Love for Christ & Scripture-Regulated Worship: Loving What Christ Loves
If Christ is Lord, then we should obey him. But we should also obey Christ because we love him.
The way Christ exercises authority in the church is through the apostles, and the writings of the
apostles are the way Christ’s authoritative teachings have been communicated to us. So
regulating our worship according to Scripture is the way we submit to Christ’s lordship with
respect to our worship. Christ’s apostles not only dictate the doctrine and practice of churches,
but the worship of churches (which is an important part of our practice). And we ought gladly
allow our worship to be regulated by Scripture because we love Christ.
There’s another way in which love for Christ leads us to Scripture-regulated worship. Now, all
that I’ve already argued still holds true. If Christ’s authority regulates church practice, and if that
authority is mediated through the apostles and prophets and then the finished canon of the New
Testament regulates church practice, then we should only worship with those elements Christ has
given us.
Moreover, if we love Christ, we not only willingly submit to his authority, but in that submission
we learn to love what he has prescribed for us. As John tells us in 1 John 5:3, And his
commandments are not burdensome. We know, however, that human depravity does find God’s
commandments burdensome. Natural men have evaluated New Testament worship and found it
wanting. It’s not technologically sophisticated. It’s not visual enough. It’s not relevant enough.
But I am arguing that our love for Christ teaches us to love what he loves. If Christ loves (or
wills) a certain kind of worship, that should draw my love away from my own “style
preferences” and interests.
What we love is very often taught to us by others. (We see this principle at work in popular
cultures.) There is a social dynamic at work in the things we love. Leave it to Donald Trump, and
a bunch of people suddenly hate Oreos and love Big Macs. All it takes is one respected art critic
to spoil your love for this or that composer or painter.
When Christ gave his church the elements of worship, he as it were said to her, these are the
ways of worshipping that I delight in, that I find beautiful. In fact, Holy Scripture compares
prayer to the sweet aroma of incense (Rev 8:3–4); it describes the Word of God as better … than
thousands of gold and silver pieces (Psa 119:72); and says that those singing to the Lord are
radiant (Jer 31:12). If Christ declares that such worship is beautiful, we ought to find it beautiful
as well. We have the mind of Christ, and so we should agree with his aesthetic judgment, and
love what he loves.
In fact, if we find that we do not love the simple beauty of Scripture-regulated worship, it is
evidence of our remaining depravity. Herein people are drawn away from what is good and holy
and beautiful, and toward that which God has never willed that we use to worship him (Col 2:23;
cf. Jer 32:35).
Love for Christ & Scripture-Regulated Worship 6: Love for Christ and New Testament
Authority
This is the sixth post in this series (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5). The whole of the first five parts could be
summarized in the final paragraph of the last post:
In sum, the Christian religion is subservient to Christ’s authority. Christ gave that authority to his
apostles and prophets, and they sealed that authority in their writings, which they regarded to be
both authoritative and inspired. This body of teaching is sufficient for the faith and practice of
Christians today. If we claim to follow Christ, we must not only conform our beliefs to Scripture,
we must not only conform our personal lives to God’s Word, but the practice and worship of our
churches must also conform to the New Testament.
In this post, I want@to develop more the idea of Christ’s authority. More than being about the so-
called “worship wars,” Scripture-regulated worship is really about our love for Christ. We
submit to Christ’s authority because we love our Savior. It is certainly true that all men are
obligated to submit to Christ’s authority (Phil 2:9–10; Rev 5:12–13). To disobey the New
Testament is to disobey Christ himself. If we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Acts 2:36; Rom
10:9; 1 Cor 1:2; Phil 2:10), we are obligated to obey him. Christ’s Lordship and his authority is
over us as believers.
The force of this must rest upon our consciences as we go about our work as churches. Christ is
Lord of all. He is the head of the body (Col 1:18). And our faith, polity, and worship are all
received from Christ himself. But for every Christian, our obedience is not merely a matter of
submission to a supreme authority. It’s also a matter of loving the one who died for us. Jesus said
to us in John 14:15, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Our submission springs,
not as prisoners toward a violent guard, but out of love for the Lamb once slain. Jesus taught us,
If you love me, you will keep my commandments (John 14:15; cf. Exod. 20:6).
This is why we want the New Testament to govern our churches. Though we have not seen our
Lord Jesus Christ, we love him. We believe in him and rejoice with joy that is unspeakable and
filled with glory (1 Pet 1:8-9). We love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible (Eph 6:24).
