We are continuing our study of worship, specifically corporate worship in the church. Does God care how we worship? Does he regulate how we worship? And how do we determine how we should worship?
So far, we’ve established that God does, in fact, care how we worship and that he does regulate the worship offered to him. We saw this in the story of Cain and Abel, which took place before tabernacle worship and before the ceremonial law was in force. We also see it clearly throughout the era of tabernacle worship. God gave many strict instructions regarding how his people were to worship him. In the notable case of Nadab and Abihu, we saw what happens when people choose to worship him in their own way.
We also saw that God continues to care about how he is worshiped under the new covenant. Christ accused the Pharisees of worshiping in vain because they had added to the commandments of God, and Paul warned against what he called “self-made religion.” Instead, he says we should submit to the Head of the church, Jesus Christ.
There are two competing principles regarding worship, and most Christians tend to fall into one of these two categories. Few would claim that God does not regulate worship at all. The real question is where we draw the line of what is permissible in the church.
First, there is the regulative principle, which says the church is permitted to do only what God commands. The normative principle, on the other hand, says the church is permitted to do anything except what God forbids.
If I had to guess, I would say that more churches today operate according to the normative principle rather than the regulative principle. Part of the reason may be the way the regulative principle is sometimes portrayed. The name alone can conjure up images of strict legalists insisting that you shouldn’t even have hymnals in church because there is no command in the Bible that says, “Thou shalt use hymnals.”
People sometimes make arguments like that, yet those same arguments are often made while sitting in a church building, as if there were a command in Scripture that says, “Thou shalt have dedicated buildings for worship.” There isn’t.
Questions like that may already be coming to your mind, and I will address them. For now, however, we’ve seen in both the Old and New Testaments that God permits only what he reveals. Nothing should be added to it, and nothing should be taken away from it.
That is, by definition, the regulative principle of worship. The normative principle says you may add practices as long as the Bible does not forbid them. The regulative principle holds that the church does only what God has revealed it should do—nothing more and nothing less.
Having seen the biblical teaching and examples of this, I want to focus now on two underlying truths that form the foundation of the regulative principle of worship:
A holy church
The authority and sufficiency of Scripture
In other words, we believe and practice the regulative principle because we believe in a holy church and in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.
The Church as a Holy People
Let’s begin with the idea of a holy church.
Going all the way back to the early fourth century, the Nicene Creed described the church as “one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” By one, they meant there is only one body under Christ. By catholic, they were referring to the universal church, or the church across both geography and time. But for our purposes, notice how the creed describes the church as holy.
What did they mean by that?
Clearly, this is a very old understanding of the church. It did not arise during the Protestant Reformation. It goes back to the early centuries of the church itself. But what does it mean for the church to be holy?
In the simplest terms, to be holy means to be set apart by God for God.
Throughout the Old Testament, we see this idea repeatedly. Scripture speaks of holy ground, a holy city, a holy mountain, a holy temple, holy offerings, and holy people. For example, consider the fourth commandment:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work. (Exodus 20:8–10)
Here, the Sabbath day is designated as holy or set apart from the rest of the week. There were six days for work, but this one day was distinguished by the command not to work. It was unique. It was different. It was set apart from the others for a distinct purpose given by God.
We see the same principle in the worship of the tabernacle. Exodus 30 says:
With [the anointing oil] you shall anoint the tent of meeting and the ark of the testimony, and the table and all its utensils, and the lampstand and its utensils, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils and the basin and its stand. You shall consecrate them, that they may be most holy. (Exodus 30:26–29)
To consecrate something meant to appoint or dedicate it for a sacred purpose.
When most people hear the word holy, they immediately think of moral purity or sinlessness. Sometimes the word does carry that meaning, but that is not what is meant when the Sabbath day is called holy or when the utensils of the tabernacle were designated as holy.
Saturday is not a morally pure day. The items in the tabernacle are not more righteous than the items in your home. What made them holy was that God had set them apart for his own purpose. The Sabbath day was meant to be different from the other six days of the week. The lampstand in the tabernacle was not meant to be taken home and used as a reading light. The altar was not meant to be used to cook family dinners.
God had a distinct purpose for these things in Israel’s worship of him, so they were set apart from what we might call common things.
We see this distinction in Acts 10 when Peter is given a vision of “all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air” (Acts 10:12). The Lord says to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat” (Acts 10:13).
Under the dietary laws of the old covenant, Peter knew he was not allowed to eat certain animals. So he responds, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean” (Acts 10:14).
