Question: Will you kindly give me a reply, in the next number of the B.T., to the following question—
Is it a correct assumption that the Father is the object we worship, while the Lord Jesus Christ is the subject of our worship? And should we therefore only worship the Father, and not the Lord Jesus? E.R.W.
Answer: Not only does such a conclusion offend every spiritual feeling of the renewed nature, but scripture is plain that the Father will have all men to “honor the Son as they honor the Father.” And so if we trace but even a few instances in the N.T. there is the clearest evidence of what is the mind of the Holy Spirit.
Take Matt. 2:2, 11, when the Magi “fell down and worshipped Him,” presenting “unto Him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.” Was not this a foreshadowing of what will be, when in the language of Psa. 72 “all kings shall fall down before him” (προσκυνήσουσιν αὺτῶ “shall worship him”), confirmed again as this is by Heb. 2:6, “When He bringeth in the First begotten into the world, He saith, And let all God’s angels worship Him?”
Now take another scene, not on earth but in heaven. “A door is opened in heaven” (Rev. 4:1), and in the next chapter we read “Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, AND unto the Lamb forever and ever. And the four living creatures said, Amen. And the elders fell down and worshipped” (v. 11-14). To add but one more scripture—how can one in thought even withhold the homage and worship of adoring hearts from Him who is supreme God—the Christ “who is over all (ὁ ὥν ἐπὶ πάωτων) God blessed forever, Amen” (Rom. 9:5)? And so much the more as we think of the wondrous stoop of grace as revealed in His poverty, humiliation, and death!
Whilst John 4:21-24 blessedly makes known the Father as now seeking worshippers who shall worship Him in spirit and truth, one may nevertheless ask, Can there be this worship of the Father, independently of equal homage to the Son? And the more deeply we enter into what is thus due to the Lord Jesus (and no honor that we render to Him can derogate from the Father’s glory), so do our hearts rise to the worship that the Father seeks from those who know His unspeakable gift. Only thus, as would appear, when a soul knows peace and relationship with, and access to, the Father through Him (the Lord Jesus) in [the power of] one Spirit, can we rightly answer to the Father’s desire as here made known to us by the Son.
This we should seek by the Spirit to know and enter into more and more, but all is surely consistent with the adoration and homage due no less to the Son.