Last time, we looked at two biblical principles that serve as a foundation for the regulative principle of worship. The regulative principle says we ought to do only what God commands when we worship. By contrast, the normative principle says we are permitted to do whatever we want in worship so long as Scripture does not forbid it.
The two biblical principles that support the regulative principle are:
A holy church
The authority and sufficiency of Scripture
By a holy church, I mean the church is a people set apart by God for God. We are to be distinct from the rest of the world in many ways, but nowhere more so than when we gather for corporate worship. Our worship of God is the most important and distinctive thing we do as the church. And as we saw in both the Old and New Testaments, God shows great concern for how his people worship him. Indeed, he regulates how his people are to worship.
When we combine the principle of a holy church with our belief in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, it follows that we should be careful to worship God only as he directs. When God’s set-apart people do the most important thing they are called to do, it only makes sense that they would submit to the authority of Scripture. More than that, we trust that God’s Word provides everything we need to worship him “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23).
If those two principles are not enough to persuade us of the regulative principle of worship, Ligon Duncan offers several more in his book Does God Care How We Worship? In fact, he names eleven. I would like to consider each of them, at least briefly.
The Nature of God
Duncan begins with the nature of God. As he writes, “God’s own nature—who God is—determines how we should worship him.”
Previously, I cited Deuteronomy 4, but let me return to a portion of that passage. It helps us understand why God gave the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image” (Exodus 20:4). The Lord says,
Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. (Deuteronomy 4:15–19)
Why does God forbid the creation of physical images of him? Throughout church history, especially during debates over icons and images, many have argued that such images help worship by providing something tangible to look at. So why does God prohibit them?
The answer appears in the passage itself: “Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves” (Deuteronomy 4:15–16). The Israelites were not to make an image of God because they had not seen God. And why had they not seen him?
Jesus provides the answer in John 4 when he tells the Samaritan woman, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). Whatever it means to worship in spirit and truth, Jesus grounds the requirement in the nature of God himself. God is spirit. Therefore, his worship must be spiritual.
The same reasoning appears in Deuteronomy 4. Because of who God is, the Israelites did not see him. And because they did not see him, they were forbidden from creating a carved image of him. In John 4, we worship in spirit and truth because of who God is. God is Spirit; therefore, we must worship him in spirit.
We can take this a step further. The way we worship God inevitably shapes our understanding of him. Our worship reflects his character. When we worship according to what he has revealed, we reflect that character rightly. But when we worship according to our own ideas and preferences, we obscure it. This is why the second commandment exists. If you create an image of God and incorporate it into worship, it will inevitably change the way you see him, and not for the better.
You might say that the medium becomes the message.
Neil Postman makes a similar observation in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. His argument is that television changes the message it carries, whether news, religion, or entertainment, by turning everything into a form of amusement. But how does the shift from printed words to televised images alter the message? In a real sense, the medium itself shapes what is being communicated.
Postman writes,
In studying the Bible as a young man, I found intimations of the idea that forms of media favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture. I refer specifically to the Decalogue, the second commandment of which prohibits the Israelites from making concrete images of anything [as a representation of God]. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth.” I wondered then, as so many others have, as to why the God of these people would have included instructions on how they were to symbolize, or not symbolize, their experience [of him]. It is a strange injunction to include as part of an ethical system unless its author assumed a connection between forms of human communication and the quality of a culture. We may hazard a guess that people who are being asked to embrace an abstract, universal deity would be rendered unfit to do so by the habit of drawing pictures, or making statues, or depicting their ideas [of him] in any concrete, iconographic forms. The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. [Icons] thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture. People like ourselves who are in the process of converting their culture from word-centered to image-centered might profit by reflecting on this Mosaic injunction.
As far as I know, Postman was not a Christian, but his insight is perceptive. He recognizes that a God who is “unchangeable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty,” to borrow the language of the 1689 Confession, cannot be reduced to a picture or a statue. Attempting to do so inevitably reshapes how we think about him.
For the Israelites in Moses’ day, this was a radical approach to worship. The false gods of Canaan and Egypt were represented by idols—visible, tangible objects. But the true and living God declared, in effect, “I have not revealed my appearance to you, so you are not permitted to create anything in my supposed likeness.” As Postman puts it, “The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word,” a concept requiring the highest order of abstract thinking, which makes sense, given that our God is incomprehensible.
Ligon Duncan summarizes the implication well:
The how of worship is vital to our growth in grace and in the knowledge of the one true God, because it contributes to our grasp of the one true God. Often we hear, and agree with, the dictum that “we become like what we worship,” but the Reformed understanding of worship teaches us that it is also true that “we become like how we worship.”
The medium may not be the whole message, but it certainly shapes it. God, therefore, reveals how he is to be worshiped so that our worship reflects his nature. If we worship in other ways, according to our own inventions, we inevitably obscure who he is.