By common, Peter does not mean inherently evil. If that were the case, we would be committing sin every time we eat pork. While God had prohibited eating pork under the old covenant, Peter simply means that it had not been designated for them to eat. It was outside the bounds of what God had given his sanctified people.
So when God declares something or someone to be holy, it means that person or thing is set apart by him for his distinct purpose. It is different from what Scripture calls common.
This is how the church is described throughout the New Testament. Several different words are used, but they all point to the same idea. The church is holy. The church is sanctified. The church is made up of saints, which comes from the same root word as holy.
Peter writes that the church is “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). The church belongs uniquely to God and is set apart from everyone else.
This language echoes the way Israel was described in the Old Testament. In Exodus 19:5, God says, “You shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.” Israel was set apart from every other nation in a very distinct way. God used them uniquely and required them to live differently from the surrounding nations, even down to their foreskins. Their identity and practices marked them as a people set apart according to God’s purpose.
The New Testament says the same about the church.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:2, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And in Ephesians 5, Paul describes the church this way:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25–27)
Descriptions like these appear throughout the New Testament. The church is sanctified. The church is holy. The church is made up of saints. In other words, the church is set apart by God for God.
When we talk about sanctification, however, there are different aspects to it. Hebrews 10 gives us a helpful example.
In verse 10, we read, “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). This refers to a once-for-all setting apart of God’s people through the atoning work of Christ.
Then verse 14 says, “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). Here sanctification is described as an ongoing process in the lives of those who have already been set apart through Christ.
Finally, there will come a day when God’s people are fully and perfectly sanctified as they enter eternal life, while everyone else faces eternal judgment. At that point, the separation between God’s people and the world will be complete.
The Centrality of Corporate Worship
Everything about the church’s identity is meant to be distinct from the rest of the world. What does this have to do with how we worship?
First, we need to understand that worship is the most important thing we do as the church. Worshipping and praising God is the very heartbeat of the church.
Going back to 1 Peter 2, Peter writes, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
In Ephesians 1, as Paul describes how God has chosen and redeemed us, he repeatedly says it is for the praise of God: “to the praise of his glorious grace … to the praise of his glory … to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).
Hebrews 13:15 says, “Let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.”
In John 4, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, “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” (John 4:23).
The book of Revelation shows us what the people of God are doing in heaven and will be doing for all eternity. They are singing God’s praises: “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power” (Revelation 4:11).
Paul tells us that the culmination of human history will come when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10–11).
The Westminster Catechism asks, What is the chief end of man? The answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.
This is also the clear pattern of the church in the New Testament. From the very beginning, we are told:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. … And all who believed were together and had all things in common. … And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42–47)
Notice that last line. What happened when people were saved? They joined themselves to the church. They separated themselves from the world and became members of this sanctified body.
What was this sanctified body doing? Corporate worship. They devoted themselves to the various elements of worship. They attended the temple together. They praised God together. And they did this consistently, even daily. We are told that day by day, they attended the temple together, and when they were not in the temple, they gathered in their homes.
God sets a people apart for the distinct purpose of glorifying him. Just as in the Old Testament, our corporate worship under the new covenant is a primary means by which we glorify him.
This point is important because we live in a time when many professing Christians believe they do not need to be part of the corporate church. You often hear people say, “I can worship God alone at home. I can worship on my fishing boat. I can worship anywhere. I don’t need to go and be part of the church on Sunday morning.”
While it is true that we can worship God apart from the gathered church, the consistent teaching and example of Scripture is that corporate worship is of supreme importance and should never be neglected. Hebrews 10 warns us not to neglect meeting together, “as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25).
Another telling fact is that much of the New Testament was written to local churches—that is, bodies of believers meeting regularly for corporate worship.
In Matthew 18, we find a verse that is often taken out of context. Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matthew 18:20).
The context of that statement is not corporate worship but church discipline. Yet the principle remains relevant. Jesus says that when his sanctified people are gathered in his name—that is, for his purpose—he is with that body of believers in a special way.
This does not mean that he is absent when we are alone. Rather, it emphasizes that Christ is present with his people when they gather together as the church, even in the most difficult circumstances.
The Church as the Pillar and Buttress of the Truth
Let’s consider one more passage that serves as a bridge between these two underlying principles—a holy church and the authority of Scripture. That passage is 1 Timothy 3:15.
