Free To Be Regulated
The Regulative Principle of Worship
Introduction
Several years ago, my wife and I engaged in that most anxious of parenting rituals, teaching our oldest daughter to drive. We started simply, as most parents do, with parking lots, isolated roads, etc. But one day, as we were practicing with her, my wife surprised me and my daughter. She pulled her car over at the bottom of one of the tallest mountains that ring the city. She handed the keys to my daughter and said, “You drive us home.”
The ascent is about 2 miles of winding, treacherous roads, with an average gradient of about 12%—not for the faint of heart! Her hands trembling and eyes wide with terror, my daughter took the keys, put the car in gear, and slowly (and safely, praise God) began the drive home.
Inching up the mountain, she glanced to the side and said, “I’m so thankful for those guardrails.” “Me too,” her mother chimed in, sweating almost as much as my daughter. On the other side of those guardrails was a precipitous drop of about 200 feet.
This anecdote illustrates well how the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW) functions in the life of the church. When it comes to worship, the RPW provides a lot of freedom, while giving us appropriate boundaries to keep us from going off an ecclesiastical cliff. With this in mind, my goal for this article is simple. I will first look at the biblical and historical roots of the RPW and then close by attempting to show that the RPW is indispensable to the life of the church today.
Background: Biblical and Historical Roots of the Regulative Principle
Defining our terms
Let’s begin by defining our terms. Simply stated, the RPW asserts that, in our worship, we are to do whatever God commands, refrain from what He forbids, and not do anything that is neither commanded nor forbidden. This understanding differs from the Normative Principle of Worship (NPW) in one significant way. According to the NPW, if something is neither commanded nor forbidden, it is permitted.
Objections
The most common objection, then, to the RPW is that it is too restrictive. But, returning to our earlier illustration, I think this objection only holds up if we assume God hasn’t told us specifically how He wants to be worshipped. In other words, God loves us enough to put guardrails up so that we can enjoy the drive!
Historical Background
The RPW is distinctive to churches springing from the Reformed branch of the Reformation, as opposed to the Conservative or Radical branches. Representative of the latter two would be Lutherans (Conservative) and Mennonites (Radical). Roughly speaking, the former wanted to conserve as much as they could from Western Catholic worship practices, while the latter believed a radical rethinking of all prior worship practices (and, often, doctrines) was in order.
The Reformed saw things differently. Given their inflexible commitment to sola Scriptura, they asked the most basic question about the most important issue in all of life: what does God’s word teach us about the ways He wants to be worshipped? This simple question is the heart and soul of the RPW.
Biblical Background
Some readers may think I’m overstating the case to say that worship is the most important issue in all of life. But even a cursory reading of Scripture will demonstrate that any worry about overstatement is unwarranted. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is filled with both precepts and examples that teach us the utter seriousness of our approach to God in worship.
For example, the first murder in human history took place because of a dispute over worship (Gen 4:1-8). Moses dedicates one of his five books to the practice of worship. In that book, a single instance stands as a warning for all time against transgressing God’s exact prescriptions for His worship, the case of Nadab and Abihu. Since they brought unauthorized fire in their offering, Moses records, “And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.” (Lev. 10:1-3) Despite their best intentions (and those have been debated), these men were struck dead for offering what God had not commanded. (See also 2 Sam 6:5-7)
Turning to the prophets, one of their functions was to prosecute the covenant lawsuit on God’s behalf against His wayward people. The most serious charge presented by them to the Judge of all the earth was the people’s failure to worship Him as He had commanded. In sum, the worship of the living God is accorded the highest priority in the Old Testament.
The primary Scriptural basis for the RPW is the second commandment. As the Westminster divines rightly understood, this commandment is not simply a prohibition against making idols. Rather, “The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving any religious worship not instituted by God himself.” (LC 109) Notice the structure of God’s moral law here. The first commandment tells us Who to worship; the second commandment tells us how to worship Him. Worship is central to the first table of the moral law.
Nor was the importance of right worship simply an Old Testament reality. Jesus prioritized synagogue worship, as Luke tells us. “As was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day.” (Luke 4:16) His custom! How delightful to stop and consider the infant God-man cradled tenderly by Mary in the synagogue, to ponder the steady, Sabbath rhythms of our Savior’s weeks and years and decades, as he matured from infancy, to boyhood, to manhood. The One Who would receive all worship, worshipped! No greater evidence exists of the priority of worship than this one verse from Luke’s gospel.
Not only did our Savior worship; He worshipped according to the Word. The Author submitted to His own directives. What a beautiful image! For our purposes, we should note that synagogue worship was regulated worship. Jewish scholar Ismar Elbogen summarizes, “The synagogues were a kind of ‘little temple.’” (1) As such, they would have followed, in miniature, the strictly regulated worship practices of the temple prescribed in the Word of God. In His own public worship, the Savior was the living embodiment of the words He spoke: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matt 5:17)
It would be tempting to make the logical leap that Jesus’s fulfillment of the law means that regulated worship is a thing of the past. That would be unwarranted. Jesus tells us, in plain terms, that His fulfilling of the law is not a broad-stroke abrogation of God’s law. In fact, He tells us plainly that there is a right and wrong way to worship. Speaking to the Samaritan woman, He said, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” (John 4:22) The Samaritans were descended from the Northern Kingdom, which had set up alternative worship centers when the Kingdom of Israel was divided between North and South. As a result, their worship was not true worship because, though they claimed to worship Jehovah, they worshipped what they did not know.
To be sure, Jesus was not engaging in an extended debate on worship in this episode! He was evangelizing and discipling this dear woman. But His answer reminds us that worship is a central concern for both evangelism and discipleship. He loved this woman enough and He loves us enough to correct our false ideas about worship.
