Some of the saddest words in the Bible are those that portray the condition of the church in the days of the judges: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). These words describe a devastating spiritual anarchy. Our days are marked by the same anarchy, not only in the culture, but also in the church. Congregations and individuals are doing their own thing. One congregation excommunicates a man for immorality. He, then, goes down the street and joins another congregation, which not only receives him but, also, makes him an officer.
This spiritual anarchy is particularly evident in the area of worship. Not that long ago, when visiting a Presbyterian or Reformed church, one would have found a basic uniformity in worship. It mattered not whether one was in the United States, Mexico, or Korea. Today, everyone is doing what is right in his own eyes. A multitude of diverse forms of worship confronts us under the guise of making worship understandable and contemporary. It seems that, along the way, people, first, began to experiment and, then, began looking around for some theological justification for what they were doing. In the process, some have redefined the principles that govern them.
The earlier uniformity in worship grew out of a common commitment to the biblical foundation for worship. Today, many are altering, or even denying, this foundation. Two of the primary proponents of new principles for regulating of worship are John Frame, who redefines the Regulative Principle, and Steve Schlissel, who denies it. Although beginning with different presupposition, both men argue in a similar fashion and reach similar conclusions. They claim that Scripture does not regulate worship in the manner stated in the Reformed Confessions. According to them, God requires certain basic things to be done in worship (e.g., preaching, singing, and prayer) but leaves it to the elders, who oversee worship, to determine the specific application.
This chapter’s purpose is to demonstrate the biblical basis for the Regulative Principle of Worship…
From: “Covenantal Worship,” by Joseph A. Pipa, Jr., in Written for Our Instruction: The Sufficiency of Scripture for All of Life, Joseph A. Pipa, Jr. and J. Andrew Wortman, editors (Taylors: Southern Presbyterian Press, 2001), pp. 65-66.
Dr. Joseph A. Pipa, Jr. received his Ph.D from Westminster Theological Seminary, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1985. He is a professor at, and is president of, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in Taylors, South Carolina. He is also the author of The Root and Branch, a study of the person and work of Christ, and of The Lord’s Day, a study of the orthodoxy and orthopraxy regarding the Lord’s Day.
