Truth Unites - A "Worship Problem" For Protestants?

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Do Protestants lack worship (or the highest form of worship) because we don't have the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist? Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Do Protestants worship God? Might seem like a strange question, but this is one of the talking points that comes up from Catholic apologists. Protestants don't worship God, or more careful, less outlandish claim would be to say, Protestants don't have the highest form of worship because we don't have the sacrifice of Christ in the mass. Trenhorn put out a video like that. Joe Heschmire has put out a video on this topic in the past.

I see the same sentiment coming up from my engagement with Eastern Orthodox Christians, though fleshed out a little bit differently. The general vibe is, Protestant. worship is lame. So I can read comments. You'll see comments like this in these discussions. Protestants read the menu. Catholics eat the meal. Evangelical churches sing love songs to Jesus. Orthodoxy has the fullness of the fullness of the faith. When the pastor opens sermons with clips of Disney movies, I understand leaving. Those are comments that you will see out there that I've seen real comments. Now, we might feel a little defensive in response to these criticisms, those of us who are in the

Protestant traditions. I think we need to start by asking what we can learn from them. This is a good edifference. practice. When a criticism comes in, ask what you can learn from it, even if you don't agree with it fully. The fact is, you know, treat criticisms like a wrecking ball to demolish whatever they need to demolish. And the fact is, it's just true. Sociologically, it's true that in the United States, evangelical churches tend to feel less reverent and less transcendent, while Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches tend to feel more reverent and more transcendent. Now, this is not universal. You know, of course, we need to point out not the word Protestant is used for all these different traditions and so on and so forth.

Nonetheless, there's a lot we can learn. This is why I put out this video recently encouraging evangelicals in particular to consider where we need to reform our own practices and go back to our own roots at the same time. Here are three points that are deep, a deep burden on my heart that need to be remembered in these discussions. I'm especially thinking of those who are thinking, yeah, maybe I do need to leave Protestantism right now. I hope they'll consider these three points first.

Number one, the idea that the sacrifice of the Eucharist is the highest or only form of worship is completely contrary to Scripture. All you need to do here is look up the word worship in a biblical concordance, including where the Greek word Latria is used, and you can see that this is not how the scripture defines worship. So just think about this. If the highest form of worship requires sacrifice, then the angels in heaven are not worshiping God. They lack the highest form of what, you know, if Protestants don't actually worship because we don't offer up Christ to God in the form of bread and wine, then neither do the seraphim in Isaiah 6 when they cry out holy, holy, holy. If you just look at the way scripture defines worship, whether happening among

the angels and saints in heaven or throughout the old covenant era, in the book of Psalms, for example, or even throughout the new covenant era, in the exercising of spiritual gifts, for example, like how an unbeliever might respond to the gift of prophecy. Worship is never defined, or, you know, the Eucharist is never singled out. It's some kind of unique form of worship. In fact, let me put, let me state this strongly, not wanting to offend anybody, but I think I need to put this bluntly. In the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus himself, in Paul's teaching about the Eucharist or in early descriptions of Eucharistic practice, in the Didacay or in Justin Martyr, for example, not only is the Roman Catholic conception of the Eucharist nowhere identified

as a unique expression of worship. It's nowhere identified at all. It's not only not singled out as worship. It's just not present in any way in the founding of our religion. Let me clarify that with the second point. The issue dividing Protestants and Catholics here is not whether the Eucharist is a sacrifice, but what kind of sacrifice? The Lutheran theologian Martin Kemnitz listed seven different meanings of the word sacrifice that can write. be applied to the Eucharist and six different senses in which the church fathers spoke of it as a sacrifice. And his concern and his objection, which you can see on the screen, is that the Roman Catholics of his day were sort of being sneaky by arguing as if there's only one meaning of the term sacrifice. So beware when people say, oh, look, the church father's called the Eucharist a sacrifice. Therefore, that means the same thing that later Roman Catholics would mean by that term. We know this is wrong because of the church fathers called the Eucharist a sacrifice. Therefore, that means the same thing that later Roman Catholics would mean by that term. We know this is wrong because of what is required by anathema at the Council of Trent. If anyone sayeth that the sacrifice of the mass is only a sacrifice of praise and of Thanksgiving, or that it is a bare commemoration of the sacrifice

consummated on the cross, but not a propitiatory sacrifice, or that it profits him only who receives and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead for sins, pain, satisfactions, and other necessities. Let him be anathema. So you can see very clearly it's not anathema on those who deny it's a sacrifice, it's anathema on those who claim it's one kind of sacrifice rather than another. Specifically, those who claim it's a sacrifice of praise and Thanksgiving and not a propitiatory sacrifice, meaning an appeasing sacrifice, and also that it can be sort of applied vicariously, including for deceased Christians. Remember those words to him who receives only, okay? So you can see how people get duped by not realizing that the word sacrifice

is being used in different senses. Now, historically, some Protestants have rejected all language of sacrifice. I think another concession I need to make out of honesty is to say, it's true that many Protestants have misunderstood the Roman Catholic position on this point. I think that's a fair point that in my conscience, I feel like I need to articulate that and put that out there. That's true. But most Protestants have affirmed that the Eucharist is a sacrifice.

