal? Absolutely not. Stephen got killed. Eventually Peter got killed. Eventually John got exiled; eloquent or not, he didn’t talk his way out of it. The Twelve were martyred, all proclaiming Jesus till the end.

Jesus doesn’t promise any pretribulation rapture. He only promises those who endure to the end will be saved. Mt 24.13 We might not convince anyone. Might get killed. But despite our death, Jesus is resurrection and life. We may die, but thanks to Jesus, we’ll live. Trust him.

And if you ever find yourself in circumstances where you gotta defend yourself under pressure, trust the Holy Spirit. He may not give us an instant crash course in Aristotelian rhetoric. But he’ll still tell us just what we need to say.

Prophecy and preaching.

Prophecy is when we hear God and share with others what we heard.

It’s not a complicated definition. It only gets complicated when people don’t wanna define it that way. When they wanna claim prophecy is only for the very, very few (not every Christian, like Joel described Jl 2.28-29); that it’s a special office, and they’re one of the few officeholders, so heed them. Or when they wanna claim prophecy ended in bible times ’cause God has since turned off the miracles.

Today I’m dealing with the second group, the cessationists. And if prophecy is when we share what we heard from God, but nobody hears God anymore… are there prophets anymore? Can there be prophets anymore?

Some’ll say no. Which is a problematic belief. If there’s no such thing as prophets and prophecy, what’re we to do with all the verses in the scriptures where we’re encouraged to prophesy, 1Co 14.5 and discouraged from rejecting prophecy? 1Th 5.20 Do we set them aside, ’cause they no longer count in this dispensation?

Others have come up with this explanation: Yes we can hear from God in the present day—through the pages of the bible. When you read God’s word, you’re “hearing” from God, aren’t you? And when you share what you read in the bible, and explain it to people who struggle to understand it… well this, they claim, is prophecy. We prophesy every time we teach bible.

Even Christians who do believe God still speaks, have accepted this redefinition: Teaching bible counts as prophecy. Anybody who expounds on the written word of God is ipso facto a prophet.

Is this an accurate definition of prophet? Hardly.

Love of God.

Jesus was asked about the most important of God’s commands, and instead of picking just one (as the great Pharisee teacher Hillel did), he picked two.

Mark 12.28-31 KWL

28 One of the scribes was standing there listening to the discussion.

Recognizing how well Jesus answered the Sadducees, he asked him, “Which command is first of all?”

29 Jesus gave this answer: “First is, ‘Listen Israel: Our god is the Lord. The Lord is One.

30 You must love your Lord God with all your heart, life, purpose, and might.’ Dt 6.4-5

Second is, ‘Love your neighbor like yourself.’ Lv 19.18

No command is higher than these.”

So let’s talk about those commands. Because the Holy Spirit empowers us with the love necessary to obey ’em.

Starting with love for the LORD God. The Spirit hasn’t granted us his fruit solely so we love other people. It’s also so we can love him. A fruity Christian loves God. Loves Jesus too, ’cause he’s God. Loves the Holy Spirit, ’cause he’s God.

Fruitful people look forward to time spent with God. We look forward to worship—and no, I don’t mean music. True worship, the kind of worship God asks us for, is obedience and good works. Swapping out music for true worship—substituting entertainment and feel-good emotion for being like Jesus—is one of the devil’s cleverer tricks, ’cause it appeals to Christians so effectively. Nothing wrong with loving Christian music, but fruity Christians wanna serve God too, and that’s through doing as Jesus teaches.

Fruity Christians also look forward to Jesus’s second coming. We’re not hoping he’ll delay it so we can get a few other sins things crossed off our to-do lists. Nor are we looking forward to demented versions of it where we dodge suffering, or where pagans get wiped out. We want Jesus to save the world—and we wanna be with him when it happens!

A fruitless Christian prefers God stick to a weekend schedule. Stop interfering with our time the rest of the week; our “tithe” of time takes place Sunday morning, and maybe Wednesday nights, and that’s all. Any more is inconvenient, and even those Sundays and Wednesdays are kind of a drag. Whereas fruity Christians desire God, don’t wanna encounter him only at church services, doesn’t resent him taking up “our time,” and extends our worship of him to 24/7.

Fruity Christians don’t resent God for taking up our time, using our resources, denying us things, or telling us no. We humbly accept he’s Lord. We don’t keep a list of stuff he owes us, or is obligated to make up for us; we don’t plan to accost Jesus at his second coming and say, “So when’m I getting my crown and mansion, and how close will my office be to yours?” We have no ulterior motives for following God, like power and rank and wealth. We love him. That’s more than reward enough.

Fruity Christians don’t give up on God. Don’t lose faith in God. Always hope in God. Endure through every circumstance because of God. ’Cause when we love God, we do as love does—towards God.

The fruitless Christian, not so much. Lots of works of the flesh, all directed towards God instead of love. Fruitless “worship” will only consist of music which doesn’t lead us to repent any, or helps us insist we already have repented, and we’re good, and right, and justified. And therefore it’s okay to do evil and fall back on cheap grace, or hate others on the grounds they sin or are heretic. And all sorts of Christianism instead of worship.

So… do you love God?

If we love God, we follow the apostles’ definition of love 1Co 13.4-8 when it comes to God. We’re not satisfied with lip service and happy music; we act like we love God. It’ll be obvious to others. Hopefully to ourselves too.

I could rant further and hope you get the point, but instead I’ll do a quiz. Quizzes are fun.

If we love God, we’ll…

OBEY HIM. Or try to, anyway. And not just obey the convenient commands, but make an honest effort to find out which of ’em Christians oughta practice in the present day, then stick to ’em. Including the hard ones.

WALK IN GOD’S WAYS. More than just obeying God, we try to act like he does. Look at Jesus’s example. And it’s way more than just “What Would Jesus Do?”—we don’t guess what he’d do, ’cause we’ll easily project our motives upon him and guess wrong. When in doubt, ask. The Holy Spirit will tell us.

LOVE PEOPLE. Including the unloveable. As Jesus does. He orders us to unconditionally love everyone just the same. If we don’t truly love God, it’s kinda inevitable we won’t love others. 1Jn 4.8

PUT GOD ABOVE OTHERS. Yeah, that includes rejecting the peer pressure our friends might put on us to do various unholy things. But it’s even more than that. It’s putting family behind God: Telling the kids, the parents, the spouse, “No,” because you actually love and prioritize God more.

PUT GOD ABOVE MONEY. If our worship of God doesn’t result in tighter finances, we’re doing it wrong.

HATE EVIL. Primarily our own evil; we’re not gonna self-delusionally think we’re above every potential temptation. And yeah, we’re gonna hate other forms of evil, and actively strive to stamp it out. (Without unintentionally stamping on other people; we’re gonna remember to love them too.)

You should wind up ticking all the boxes. If not, work on it! Ask the Spirit for more love. Start obeying him. It’s a benevolent circle (the opposite of the vicious one): When we do for God, we love him more; when we love him more, we do more for him. And so on. It escalates. Grows faith too. Try it.