Paul is writing to the young minister Timothy, who was serving the church in Ephesus. Ephesus was an extremely pagan and idolatrous city, and it must have been a challenging environment for the church. Along with the pressures from the surrounding culture, there were also internal temptations. The apostle John later had to remind them, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). It is easy to imagine the temptation to bring into the church beliefs and practices carried over from their former pagan lives.
Paul writes:
I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. (1 Timothy 3:14–15)
Notice how Paul describes the church, and he is referring here to the gathered church.
First, the church is the household of God. That language might sound informal at first, but Paul is using terminology that echoes the tabernacle and the temple in the Old Testament. Rather than thinking of a household as a place where you relax and do whatever you want, Paul is describing a place of formal, regulated worship. It is certainly a place of joy, but it is also a place to be taken seriously.
Second, the church is the church of the living God. Why emphasize that God is living? For pagans, their gods were not living gods. They could create a god, however they wished, and worship that god, however they wished. They could invent the rules for themselves.
But that is not the case with a living God. Our God is real, and our God determines how he should be worshiped.
Finally, the church is described as a pillar and buttress of the truth—that is, the truth of God. According to Romans 1:18, the rest of the world suppresses the truth of God. Only the church, God’s set-apart people, has been entrusted with proclaiming and defending that truth.
As I mentioned previously, when our behavior in the church, especially in our worship, follows what God has revealed, we reflect the character of God himself. When it does not, we obscure the character of God and obscure the truth.
But as Paul says, the church is meant to be the pillar and buttress of the truth of our living God in this world.
The Authority and Sufficiency of Scripture
The church is a holy people set apart by God. We have a unique identity, and because we are set apart for God, we also have a unique purpose. This brings us to the second underlying principle: the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.
We see this principle in 1 Timothy 3:15 as well. Paul writes, “If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God.”
That statement is very explicit. As God’s set-apart people gather for God’s set-apart purpose, God gives a specific standard for how we are to conduct ourselves. I especially appreciate that word ought. It carries the idea of necessity. It is necessary that we behave in the way God directs.
This makes perfect sense. If we are set apart by God for God, it stands to reason that he would show us how to fulfill our purpose. He always has. We see it clearly throughout the Old Testament. We see aspects of it even in the Ten Commandments. And as we saw previously, we also see it in the New Testament.
The church under the new covenant does have regulations regarding corporate worship. There is a right way and a wrong way to behave in the household of God. Notice that Paul’s emphasis is not on how individuals live privately, but on how the gathered church behaves.
This verse brings the two principles together. Because the church is holy, it must behave as God directs. And because the church behaves as God directs, it reflects that holiness. It becomes, as Paul describes, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
So the second underlying principle is the authority of Scripture. Scripture is how we know what God requires of us.
The first paragraph of the 1689 Confession says:
The Holy Scriptures are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. … To preserve and propagate the truth better and to establish and comfort the church with greater certainty against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and the world, the Lord put this revelation completely in writing. Therefore, the Holy Scriptures are absolutely necessary, because God’s former ways of revealing his will to his people have now ceased.
The Confession later adds:
The supreme judge for deciding all religious controversies and for evaluating all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, human teachings, and individual interpretations, and in whose judgment we are to rest, is nothing but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit. In this Scripture, our faith finds its final word.
If we believe the Bible is God’s Word, then we must treat it as authoritative. And if it is authoritative, we should rely on it to govern our worship rather than our own opinions and ideas.
Furthermore, if we believe the Bible is sufficient, then we do not need to add anything. God has revealed everything necessary. As Paul writes, “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” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). The Bible is from God, so it is authoritative and sufficient, equipping us for every good work.
This was also the central issue of the Protestant Reformation. At the heart of the Reformation was a debate over the authority of Scripture in worshiping God. The church in Rome had long elevated church tradition to the same level of authority as the Word of God. In their view, tradition and the Bible were equally authoritative.
The Reformers rejected that idea. They insisted that tradition must always be subject to Scripture. The Bible alone is the church’s final authority.
For that reason, the debate during the Reformation closely overlapped with the debate between the regulative and normative principles of worship. The regulative principle says the church should include in its worship only what God commands in Scripture. The normative principle says the church may include anything that Scripture does not forbid.
The Roman church defended the normative approach with its traditions and innovations. The Reformers defended the regulative principle. They argued that the church, as a holy people set apart by God for a holy purpose, must worship in the ways God has revealed, because his Word is both authoritative and sufficient.