The Creator–Creature Distinction
Duncan’s second reason for the regulative principle is the Creator–creature distinction.
Psalm 100:3 says, “Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” Likewise, Numbers 23:19 declares plainly, “God is not a man … or a son of man.”
Scripture repeatedly emphasizes the vast difference between God and those he has made. Consider Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah 6:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:1–5)
The distinction between the Creator and his creatures could hardly be more vivid. The whole earth is filled with God’s glory, while Isaiah, a mere man, trembles in his presence.
We see this distinction throughout Scripture. The 1689 Confession expresses it this way: “The distance between God and these creatures is so great that they could never have attained the reward of life except by God’s voluntary condescension.”
Now consider what this means for worship. In Isaiah, the Lord says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9).
There is an immeasurable gulf between the Creator and his creatures. Given that reality, how reasonable is it to suppose that we, the creatures, can determine for ourselves how we should worship the Creator?
Yet this is precisely what happens under the normative principle. When the church adopts the normative principle, the creatures assume the right to go beyond what the Creator has revealed about how he is to be worshiped. But that is a remarkable presumption. How can we acknowledge the Creator–creature distinction while at the same time suggesting that God’s Word is not sufficient to direct our worship of him?
Revelation
Third on Duncan’s list is the nature of revelation and knowledge. He writes:
As revelation is the divine foundation of human knowledge of salvation, so also is revelation the divine foundation of our worship of God, which is itself, when properly understood, a response to revelation. And if worship is to be a right response to revelation, then it must be revelationally directed.
What he means is that there are certain things we can know about God through general revelation. For example, we can know that God exists simply by looking at creation. As Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). But general revelation is not sufficient to tell us how we may be saved. For that, we need special revelation.
According to Romans 1, general revelation is only enough to leave us without excuse. Paul writes:
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:19–20)
General revelation, then, goes only so far. When we look at the stars or the trees, creation tells us that God exists and that he is powerful, but it does not tell us how we may be saved. God must reveal that explicitly, which he has done through his Word.
Think of Abraham. Abraham may have known that there was a God, but he would not have known to leave his homeland for the land of Canaan unless God had spoken to him directly. The Baptist Confession makes this same point:
The light of nature and the works of creation and providence so clearly demonstrate the goodness, wisdom, and power of God that people are left without excuse; however, these demonstrations are not sufficient to give the knowledge of God and his will that is necessary for salvation.
Duncan’s argument is that the same principle applies to worship. General revelation may tell us that there is a God who ought to be worshiped, but it does not tell us how he is to be worshiped. For that, we need special revelation.
This is evident in the case of the Gentiles Paul describes in Romans 1:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:21–23)
They instinctively knew there was a God to be worshiped. But apart from special revelation, they did not know how to worship him rightly. So they invented their own forms of worship, which ultimately led to idolatry.
We must rely on God’s special revelation to know how he is to be worshiped. Unless he reveals it, we have no assurance that what we offer to him is appropriate worship.
It is also important to remember that worship involves a kind of dialogue between God and his people. God speaks, and we respond. God reveals how he is to be worshiped, and we answer accordingly. He declares, in effect, “Here is the sacrifice I require,” and we offer that very sacrifice—nothing more and nothing less.
The Second Commandment
Fourth, Duncan points us back to the second commandment. We have already discussed this, but the second commandment establishes the regulative principle of worship within the enduring moral law.
Why is it part of the moral law rather than the ceremonial law? Because it reflects God’s unchanging character. God does not permit us to worship him in ways other than those he has revealed, precisely because what he reveals about worship flows from who he is.
And because this commandment belongs to the abiding moral law, its principle continues into the New Testament. Paul commends the Thessalonians by saying, “Your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report … how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:8–9).
It is easy to reduce the second commandment to a prohibition about what or whom we worship, but the commandment also addresses how we worship. This becomes clear when we read Deuteronomy 4 or when we consider the Israelites forming the golden calf in the wilderness to worship the God who delivered them from Egypt.
Not only must we avoid worshiping false gods, but we must also avoid worshiping the true God in false ways.
The Nature of Faith
Next, Duncan urges us to consider the nature of faith. This is what John Owen called “the argument from faith.” Duncan writes, “Since faith is essential to true worship, the conditions of worship must accord with the exercise of true faith.”
Scripture is clear that nothing we do is pleasing to God apart from faith. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please [God].” And Paul writes in Romans 14:23, “Whatever is not from faith is sin.”
But what is faith? At its core, faith is trusting what God has revealed. If that is true, then worship that goes beyond God’s revelation cannot be an act of faith. To worship apart from what God has revealed would, by definition, be unfaithful.
