Worship is the reverent adoration, homage, and service rendered to God as supremely worthy—the acknowledgment of His infinite worth and the response of the creature to the Creator in love, fear, praise, and obedience. The very word means ‘worth-ship,’ the ascribing to God of the glory due unto His name. Worship is the chief end for which man was made and the highest exercise of the redeemed soul; it is due to God alone, for He alone is worthy: ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.’ To render to any creature—angel, saint, image, or man—the worship due to God is idolatry, the gravest of sins. True worship has several marks. It must be offered to the right object: the one true and living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It must proceed from the right principle: ‘in spirit and in truth’—not mere outward form and bodily presence, but the inward engagement of the heart, mind, and affections, and according to the truth God has revealed. And it must follow the right rule: God is to be worshipped in the way He has appointed in His Word, not according to the inventions and imaginations of men. Worship is both the formal acts of adoration—in public assembly, in the family, and in private—and the wider devotion of a whole life lived to God’s glory, the presenting of the body a living sacrifice as our reasonable service. Its inward soul is the fear and love of God; its outward expression is praise, prayer, the hearing of the Word, and the sacraments; its end is the glory of God and the good of the worshipper. Worship is therefore no peripheral activity but the central business of the church and the soul, the eternal occupation of heaven begun on earth, where the redeemed shall worship Him who sits upon the throne, and the Lamb, forever and ever.