What is adoration in the Bible?

Worship is the grateful and joyful response and over flow of the heart to God when filled with the deep sense of the blessings which have been given from Him. It is giving Him the honor, adoration, praise and thanksgiving which is His due because of what He is in Himself and because of what He has done and does do for us. Praises, thanksgivings and the making mention of the at tributes of God and of His acts in the attitude of adoration is what constitutes worship.

Worship is so commonly associated in people's minds with external ceremonies that the fact is sometimes overlooked that true worship is a thing of the heart, an emotion of the soul. Prayer is a blessed exercise for all who realise their weakness and need; thanksgiving is comely for those who have received great things from God; but worship is a higher sentiment than any of these, because it contemplates not His works only, but God Himself — His perfections and glories. Our English word is simply a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon "worthship," which means ascribing honour to one who is worthy.

360 Worship is altogether another thing. It is the heart rising up through the power and operation of the Spirit of God in praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, for what God has done and does, and for what He is, as we know Him in Christ. The returning up by the Spirit from our hearts in adoration and praise of what has been revealed and descended in grace through Christ to us, expressed in our present relationship to God, the going up of the heart in spirit and in truth to our God and Father in the full knowledge of Him.

But first, what is worship? It is the homage of the creature rendered to God. Hence the terms commonly used, both in Hebrew and Greek, to express it, have reference primarily to the action of the body as that by which worship is outwardly indicated; so that, although it may at times be but an external act of homage without the heart being really engaged in it (Zeph. 2:11), the idea conveyed by the terms in frequent use indicates the occupation for the time being of the worshipper with an object outside of himself. Where the homage of the heart is rendered to God, the worshipper is of course rightly occupied with Him. Worship, then, differs from prayer in this. In prayer we are occupied with the wants which we thereby present to God. In worship we are occupied with God. Hence true worship of God may take the form of praise, or thanksgiving, or both. If we praise Him, we tell out what He has discovered to us of Himself. If we thank Him, we speak of what He has done for us, or of what we have received from Him. In a certain sense His works praise Him, for they set forth something of what He is. But His saints bless Him, or speak well of Him; for they have received from Him. (Ps. 145:10.) For fallen creatures then to worship Him in truth they must be partakers of His grace. For one conscious of his sinfulness and sins, and what such deserve from God, cannot really worship Him till saved by faith in Christ. Till then such an one would be occupied with his condition and deserts, and not with God.

But in worship — considered in and by itself, in the proper significance of the act — we lose sight of ourselves and our blessings, and are occupied with what God is in Himself, and what He is for us as revealed in Christ. Led by the Holy Spirit, we rise above ourselves, and contemplate God in all His varied attributes and glories (for while "no man hath seen God at any time, the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" — John 1:18); and, overwhelmed by the display of His holiness, majesty, love, mercy, and grace, we cannot but bow at His feet, as we render, in and through our Lord Jesus Christ, the homage of our hearts.

We utter in prayer our wants, we give thanks for the gifts of God—His mercies and goodness; we praise Him for that which He has done, is doing and will do for our blessing—all this is in language articulate and audible, possibly, to the intelligence of men; but worship being the absorption of the soul in its glorious Object—the Father and the Son, may be beyond all possible expression. “The elders fell down and worshipped Him that lives for ever and ever” (Rev. 5:14). What they said (if anything) we are not told.

88 It is the honour and adoration which are rendered to God, by reason of what He is in Himself, and what He is for those who render it.

It is the outgoing of heart in delighting in God, and adoring Him for all He has done when we think of that, but flowing from what He is to us; and we are actually in His presence, never forgetting surely how we got there, for He has been manifested in that we have learned love and righteousness and holiness there, but as within, praising Him whom we have found, in our present relationship to Him.

They that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth, and the Father seeketh such to worship Him. John 4:24. They delight in what He is: they "joy in God," and they love Him. To worship 'in spirit' is to worship according to the true nature of God, and in the power of that communion which the Holy Spirit gives. It thus stands in contrast to worship consisting in forms and ceremonies, and to the religiousness of which the flesh is capable. To worship 'in truth' is to worship God according to the revelation which He has been pleased to give of Himself. It would not therefore now be worshipping God 'in truth' to worship Him simply as 'a great God,' 'our Maker,' and 'a great King above all gods,' as in Psalm 95; for He has been pleased to reveal Himself in another light, even as 'Father' to those who are His. They enter into His presence in the spirit of sonship, and in the sense of the love which has given them a place before Him in Christ, as sons according to His good pleasure: the sense of this love, and of the good pleasure of God in having us before Him in Christ, is the spring of worship. The Father and the Son are known, the Father's will is that the Son should be honoured as revealing the fountain of love, and the Son leading the hearts of the many sons into the Father's love. Worship is thus distinguished from ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving: it is the homage of love. Rom. 8:15.

The word for worship, proskuneo, signifies to kiss (the hand) toward. Just as a loyal subject bends low before his sovereign and kisses his hand in token of fealty and reverence, so what must it be to bow low in heart before the blessed God, known too, as Father, and express, it must be, at best, in feeble faltering tones, appreciation of all that He is in His own blessed Person—to bow low in heart before the Son, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who has carried manhood up to the eternal throne, in whom everything of Christianity is revealed and by whom every blessing is manifested, and pour out our heart in worship.