Should we Worship Jesus?

Proskuneo
Strong 4352: To worship, to bow down, to prostrate oneself. From 4314 pros – against and 2965 kuon – dogs; to kiss, like a dog licking his master’s hand.
1. to fawn or crouch
2. to fall face down (prostrate) in adoration
3. a physical act of lowering oneself in humble submission with an attitude of utmost adoration or respect

HELPS: properly, to kiss the ground when prostrating before a superior; to worship.
The basic meaning of 4352 is to kiss… On Egyptian reliefs worshippers are represented with outstretched hand throwing a kiss. Has been metaphorically described as the ‘kissing-ground’ between believers and Christ. 4352 suggests the willingness to make all necessary physical gestures of obeisance.

Topical Lexicon
It depicts bodily prostration that signifies the heart’s acknowledgement of worth – whether rendered to the living God, to the risen Jesus, or, tragically, to idols and demonic powers. In every context Scripture affirms a single standard: worship belongs to God alone, and any worship Jesus accepts testifies to His full deity.
Summary
Scripture’s witness that worship is the creature’s highest calling, the Son’s rightful due, and the Father’s eternal delight. To bow before God in Christ now is to preview the joy that will fill the new heaven and new earth forever.

Is there a difference between worship and obeisance – either actually or linguistically? Firstly, note that worship is a verb, obeisance is a noun which requires an additional verb such as ‘do’, ‘offer’, ‘make’ etc. verbs that will not be in the original manuscripts.

Definitions:

Worship vb. 1. to show profound religious devotion and respect to; adore or venerate (God or any person or things considered divine). 2. tr. to be devoted to and full of admiration for. 3. tr. (intr) to have or express feelings of profound adoration. 4. (intr) to attend services for worship. 5. religious adoration or devotion. 6. the formal expression of religious devotion; rites, prayers etc. 7. admiring love or devotion.
Obeisance n. 1, an attitude of deference or homage. 2. A gesture expressing obeisance.
(The New Collins Dictionary © 1990)

Outwardly, there is no difference between these two concepts. In action, they look identical. The difference lies in the context and in the heart of the individual. People are often expected to bow, stand, salute, applaud as a gesture of respect for what the human recipient has achieved or represents. As can be seen from the above definitions, obeisance is a physical attitude or gesture. Worship is an outward manifestation of inner devotion, adoration and veneration. What does that mean in daily life? Do we worship only at certain moments? If worship means ascribing ultimate worth then a life of worship is far more than moments of prayer, singing, or prostration. It is not, primarily, a posture of the body but a posture of the will, expressed, but not defined, by physical acts. The most authentic worship is continuous – an entire life acknowledging God’s supremacy.
* Romans 12:1 – our bodies should be a living sacrifice. This shifts worship away from ritual towards daily life.
* John 4:23 – worship in spirit and truth. Not location (Jerusalem, Gerizim) but inner devotion.
* Col 3:17 – whatever you do… in the name of the Lord. Ordinary acts become acts of devotion when performed in Christ.
* Heb 13:15-16 – praise, good works, generosity. Living an ethical life is worship.

What becomes clear is that obeisance is the act of a moment, whereas worship cannot be momentary. It is a whole of life attitude. Worship is transformative, reshaping priorities, faith, ethics and identity. Therefore an act of obeisance (bowing, kneeling) is not the highest form of worship. Obedience is! We worship Jesus when we obey God’s command to honour him. We worship God by direct obedience. Proskuneo is not the essence of worship – it is the outward manifestation of worship that wells from the heart through faith, obedience, trust, love and devotion, expressed daily.

Is the WTS justified in translating proskuneo differently depending on the context? Alert! I am not about to give a definitive answer to a theological debate that has raged ever since exegesis of Scripture began. We are all expected to be obedient to Scripture, to be Beroean, and to prove to ourselves the validity of our beliefs. Taking at face value everything we are told by our religion is unacceptable, even if we believe that our religion is the only true one and all others are, by definition, wrong.

The question here is: Should we worship Jesus?

