¹Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. ²And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

The more we know about our Lord Jesus, the better we can see how amazing He was and continues to be. This leads us to a more informed worship that is more than saying, “Lord, we worship You.” One can almost hear the Lord responding, “OK, I’m ready to receive your worship, now go ahead and do it.”

What do we say to Him when we worship? To be sure, music and warm, sentimental and oft repeated lyrics may provide us with a means for worship, but they are not synonymous with worship. But worship emanates from within us, our whole selves, not just our emotions.

We are not only in awe of Him, but we speak our awe to Him. He is high and lifted up, and we bow within ourselves. We worship Him when we move ourselves to His feet, prostrate in our spirits before Him. Scripture gives us the imagery of being in His throne room to convey this mental picture (see Isa. 6:1-5, Heb. 4:16). We do now in our hearts what we will do when we will do in His presence in heaven.

The apostle Paul extends our “spiritual service of worship” to include a whole-body experience (“present your bodies”) with a fully engaged thinking (“renewing your minds”). Perhaps a simple illustration may help. When a young man expresses love to his bride, he begins with the words, “I love you.” He says it with feeling, and he says it quite often—and she delights in receiving this expression of his feelings. But, if all he says is those words over and over, it begins to sound rote. Even if he sings “I love you” over and over, after a while the tune loses its emotional impact. He needs to grow in his expression of love for her by looking deeply into her eyes and describing what he loves about her. Over the years of marriage, he learns to express his love with an expanse of phrases and descriptions, as poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

We grow in our worship by redirecting our thoughts from worldly things to the expanding delight of serving God with our intelligent worship. That is what He accepts as “good and acceptable and perfect.” The more we learn about our Lord Jesus Christ, the more we engage our minds in attributing to Him His worth. Thus, we take Peter’s final words as essential for growing in our worship:

“[G]row in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (2 Peter 3:18)

We are helped in our worship by glorifying Him in great songs and hymns that put into musical form great theology, describing God and particularly His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ in profound ways, engaging the emotional power of music with the intelligent rehearsing of God’s ways and attributes. Gifted writers and composers use poetic verse that conveys truth in ways that plain prose cannot touch. We include here one example by Graham Kendrick, extolling the incarnation of Jesus Christ with the combined attributes of meekness and majesty:

Meekness and majesty, manhood and deity
In perfect harmony, the Man who is God
Lord of eternity dwells in humanity
Kneels in humility and washes our feet.

Chorus: O what a mystery, meekness and majesty
Bow down and worship for this is your God
This is your God.

Father’s pure radiance, perfect in innocence
Yet learns obedience to death on a cross
Suffering to give us life
Conquering through sacrifice
And as they crucify prays, “Father forgive.”

Wisdom unsearchable, God the invisible
Love indestructible in frailty appears
Lord of infinity stooping so tenderly
Lifts our humanity to the heights of His throne.

We must also remember that intelligent worship is not confined to music and singing alone. While Jacob may or may not have sung his worship, the content of his worship is suggested by the mention of blessing the children of his previously long-lost son, Joseph. God had been faithful and saved Jacob and his family from famine, and thereby kept His promise to bless him and his descendants. All that is noted is the physical limitation of his old age:

“By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.” (Heb. 11:21)

May our informed worship lead to an expanding vocabulary for expressing to God and attributing to Him how absolutely worthy He is of all of our love, adoration, and praise, including with our emotions, minds, and bodies. As we study the Scriptures, and in particular, as we study Jesus Christ, may we turn our knowledge about Him into worship of Him.

Oh Lord, I desire to know You better so that I may worship You more intelligently, for You alone are worthy.