In my tradition, the reformed tradition, it's often been understood as a sacrifice in the sense that it is a representation, application, and sealing of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ to the penitent believer. The way I like to think of it in my mind colloquially when I'm administering the Lord's Supper or receiving it is this is where Jesus in the saving power of his death meets faith. Now in this video I'll put on the screen you can watch and I'll give a brief rundown of some of those views if you're interested in chasing that down. Some of the key voices there are the older voices of Thomas Cranmer and Peter Martyr Remigley, and then more recently, people like Bibi Warfield and Thomas Torrance for the reformed view of this. But there's a lot

there to chase down. My point is very simple here. What Protestants reject is not any conception of sacrifice. That's true of some, but a minority of Protestants historically. What we all, as Protestants, reject, is that it's a propitiatory sacrifice as understood within this Roman Catholic framework of temporal versus eternal punishment, okay, which is then also efficacious for deceased Christians. The Council of Trent says that the Eucharist is propitiatory for the sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities of those on earth and the imperfectly purified Christians in purgatory suffering temporal punishment for sin. That is what the Roman Catholics think the Eucharist is doing, and the Protestants were saying, no, it's a sacrifice, but it's not that kind of

sacrifice. So I'm trying to get the framing right here for where the actual demarcation is between the various Protestant traditions and the Roman Catholic view. And the Protestants at that time, at the time of the Reformation, were also responding to real abuses at the street level on the ground happening. The shameless buying and selling of private masses at huge quantities of money to reduce time in purgatory for loved ones. The Eucharistic reception, for bodily benefits and not just for spiritual benefits, this kind of thing. The Protestants also objected to the mass not being celebrated in the vernacular language, which was a practice defended at the Council of Trent. The Protestants also objected to the Council of Florence's refusal

to give the Eucharist in both the forms of bread and wine. And they said that is a clear, an absolutely crystal clear departure from scripture and the practice of the early church. So all of of that is, you know, involved in these discussions, and I've done some dialogues on this kind of thing and talked about this in greater length. The point I'm trying to make here is just very simply to encourage onlookers to see where the actual framing lies for where our traditions differ, at least at their best where they differ. And not to think, like, okay, Protestant worship is lame. Over there, you get the Eucharist. You get a Eucharistic sacrifice. No. Okay. The Protestant Reformation actually re-centralized and revitalized Eucharistic experience.

Okay, so don't let this be mis-framed as though it's a sacrifice over here but not over there. No, the question is, what does it mean when we speak of the Eucharist as a sacrifice? And we reject the idea that it's a propitatory sacrifice, reducing temporal punishment for deceased Christians. And there's other issues there as well. That leads to a third point. Preaching is integral as a part of worship. Sometimes preaching is denigrated today, and in these conversations especially. And to be sure, there are definitely bad expressions and practices of preaching in Christian churches

today. But properly understood, I'm very jealous, that preaching be understood as the glorious activity. I want every pastor to know the sacredness of what you are doing. When you stand up in a pulpit, insofar as you are preaching faithfully to the text of scripture and communicating Jesus and his gospel and his benefits, in a godly heart with good motive, preaching the truth, and so forth, then you are proclaiming the Word of God, and that is a, how can we get, how can we recover a sense of what preaching actually is? I think a lot of people preach and don't even know what a sermon is, historically in terms of the theology of preaching.