Back to the matter of Jesus fulfilling the law. This scene at Jacob’s Well captures both the regulated nature of New Covenant worship in continuity with Old Covenant worship. Jesus teaches in this scene how He ushers in the semi-eschatological fulfillment of the typological nature of Old Covenant worship. Stated more simply, Jesus teaches us that He is the intersection of the “already” of the Old Covenant, even as He brings, in a partial way, the “not yet” of the New Covenant and its worship practices. Noel Due explains, “If the worship of the Samaritans had been deficient, the worship of the Jews had been provisional…Jews and Samaritans both were now in a situation where they could come to know the Father, and this transformation is already taking place.” (2) Jesus makes this clear in verses 23 and 24.
What is the nature of this transformation? It is not from more regulation to less, but from type to fulfillment. Put in more technical terms, the transformation Jesus speaks about is redemptive-historical in nature. Therefore, it is not so much about abrogation as expansion in redemptive-historically appropriate ways, all under the gracious regulation of God’s word.
Conclusion of Background Information
This flyover of the Scriptural data makes at least two things clear: 1) How we worship God is strictly regulated by His word and 2) regulated worship continues into the new covenant era of redemptive history.
Much more can (and has been) said about the RPW’s scriptural basis. (3) But one thing has become clear to me over years of teaching theology of worship at the seminary level. The Bible is much more specific and expansive on the topic of God’s worship than many of us recognize. Once we acknowledge this principal truth about God’s word, it opens vast pathways to experience more of Him and His blessing in our gathered worship.
The RPW & Church Today
Throughout this article, I have tried to offer an overview of the Scriptural basis for the RPW, in broad strokes. In addition, as the title suggests, I want to stress the freedom of worship that is reformed according to the RPW for churches today. At first glance, to speak of “regulated freedom” may seem to be an oxymoron. But I don’t think it is, for the following reasons.
First, the RPW frees our consciences.
Again, the Westminster divines understood well the precious doctrine of the liberty of conscience. “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” (WCF 20.2) No church or elder has the right to bind the conscience of God’s people by requiring them to do something not expressly commanded by God—especially in worship.
Second, the RPW makes our worship portable.
Because Biblical worship is essentially simple in both form and substance, we don’t need to muddy the liturgical waters as we plant churches or pastor them. The RPW transcends cultures, time, and place precisely because it seeks to follow God’s word only.
By way of illustration, consider worship music. As most readers know, this fraught issue has been a theological flashpoint for the last 50 years. What “style” of worship should we use? What kind of instruments should be played? I certainly don’t have all the answers to these questions, but we can say this much. The RPW frees us to answer them by asking the most basic question: What does God’s word say? In other words, instead of answering them either from a purely pragmatic standpoint (“Whatever works!”) or a purely emotive view (“If I feel God through this music, it must be right!”), the RPW calls us back to evaluate all we do in light of God’s word.
Putting it this way doesn’t mean the answers to the kinds of questions above are easy! We cannot avoid the hard work of thorough exegesis or the discomfort of some ambiguity in our answers. But once we evaluate them in light of God’s word, we find that the very simplicity of Biblical worship makes it transferrable.
Third, and related to the second reason, the RPW is missional.
It enables us to be flexible culturally without compromising Biblical truth. It allows us to impart Biblical worship without importing our own culture. It removes one more barrier to the acceptance of the gospel. It gives us all we need to accomplish the whole goal of missions—worship! As John Piper memorably put it, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.” (4)
Let’s ask one last (and very important!) question. In its essence, what is regulated worship? As numerous authors have pointed it, regulated worship means we read the Bible, pray the Bible, preach the Bible, sing the Bible, and see the Bible (in the sacraments). The Bible alone guides what we read, speak, sing, perform, and preach in any given worship service.
Conclusion
I have not dealt with objections to the RPW in this article because I wanted to make a positive case for this essential principle of Reformed theology. Objections can (and have been) answered in other places. (5) In attempting to make a positive case, my main objective has been to celebrate the beauty of worshipping God in Spirit and truth, which means simply and Biblically. At its core, the RPW aims to clear away man-made debris in our worship so that we can bask in the cloudless sunlight of God’s grace. It frees us to get to God quickly and safely in our worship, so that Jesus’s mediation, along with the Spirit’s overflowing presence, fills our souls with the fulness of the Triune God. It enables us to enjoy a glimpse of heaven on earth, even as we await the day faith turns to sight. In sum, the RPW enables us to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, right now.
(1) Ismar Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History, trans. Raymond P. Scheindlin (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1993), 342.
(2) Noel Due, Created for Worship: From Genesis to Revelation to You (Fern, Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2009), 136.
(3) For modern treatments of the RPW, see Philip Ryken, Derek W.H. Thomas, and J. Ligon Duncan, III, eds., Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003); D.G. Hart and John R. Muether, With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002); and Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship: Reformed According to Scripture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. For a classic Puritan statement, see Jeremiah Burroughs, Gospel Worship: Worship Worthy of God (Orlando, FL: Soli Deo Gloria, 2006).
(4) John Piper, Let the Nations be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010), 15; emphasis mine.
(5) See, for example, Derek Thomas, “The Regulative Principle: Responding to Recent Criticisms” in Philip Ryken, Derek W.H. Thomas, and J. Ligon Duncan, III, eds., Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship(Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003), 74-93 and Terry Johnson, “The Regulative Principle” in The Worship of God: Reformed Concepts of Biblical Worship (Fearn, Tain, Ross-Shire: Mentor, 2005), 9-30.