27: Bowing Down or Building Up? Rethinking Worship in the New Testament

This is the Ready for Eternity podcast, and I'm Eddie Lawrence. No New Testament passage instructs

Christians to gather for the purpose of worship. In fact, many of our modern worship terms, ideas, and practices are not found in the

New Testament. First century Christians gathered for a different purpose, so their gatherings looked different.

The New Testament shows that their goal was not worship, but mutual edification and discipleship.

In this episode, let's rethink worship in the New Testament. Were they bowing down or building up?

What do Christians mean by the word worship? Here's how different believers might respond if we ask them what worship is.

Worship is feeling awe and gratitude toward God and expressing it through prayer, singing, and praise.

Worship is when my heart overflows with love for God and I can't help but sing or pray to Him. Worship is an active response to God's presence, whether it's raising hands in praise or kneeling in prayer.

Worship is getting lost in God's presence, feeling His love, and responding with joy or tears. Worship is setting aside time to focus on God through songs, reflection, and heartfelt prayer.

Webster's Dictionary defines worship as a prayer, church service, or other church rite showing reverence for a deity.

While these are all common modern ideas about worship, the New Testament reveals a different idea.

Let's talk about the New Testament's worship words. As it turns out, the

English word worship is a poor translation choice since it does not reveal what someone in the

New Testament was doing when it says they worshipped. Dr. Tom Wadsworth in his extensive

PhD research on early church terminology asked, When an

English Bible says that someone worshipped, what did that person do? Did they offer a prayer or a song?

Did they feel a sense of reverence? When a Bible verse says that someone paid homage, what exactly constitutes homage?

Did the person present a gift? Did they offer a sacrifice? Did they say certain words?

The reader does not know. Why doesn't the reader know? We don't know because there are five

Greek words, each with distinct meaning, that our English Bibles generically translate as either worship or serve.

These two English words don't adequately express a meaning in English which is equivalent to the meaning in Greek.

In this article, we'll consider the most frequently used Greek word that our

New Testament Bibles translate as worship, proskuneo. Here's how lexicons define proskuneo.

Other lexicons define proskuneo similarly. Quite clearly, proskuneo is a word which indicates a physical posture.

It describes when someone was bowing, kneeling, or had prostrated themselves on the ground as a show of respect or reverence.

Wadsworth observes, The New American Standard Bible translates it as worship 87 % of the time.

As for the remainder, the English Standard Version renders proskuneo as bow, fell, kneel, etc.

In other words, when the New Testament mentions worship using this Greek word, it's describing an act of physically bowing down, not the modern idea of singing or praying in a church.

This makes one wonder why the translators of the various English New Testaments chose to translate proskuneo as bowing, kneeling, falling down, etc.

in some passages and as worship in others.

Why the inconsistency? Often there are other words in a sentence where proskuneo appears which suggest the action of bowing.

Dr. Wadsworth calls these prostration indicators. Listen to the following verses and notice how it tells what a person's physical actions were when worship or proskuneo was occurring.

All this I will give you, he said, if you will fall down and worship proskuneo me.

Matthew 4 9 As Peter was about to enter, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet to worship proskuneo him.

Acts 10 25 The twenty -four elders fall down before the one seated on the throne, and they worship proskuneo, him who lives forever and ever.

They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Revelation 4 10 These clues, along with the definition of proskuneo, show that prostration was a physical and visible act.

It describes kneeling, bowing, or laying flat on the ground face down before the one being honored or revered.

The English word worship does not necessarily describe a physical posture nor any kind of visible outward action.

The New Testament never uses the word proskuneo to describe what

Christians did when they came together as a congregation. On the other hand, the

Bible does use proskuneo to describe what happened in a different religious setting.

Bowing, or proskuneo, was performed in the Old Testament temple.

The Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures, often uses proskuneo to translate the

Hebrew word histahawa.

Both words have the same meaning, and with very few exceptions,

English Bibles translate histahawa as worship. John Richardson, in his 1995 article in Churchman magazine on the topic of worship, said that this word specifically refers to or is connected with either the act of bowing down or the attitude associated with it.

This includes frequent references to bowing down and worshiping, which expresses both the specific action and the attitude prompting the action.

He goes on to say that both histahawa and proskuneo are almost entirely confined to bowing or prostrating oneself.

This practice was an essential part of temple worship, as is seen in numerous passages like 2

Chronicles 7 verse 3, where the Israelites bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshipped when the glory of the

Lord filled the temple. The word worshipped in that verse is the Hebrew word histahawa, which the

Septuagint translated as proskuneo. The physicality of this act underscored the

Israelites' submission and deep reverence for God. It wasn't an abstract internal feeling, but a visible embodied expression of homage central to their worship in the temple setting.

The New Testament continues this association between proskuneo and the temple.

For example, Revelation 11 verse 1 refers to those who prostrate in the temple, reflecting the same physical act of devotion seen in the

Old Testament. Similarly, Revelation chapter 11 verse 16 describes the twenty -four elders falling on their faces and prostrating before God, echoing the

Septuagint's portrayal of temple prostration. These scenes in the heavenly temple emphasize the continuity of proskuneo as a tangible physical act reserved for sacred spaces.

Importantly, the term does not describe general worship practices such as prayer, singing, or communal gatherings.

The Septuagint consistently separates proskuneo from other temple activities like sacrificing or offering incense, reinforcing that prostration was a distinct and highly specific act within the temple context.

In stark contrast, early Christian gatherings did not involve prostration or proskuneo.

The New Testament never uses this word to describe what believers did when they assembled as a church.

Instead, Christians met for mutual edification and teaching and fellowship as seen in passages like 1

Corinthians 14 verse 26 where each person contributed to the building up of the community, while temple prostration symbolized reverence in a physical space.

The early church focused on spiritual growth and community encouragement. These gatherings underscore that the

Old Covenant used the physical act of temple prostration, which the

New Covenant did not carry forward. Dr. Wadsworth points out

Heinrich Greven's observation that proskinesis, which is bowing or prostration, virtually disappears from the

New Testament after the Gospels and Acts. It does reappear in the book of Revelation where it describes those who prostrate before God, leading

Greven to conclude that proskinesis demands visible majesty before which the worshiper bows.

When the New Covenant replaced the Old Covenant, it brought sacred spaces, sacred objects, and sacred rituals to a close.

God's presence was no longer in a temple made with hands, but within each believer and within the congregation of believers, the church.

Paraphrasing Wadsworth, it would seem that prostration lost its significance and purpose under a covenant where God was no longer physically present, that is, in the temple.

The presence of God no longer resided in the temple in Jerusalem, and Jesus had ascended back to the

Father. In this new world of the New Covenant, there was no longer a divine presence to bow before.

Therefore, prostration became irrelevant in the church, and therefore it played no part in the

Christian gatherings. In light of all this, we see a profound shift from external rituals to internal transformation in the

New Testament. Proskuneo, with its focus on physical prostration, belonged to an era when sacred spaces defined worship.

With the New Covenant, worship took on a deeper spiritual dimension, no longer confined to a temple, but embodied within the lives of believers.

This transition underscores the purpose of early Christian assemblies, mutual edification, not ritualistic homage.

Understanding this helps us see church gatherings not as ceremonial acts, but as opportunities for shared growth and encouragement, aligning our practices with the heart of New Testament teaching.

In our next episode, we'll explore another worship word, Latruo, and see how it further reshapes our understanding of early

Christian gatherings. Thanks for listening to the podcast.

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