I think a study of Nehemiah 8 and the role of preaching during the covenant renewal that the people went through after the exile would be great. I think a great resource, which I'll put a link to in the video description would be Martin Lloyd-Jones' book, Preaching and Preachers. He has this amazing account from a reformed perspective, this great Welsh preacher. He was going to be a doctor. He became a great preacher. Read this book. He's talking about how the goal of the preacher is to facilitate an encounter with God. The understanding here from Luther and Calvin is that faithful preaching is the voice of God. God is speaking, and we encounter God through the faithful preaching of his word. We need to recover this in the Protestant tradition. Now, it is not true that,

Only Protestants believe that or that Protestants introduced preaching to the church. One of the characters we find is that, you know, that preaching really wasn't central or important prior to the Reformation, not at all. Justin Martyr's description of worship in the second century describes preaching. Of course, many of the church fathers themselves were masterful preachers. John Chrysostom is one of the famous ones, but there's so many, like Augustine. Augustine was a great orator. We would love to hear these people preach.

preaching was a huge part of Christian worship, and it's true that that slackened off a little bit in the medieval era, but not everywhere. I remember in my study on Jan Hus, learning about the tradition of preaching leading up to him before him in Bohemia. So like late 14th century in modern day Prague. I love this picture of Huss in the Bethlehem Chapel there in Prague, just imagining what it would be like to hear him preach. So preaching was out there, but it had been, especially in the late medieval church, West neglected, and happily Protestantism, like it did with the Eucharist, frankly, re-centralized the preaching of Scripture, and especially in the vernacular language. Many lay Christians prior to the Reformation were simply and sheerly ignorant of the contents of

scripture. And preaching was one of the means that God used to sort of awaken the laity to the knowledge of the gospel and the knowledge of the scripture again. Luther's own experience is amazing. He's saying he was 20 years old before he'd seen a Bible. Think about that. Not read it, seen it. And that he didn't know that there were Gospels and epistles beyond what was being reproduced in the church. If you want more on that issue, see my video on William Tyndale for a little more in-depth analysis, especially of how that's playing out in England. I talk about, you know, how many priests couldn't name the Ten Commandments and this kind of thing. I think we forget today how bad things got.

And the simple fact is the Reformation valued the preaching of God's word in the context of worship and also frankly outdoor preaching and illegal preaching because they valued the clarity of the gospel. Okay. The simple truth is that prior to the Reformation, there was so much ignorance of the Scripture and of the gospel. After the Reformation, there was much less. The Reformation advanced the knowledge of Scripture. and advanced the knowledge of the gospel, and preaching was a huge part of that. It is through preaching that the gospel comes to be known.

You become a Christian by hearing through your eardrums, the gospel message. This is why Paul is so urgent in Romans 10 that people need to go and preach. How good are the feet, you know, because faith comes through hearing. You see that in verse 17 there. That's an amazing passage. This is why my heart was singing with joy as I'm watching Wes Huff explain the gospel to Joe Rogan recently in this amazing podcast everyone's talking about because now is the time for preachers to go forward. We are living in a day right now where we have incredibly urgent need for preachers to go forward and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ clearly. That is the need of the hour, I think.

much as I talk about how evangelical churches need to reform their worship practices, and they do. Nonetheless, this is the central need. What is the gospel? Let's put it really simply. God is the Creator. We have sinned and fallen away from Him. Jesus lived, died, and rose again to restore us to God. We need to repent and believe in Jesus.

Now, we need to flesh that out more, okay? But that basic message, we need to proclaim from the rooftops right now. And we should be grateful for Protestantism's revitalization of preaching within the Christian church. Right now is another need for that. We need reformation today. Okay? We need reformation of our worship practices. Yeah, look, evangelicals. We've got a lot of issues. But we also just need evangelism, bold proclamation of the gospel. I'm even so boldest to think that I feel like YouTube is a way to do that. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. I really believe now is there there is an urgent need for evangelism and apologetics right now. I hope you would join me in that.

I hope you would pray for that. It's amazing when Jesus has that passage where he says, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out because the harvest is right, but the workers are few. It's interesting that the injunction there is pray. That is the thing to do. Pray, Lord, raise up many more people who are doing like what Wes Huff did on Joe Rogan's podcast. Pray for him. You know, it's not easy to blow up like that, actually. Don't envy that, by the way. That's not easy. We need to pray for him, but pray for many others, pray for dozens of other people doing that. Now is the time to do that.

So these are, what I'm saying right now is not really like a refutation of something specific out there. It's just a general sort of pastoral appeal for why we need these things. But those are appeals. Those three points I made, those are things. I hope people would think through carefully and really look at the best of these different traditions before they go anywhere. This general vibe of Protestant worship is lame, honestly.

That vibe is not deep in history. that sentiment is historically ignorant. If you study church history, you see, okay, no, Protestantism did a lot of good for worship, both with respect to preaching and with respect to the Eucharist. And it's just more biblical, in my opinion. Anyways, enough on that. Thanks for watching, everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Boy, I got a lot of fire in my blood these days because I put not a lot of videos. So there'll be another one coming out soon on this. All right, thanks for watching.