Again, this is why we Baptists are so careful to follow the New Testament. Our desire to obey
the Scriptures flows out of our love for our Savior.
True religion is very much a religion of love or affection for Christ. As Jonathan Edwards
observed, “That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull and
lifeless wouldings, raising us but a little above a state of indifference: God, in his Word, greatly
insists upon it, that we be in good earnest, fervent in spirit, and our hearts vigorously engaged in
religion.”[1] Believers, according to Paul, are those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love
incorruptible (Eph 6:24).
There are many reasons we should love Christ, and the topic would amount to a whole series of
lessons. The Son of God himself is the reason why the Son of God is to be loved.[2] John taught
us, We love him because he first loved us (1 Jn 4:19). Looking at Revelation 5 alone, Christ is
due our love, for he is the Lion of the tribe of Judah (v 5), the Root of Jesse (v 5), the Lamb who
was slain (v 12), the one who opens the seals of divine judgment (v 5), the object of angelic
worship (v 8, 11), the one who has ransomed people from the entire globe for God by his blood
(v 9), and the one who has made those who believe in him a kingdom, priests to our God, giving
them a right to reign on the earth (v 10).[3]
American Baptist John Leadley Dagg wrote a wonderful book on church practice called the
Manual of Theology. In it, he connects our obedience to God’s Word to our love for Christ: “To
love God with all the heart is the sum of all duty. … [L]ove to God produces obedience; for it
impossible to love God supremely without a supreme desire to please him in all things. Hence
this one principle contains, involved in it, perfect obedience to every divine requirement.”[4]
Again: “The true spirit of obedience is willing to receive the slightest intimations of the divine
will.”[5] Love for Jesus Christ, our dying Savior and risen Head, is the fertile ground out of
which the fruits of good church doctrine, practice, and worship springs.
'So why should we insist on Scripture-regulated worship? Simply put, because we dearly love
our Lord Jesus Christ. Worship is not only the vehicle whereby we express our love for Christ
(more on that in a bit), but we worship with the elements we do because we love our Lord Jesus.
Too often, when we hear about New Testament authority, we think about it as either stern
authoritarianism (such is the Adamic response to authority in general) or that the Bible is some
kind of law code to decipher. On the latter, New Testament authority is more than a matter of
turning the Bible into a church handbook or lawbook. The reasons we hold to New Testament
authority shows the real significance of New Testament authority. To disobey the New
Testament is to disobey Christ himself. To add to or alter the New Testament is to disobey Christ
himself. There is no gap between Christ’s teaching and the apostles’ teaching for the churches.
Love for Christ & Scripture-Regulated Worship 6: Love for Christ and New Testament
Authority
In sum, the Christian religion is subservient to Christ’s authority. Christ gave that authority to his
apostles and prophets, and they sealed that authority in their writings, which they regarded to be
both authoritative and inspired. This body of teaching is sufficient for the faith and practice of
Christians today. If we claim to follow Christ, we must not only conform our beliefs to Scripture,
we must not only conform our personal lives to God’s Word, but the practice and worship of our
churches must also conform to the New Testament.
In this post, I want@to develop more the idea of Christ’s authority. More than being about the so-
called “worship wars,” Scripture-regulated worship is really about our love for Christ. We
submit to Christ’s authority because we love our Savior. It is certainly true that all men are
obligated to submit to Christ’s authority (Phil 2:9–10; Rev 5:12–13). To disobey the New
Testament is to disobey Christ himself. If we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Acts 2:36; Rom
10:9; 1 Cor 1:2; Phil 2:10), we are obligated to obey him. Christ’s Lordship and his authority is
over us as believers.
The force of this must rest upon our consciences as we go about our work as churches. Christ is
Lord of all. He is the head of the body (Col 1:18). And our faith, polity, and worship are all
received from Christ himself. But for every Christian, our obedience is not merely a matter of
submission to a supreme authority. It’s also a matter of loving the one who died for us. Jesus said
to us in John 14:15, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Our submission springs,
not as prisoners toward a violent guard, but out of love for the Lamb once slain. Jesus taught us,
If you love me, you will keep my commandments (John 14:15; cf. Exod. 20:6).
This is why we want the New Testament to govern our churches. Though we have not seen our
Lord Jesus Christ, we love him. We believe in him and rejoice with joy that is unspeakable and
filled with glory (1 Pet 1:8-9). We love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible (Eph 6:24).