The Baptist Confession speaks clearly about the nature of faith in chapter fourteen:
By this faith, Christians believe to be true everything revealed in the Word, recognizing it as the authority of God himself. They also perceive that the Word is more excellent than every other writing and everything else in the world, because it displays the glory of God in his attributes, the excellence of Christ in his nature and offices, and the power and fullness of the Holy Spirit in his activities and operations.
What God reveals to us displays his glory. By faith, we recognize his revelation as true and authoritative. And if that is so, then whatever he reveals about how we should worship him will also display his glory. By faith, we trust what he has revealed and receive it as our authority for worship.
The Doctrine of Carefulness
Sixth, Duncan points to what he calls the doctrine of carefulness. He writes,
The Bible makes it exceedingly clear that we ought to be careful in worship. Our God is a consuming fire and not to be trifled with. The severity of the punishments inflicted upon those who, from time to time, offer to God, apparently in good faith, unprescribed worship catches our attention: the stories of Nadab and Abihu and their “strange fire” and of Uzzah and David and the ark.
Of course, some will argue that these examples come from a time when the ceremonial law was still in force. And that is true. But we should remember what Paul says about the Old Testament. Writing to the Romans, he says, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction” (Romans 15:4).
So while the specific regulations of the ceremonial law are no longer binding, the warnings they contain still instruct us. These accounts remind us that we must think carefully about how we approach God in worship.
We remain a people created to worship God, and that responsibility alone should make us cautious about how we do it. Jesus himself said, speaking of new covenant worship, “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:23).
Good intentions, by themselves, are not enough. True worship requires more than sincerity. It requires submission to the authority of God’s Word and a willingness to neglect no part of it.
The Church’s Derivative Authority
Seventh, Duncan points to the church’s derivative authority. In other words, whatever authority the church possesses is derived from Christ. The church is not in a position to establish its own laws and norms.
In Matthew 28, Jesus says,
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:18–20)
The church’s task is therefore clear. We declare the word of Christ and uphold the word of Christ, but we do not have the authority to add to it, subtract from it, or alter it in any way.
The Scottish theologian James Bannerman said, “The Church is given no authority to require obedience to its own commands, and it is given no authority to require participation in ordinances of its own making.”
When it comes to worship, then, the church is not free to invent something new. That level of authority does not belong to us. Our authority is subordinate to Christ’s authority. He gives the commands, and we obey them and teach others to do the same.
The Doctrine of Christian Freedom
Eighth, Duncan urges us to consider the doctrine of Christian freedom. At first, it may seem unusual to appeal to liberty of conscience in defense of the regulative principle of worship. But consider how the Baptist Confession describes Christian liberty:
God alone is Lord of the conscience, and he has left it free from human doctrines and commandments that are in any way contrary to his word or not contained in it. So, believing such doctrines, or obeying such commands out of conscience, is a betrayal of true liberty of conscience. Requiring implicit faith or absolute and blind obedience destroys liberty of conscience and reason as well.
When the Bible speaks of Christian liberty, it does not mean freedom from the Word of God. Rather, it means freedom from human doctrines and commandments. As the Confession explains, the conscience is bound to God’s Word alone.
Paul addresses this in Romans 14:
As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. (Romans 14:1–4)
Paul makes similar arguments in Galatians 4 and Colossians 2. The point is that Christians must not bind one another’s consciences with requirements that God himself has not imposed.
For that reason, the doctrine of Christian freedom actually supports the regulative principle rather than the normative principle. Under the normative principle, churches may introduce practices that go beyond Scripture and then expect others to participate in them. But doing so risks imposing extra-biblical obligations on the conscience.
The regulative principle guards against that danger. By limiting worship to what God himself has prescribed, it protects the liberty of the Christian conscience.
The Nature of True Piety
Ninth, Duncan appeals to the nature of true piety. He writes, “God repeatedly expresses his pleasure with, and delight in, those who do exactly what he says.”
Consider what the Lord says in Isaiah 66:
Thus says the LORD:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest?
All these things my hand has made,
and so all these things came to be,
declares the LORD.
But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:1–2)
This passage gives us something like a definition of true religion. It is marked by humility, contrition, and a willingness to tremble at the Word of God rather than choosing our own way.
The same principle appears in Deuteronomy 12, where God warns Israel, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32). And Jesus echoes this concern in the New Testament when he says, “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:23).
True piety, then, is not expressed by creativity in worship but by submission. It appears wherever God’s people humbly receive his Word and refuse to add to it or subtract from it.
Our Tendency Toward Idolatry
Tenth, we should consider our natural tendency toward idolatry.
This is evident throughout Israel’s history. One of the clearest examples appears almost immediately after God delivered the people from slavery in Egypt, when they fashioned the golden calf in the wilderness. The human heart is remarkably prone to idolatry in its many forms. John Calvin famously described our minds as “perpetual idol factories.” Martin Luther similarly observed, “We are inclined to [idolatry] by nature; and coming to us by inheritance, it seems pleasant.”