John Calvin expressed this point clearly:
The rule which distinguishes between pure and [valid] worship is of universal application, in order that we may not adopt any device which seems fit to ourselves, but look to the injunctions of Him who alone is entitled to prescribe. Therefore, if we would have Him to approve our worship, this rule, which He everywhere enforces with the utmost strictness, must be carefully observed. For there is a twofold reason why the Lord, in condemning and prohibiting all fictitious worship, requires us to give obedience only to His own voice. First, it tends greatly to establish His authority that we do not follow our own pleasure, but depend entirely on His sovereignty; and secondly, such is our folly, that 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. Justly, therefore, does the Lord, in order to assert full right of dominion, strictly enjoin what He wishes us to do, and at once reject all human devices which are at variance with His command. Justly, too, does He, in express terms, define our limits, that we may not, by fabricating perverse modes of worship, provoke His anger against us. I know how difficult it is to persuade the world that God disapproves of all modes of worship not expressly sanctioned by His Word. The opposite persuasion which cleaves to them, being seated, as it were, in their very bones and marrow, is that whatever they do has in itself a sufficient sanction, provided it exhibits some kind of zeal for the honor of God. Since God not only regards as fruitless but also plainly abominates whatever we undertake from zeal to His worship if at variance with His command, what do we gain by a contrary course? The words of God are clear and distinct. “Obedience is better than sacrifice.” “In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Every addition to His word, especially in this matter, is a lie. Mere “will worship” is vanity. This is the decision, and when once the judge has decided, it is no longer time to debate.
To summarize Calvin’s argument, God approves only the worship he commands in Scripture. Human inventions in worship, even when motivated by zeal, undermine God’s authority. True worship, therefore, requires obedience to God’s revealed will rather than human creativity.
Calvin also makes a helpful observation when he says that when we are left at liberty, we tend to go astray. Once we depart from the right path, there is no end to our wandering.
In other words, the normative principle of worship does not merely create the possibility of a slippery slope; it is the slippery slope. In subtle ways, it undermines both the holiness of the church and the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.
First, it treats the worship of God’s sanctified people as something common, allowing the church to incorporate whatever it chooses. Second, it assumes that God has not provided everything necessary for what is the most important function of his sanctified church.
A Necessary Distinction
At this point, some people push back and say, “Wait a minute. There are many things we do that God does not explicitly prescribe.”
That is true. If we had to live by the regulative principle in every aspect of life, we would essentially be crippled. There is no command in Scripture telling me to set my alarm in the morning. There is no command telling me to take a shower, check the weather forecast, or get in my car and drive to work. There are countless things we do every day that the Bible does not specifically tell us to do.
Some people use that fact to argue that the regulative principle cannot possibly be correct.
Pastor Mark Driscoll once made this argument:
What I don’t understand is why we would treat 1 hour a week by a certain set of rules, and the other 167 hours of the week by a different set of rules. … You don’t wake up in the morning acting like a regulativist. You don’t wake up in the morning and say, Okay, I need to brush my teeth. Where is that in the Bible? It’s not in there. Golly, I was hoping I could brush my teeth, but I can’t. Well, I guess I’ll have breakfast. Well, the Bible doesn’t say breakfast. It says to eat, but it doesn’t say when. Is it okay to eat in the morning? I’d better pray about this. Okay. I gotta put on pants. Uh-oh, pants aren’t in the Bible. Oh no. This is gonna be a bad day … Why is it that we live by the normative green-light principle until we get to church, and then we have to live by the regulative red-light principle just for an hour a week as if there’s not a blur in between the lines? We also have other church gatherings, meetings, Wednesday night classes, community groups. Do they count red light, green light? The whole thing gets very confusing. I think we live our whole life by the same principles, whether we’re scattered or gathered for worship, it’s green light. We’re free until we see something that is sinful and forbidden, then it’s red light and we stop.
Do you see the mistake Driscoll makes?
For many people, this argument is compelling. It seems reasonable. There are many things we do and must do that do not require a direct command from God. So why, when the church gathers for corporate worship, do we insist on the regulative principle?
The answer returns us to the two principles I have already expounded upon:
A holy church
The authority and sufficiency of Scripture
There is a vital distinction between the sanctified people of God gathering for corporate worship—our highest calling—and the rest of life. God regulates worship in a way that he does not regulate every detail of daily life.
Think again about the tabernacle in the Old Testament. God did not regulate how someone used a lampstand in their own home. But he did regulate how the lampstand was used in the tabernacle.
Why? Because God himself made a distinction between worship and ordinary life. Some things were common, and some things were sanctified.
In short, worship is governed by the regulative principle because it is special, distinct, and sanctified. The rest of life, however, operates according to the normative principle.