Again, this is why we Baptists are so careful to follow the New Testament. Our desire to obey
the Scriptures flows out of our love for our Savior.
True religion is very much a religion of love or affection for Christ. As Jonathan Edwards
observed, “That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull and
lifeless wouldings, raising us but a little above a state of indifference: God, in his Word, greatly
insists upon it, that we be in good earnest, fervent in spirit, and our hearts vigorously engaged in
religion.”[1] Believers, according to Paul, are those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love
incorruptible (Eph 6:24).
There are many reasons we should love Christ, and the topic would amount to a whole series of
lessons. The Son of God himself is the reason why the Son of God is to be loved.[2] John taught
us, We love him because he first loved us (1 Jn 4:19). Looking at Revelation 5 alone, Christ is
due our love, for he is the Lion of the tribe of Judah (v 5), the Root of Jesse (v 5), the Lamb who
was slain (v 12), the one who opens the seals of divine judgment (v 5), the object of angelic
worship (v 8, 11), the one who has ransomed people from the entire globe for God by his blood
(v 9), and the one who has made those who believe in him a kingdom, priests to our God, giving
them a right to reign on the earth (v 10).[3]
American Baptist John Leadley Dagg wrote a wonderful book on church practice called the
Manual of Theology. In it, he connects our obedience to God’s Word to our love for Christ: “To
love God with all the heart is the sum of all duty. … [L]ove to God produces obedience; for it
impossible to love God supremely without a supreme desire to please him in all things. Hence
this one principle contains, involved in it, perfect obedience to every divine requirement.”[4]
Again: “The true spirit of obedience is willing to receive the slightest intimations of the divine
will.”[5] Love for Jesus Christ, our dying Savior and risen Head, is the fertile ground out of
which the fruits of good church doctrine, practice, and worship springs.
'So why should we insist on Scripture-regulated worship? Simply put, because we dearly love
our Lord Jesus Christ. Worship is not only the vehicle whereby we express our love for Christ
(more on that in a bit), but we worship with the elements we do because we love our Lord Jesus.
Too often, when we hear about New Testament authority, we think about it as either stern
authoritarianism (such is the Adamic response to authority in general) or that the Bible is some
kind of law code to decipher. On the latter, New Testament authority is more than a matter of
turning the Bible into a church handbook or lawbook. The reasons we hold to New Testament
authority shows the real significance of New Testament authority. To disobey the New
Testament is to disobey Christ himself. To add to or alter the New Testament is to disobey Christ
himself. There is no gap between Christ’s teaching and the apostles’ teaching for the churches.
Love for Christ & Scripture-Regulated Worship 8: Love for Christ through Scripture-
Regulated Worship
The primary reason Christ through his apostles gave churches the elements he did was he in his
wisdom ordained that those elements would be blessed by the Holy Spirit to nurture and grow
true spiritual love for Christ.
The believer’s love for the Incarnate Christ is a very unusual thing. We love this Lord and Savior
sight unseen. As Peter says in 1 Peter 1:8–9, Though you have not seen him [Christ], you love
him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible
and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. We love
Christ though we have not seen him. The believers addressed in 1 Peter not only loved Christ, but
they loved him in a most glorious and joyful way. Clearly, our love for Christ is very different
from most of our earthly loves. For the vast majority of Christians throughout history, we love a
Savior we have never touched or seen or heard (first-hand). Moreover, he is the holy Son of God,
so our natural, depraved love struggles to love him as we ought. So our love for Christ is
supremely spiritual, both in the sense that we have not seen him, and in the sense that he is God
Incarnate.
I am arguing that God ordained and designed our love for Christ to grow with the Spirit’s grace
through the elements of worship given to us in the New Testament. Indeed, preaching, praying,
singing, and the ordinances are the only ways of growing our love for God that God has
explicitly blessed. For now, I’m leaving aside the question of how we go about using these
elements as forms, which is also an important matter in expressing and cultivating our love for
God. But with the elements of Scripture-regulated worship, the unseen Christ is presented to us
to our understanding and moral imaginations in the ordinances and preached Word of God.
Perhaps this is why Paul says to the Galatians, It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was
publically portrayed as crucified (Gal 3:1). According to Ephesians 4, the ministry of the Word
(given through apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers) furthers believers’
knowledge of the Son of God and Christian maturity (v 13), with the ultimate goal that the whole
church builds itself up in love (v 16). The love we considered a moment ago, that Peter so
beautiful describes in 1 Peter 1:8-9, was itself born in the believers through the living and
abiding Word of God …, the good news that was preached to you (1 Pet 1:23, 25).
In Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards makes the point that truly gracious affections are
cultivated through such means.[1] In prayer, we declare God’s perfections and our “meanness,”
so that “such gestures, and manner of external behavior in the worship of God, which custom has
made to be significations of humility and reverence … affect our own hearts, or the hearts of
others.” Likewise, Christian singing “seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express
religious affections.” The “sacraments” too are “sensible representations” of the gospel and
Christ’s redemption so as “to affect us with them.” Finally, “the impressing divine things on the
hearts and affections of men, is evidently one great and main end for which God has ordained,
that his Word delivered in the Holy Scriptures, should be opened, applied, and set home upon
men in preaching.”[2] Edwards is arguing that the very nature of these elements are such that
they grow Christian affections.
John Owen makes a similar point about preaching in@The Grace and Duty of Spiritually Minded:
It must be observed, that the best of men, the most holy and spiritually minded, may have, nay,
ought to have, their thoughts of spiritual things excited, multiplied, and confirmed by the
preaching of the word. It is one end of its dispensation, one principal use of it in them by whom
it is received. And it hath this effect in two ways:–(1.) As it is@the spiritual food@of the soul,
whereby its principle of life and grace is maintained and strengthened. The more this is done, the
more shall we thrive in being spiritually minded. (2.) As@it administereth occasion unto the
exercise of grace; for, proposing the proper object of faith, love, fear, trust, reverence, unto the
soul, it draws forth all those graces into exercise.[1]
Owen would certainly view the other elements of gospel worship in a similar light. His point is
here with the Word is that it is particularly appropriate to engender spiritual affections. Later in
the book, he insists, “This is the first reason and ground whereon affections spiritually renewed
cleave unto ordinances of divine worship with delight and satisfaction,–namely, because they
are the means appointed and blessed of God for the exercise of faith and love, with an
experiences of their efficacy unto that end.”[2]
Arguably, there are other ways of growing our love for Christ in the natural world apart from
church worship. The love a believer has for the Triune God ought to grow as he goes about his
daily life, whether while explicitly worshipping or not. A Shakespeare sonnet or a good meal or
marriage can and should increase love for Christ (see 1 Tim 4:1-5, especially v 4). But it’s hard
to imagine this love coming into being, let alone being sustained over time, apart from the means
God has given in New Testament worship. Further, it seems that the way of worship prescribed
for churches in the New Testament was designed in part to facilitate the growth of believers’
affections for the Triune God.
In sum, Christ gave us the elements of worship he did in order that he might graciously grow our
love for him through the Spirit.
Conclusion
Over these eight posts, I have argued for Scripture-regulated worship. We first looked briefly at
some of the traditional arguments for this understanding of worship. I have argued that it springs
foremost from the Scripture doctrine of the relationship of Christ’s authority and the New
Testament apostles, now preserved for us in the New Testament canon. Then I showed how this
authority is related to our love for Christ. First, we submit to Christ’s authority because we love
our Lord Jesus. We should also love the worship Scripture prescribes because it is what Christ
loves. Finally, following the Regulative Principle in our worship services is God’s primary way
to grow our love for Christ.
Notes
[1] Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, vol. 2 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), 99.
[2] Bernard of Clairvaux: “You wish me to tell you why and how God should be loved. My
answer is that God himself is the reason why he is to be loved. As for how he is to be loved,
there is to be no limit to that love.” “On Loving God,” Robert Walton, tr., in Treatises II, vol. 5
of The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercian Fathers Series 13 (Washington, D.C.:
Cistercian Publications, 1974), 93.
[3] For an excellent, brief treatment of Christ’s glory, see Edwards’s sermon, The Excellency of
Christ (Boston, Mass.: Thomas Dicey, 1780). Online: https://books.google.com/books?
id=YxtdAAAAcAAJ In his preface to a 1780 edition of Edwards’s sermon, John Ryland
observed that “The Excellence of Christ” … “is the first grand truth of divine revelation in point
of dignity, beauty, and usefulness; and therefore it demands and deserves the utmost regard and
affection from every true Christian on earth.” Ibid., 3.
[4] John Leadley Dagg, Manual of Theology. Second Part. A Treatise on Church Order
(Harrisonburg, Va.: Gano Books, 1990), 9.
[5] Ibid., 11.
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