Paul describes this very tendency among the Gentiles in Romans 1: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
God created us to be worshipers. If we do not worship him, we will inevitably worship something else—ourselves, a sports team, a career, money, or any number of other things. As Bob Dylan once put it, “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
If we are so prone to wander into idolatry, how do we guard against it in our worship? Certainly not by adopting the normative principle, which easily becomes a slippery slope. As Calvin warned,
When we are left at liberty, all we are able to do is go astray. And then, when once we have turned aside from the right path, there is no end to our wanderings, until we get buried under a multitude of superstitions.
Church history provides many examples of this progression. By the Middle Ages, churches across Europe were collecting relics—physical objects believed to be associated with saints, such as bones, fragments of clothing, or items supposedly linked to biblical figures. These relics gradually became objects of veneration.
Early Christians sometimes honored martyrs and remembered them on the anniversaries of their deaths. In itself, that practice may have been harmless. But over time, it expanded significantly. Eventually, people began praying to the saints as intercessors before God. Feast days and religious processions were organized in their honor.
Devotion to Mary also expanded dramatically in the medieval church. She was called the “Queen of Heaven.” Prayers were directed to her, shrines were built in her honor, and some even began to speak of her as a co-redeemer with Christ.
Images of Christ, Mary, and the saints likewise became common in churches. People would kneel before these images in acts of devotion.
Advocates of the normative principle might respond by appealing to passages such as Deuteronomy 4 or the second commandment, insisting that these developments violate explicit biblical prohibitions. And that is precisely the problem with a slippery slope. The first step may not be expressly forbidden in Scripture. The second step may not be expressly forbidden either. But by the third or fourth step, people have grown accustomed to their justifications, and continuing along the same path seems reasonable, even when Scripture’s warnings stand plainly in the way.
Eventually, people may even reinterpret those warnings to justify what they have already begun to practice.
So how do we guard against these endless wanderings in worship? The regulative principle provides the safeguard. By restraining ourselves to what God has prescribed, we protect the church from drifting into the kinds of innovations that so often lead to idolatry.
The Testimony of Church History
Eleventh, Duncan points to the testimony of church history.
I considered leaving this one out because history is often messy. Throughout the centuries, churches have worshiped in many different ways. Some have followed the regulative principle, while others have followed the normative principle. So why should we consider the church’s historical testimony at all?
As Duncan explains, “Church history does not supply a normative authority for church worship, but it does supply a didactic authority that we would be foolish to ignore.” In other words, history does not determine how we should worship—that authority belongs to Scripture alone—but it can certainly inform our understanding.
When we examine church history, one pattern becomes clear: the healthiest periods of the church have generally been marked by simple, Bible-centered worship. In other words, they reflected the regulative principle.
Conversely, a decline in biblical worship often accompanies a broader decline in religion. In many ways, we can observe this trend throughout the Western world today. As churches abandon biblical worship and often biblical doctrine as well, people begin to wonder why they should attend at all. When Christian worship is reduced to a form of secular entertainment and the church becomes little more than a social gathering, people naturally look elsewhere. There is no shortage of entertainment or social clubs outside the church, so many eventually drift away. Churches throughout the West, especially those that have embraced unorthodox doctrine, are steadily shrinking.
Previously, I suggested that most churches today probably follow the normative principle of worship, often by default. If someone has never heard of the regulative principle or considered the subject carefully, the normative principle may seem like the obvious assumption. In my experience, most churches are not doing anything radical in their worship. At the same time, they are not intentionally following the regulative principle either. Instead, they are experiencing a slow slide down a slippery slope. Nothing they do is explicitly forbidden in Scripture, but over time, a culture of shallowness develops.
Consider the Bible’s instruction about singing in worship: “Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Ephesians 5:18–19).
The command is for the whole congregation to sing. To assist the congregation, churches often appoint song leaders and musicians who use microphones and amplifiers. Gradually, the volume on those microphones increases. The song leaders and musicians are placed on a stage at the front of the room, becoming the visual focal point. Then the lights in the sanctuary are dimmed, and spotlights illuminate the stage.
At that point, the focus has shifted entirely to the platform. The amplified music becomes so loud that the congregation can barely hear itself sing. Eventually, many people stop singing altogether and simply watch and listen. The church is no longer addressing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. The congregation has become an audience.
Nothing in this process may directly violate an explicit biblical prohibition. Yet over time, the environment changes in such a way that the church is no longer doing what Scripture commands. That is the danger of the normative principle. Small, seemingly harmless steps can eventually reshape the character of worship.
Many people in such churches sense that something is missing, even if they cannot articulate why. They often describe worship as feeling empty or shallow. What is lacking is the solid foundation that comes from structuring worship according to the clear directives of Scripture.