* Trinitarians (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) believe that we should. They say that Jesus is God Almighty.
* Arianism (3rd/4th C) teaches that Jesus should be worshipped, not because he is God, but because God exalts him to a position of worship.
* Biblical Unitarians say that worship should be directed to God alone, that Jesus has all authority but not divinity, and therefore proskuneo to Jesus is in respect and submission to God’s authority.
* Pentecostals say that Jesus is the one God in human form. Jesus is the Father in the flesh and therefore is God Almighty.
* Liberal theology states that worship is metaphorical in that Jesus reveals God, that he represents God, but is not equal to God.

But what about Jehovah’s Witnesses? As noted, their own distorted translation, inconsistently renders proskuneo differently depending on the context, particularly to whom the proskuneo is being directed. This word appears sixty times in the Greek – eighteen are rendered ‘obeisance’ with all others as ‘worship’ (see Table 1). Why? What is their belief? And have they always believed this way?

Unsurprisingly, this doctrine has been subject to change. Both CTR and JFR taught that Jesus should be worshipped (e.g. The Harp of God – 1921). It was the Knorr/Franz double-act that changed matters from the 1950s onward (e.g. WT 01/01/54). Prior to this the worship of Jesus was a core devotional practice. They sang hymns to Jesus and prayed to him.

As is demonstrated, there is a pick-n-mix, a smorgasbord of options to choose from! Putting aside religious dogma, theology and doctrine, should I, should you, should anyone worship Jesus? Consider the following regarding the nature and identity of Jesus and then decide for yourself. Or more importantly, use this as the foundation of your own project. What does the Bible say about the worship of Jesus? For starters...
* Jesus has divine nature (John 1:1). Whether you prefer that verse to say god, God, a god, divine, the result is the same; Jesus is godlike, divine.
* Jesus is the only-begotten son of God (John 1:14; 3:16,18; 1 John 4:9) ‘The only-begotten God’ (John 1:18 BLB). Just as a human father begets a son who will have his same nature, genes and DNA, etc. so Jesus has the same nature as God (Heb 11:17; Jg 11:34).
* All God’s fullness dwells in Jesus (Col 1:19, 2:9).
* Jesus is the exact image, representation, of his father (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3).
* Jesus created all things (John 1:3,10; 1 Cor 8:6; Heb 1:2; Col 1:16-20).
* Jesus continues to ‘sustain all things by the power of his word’ (Heb 1:3). What does that mean in reality? I cannot start to imagine; but I am certain that we benefit, and without which, perhaps life as we know it would not be possible.
* God loved us so much that he sent this only-begotten son to earth as an inestimable gift (John 3:16; Rom 5:8, 6:23, 8:32; 1 John 4:9).
* That son, Jesus, willingly complied (John 1:14, 10:17; Phil 2:5-8; Heb 2:9, 5:8). Yes, he became human, mortal, fragile, emotional – but without sin; suffered abuse, ridicule and a painful death so that you and I, everyone, could be redeemed, have our sins atoned for, and through faith, be given the opportunity to be adopted as sons of God.
* Jesus’s reward? He was resurrected (Acts 3:15, 4:10, 5:29, 10:40, 13:30; Rom 4:24-25, 6:4,8, 8:11,34, 10:9…) received ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Matt 28:18; Eph 1:20-21), and was exalted to a superior position and was given a name above all others (Phil 2:9-10; Acts 4:12, Eph 1:20-21). So that…
* ‘so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend—of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the ground—and every tongue should openly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father’ (Phil 2:10-11).

Should we worship Jesus? My answer is - Absolutely! Do we have any reason whatsoever to withhold adoration, reverence, love, devotion, from the one who has done everything for us? My answer is – None whatsoever! Does my knee bend in worship to Jesus my Lord, to the glory of God the Father? Most certainly! But what is your answer?

So what about those eighteen instances of proskuneo being translated as ‘obeisance’ in the NWT? Is there any justification for the WTS to do this? Let us examine the evidence.
Fifteen of these refer to reverence being offered to Jesus himself. Did he ever raise any objections? Let us analyse each instance and see what we can release. The first three refer to the astrologers and Herod. The infant Jesus was in no position to protest.
We then have a leprous man, a certain ruler, disciples on a boat, a Phoenician woman, Mrs Zebedee, and post-resurrection, the disciples again and the eleven. That is ten instances in the gospel of Matthew. In not one case did Jesus say ‘get up, do not do that, I am just a man’. Yet in Matthew chapter four, Satan demands worship and Jesus’s reply is that it is the Lord God (Jehovah) alone who should be worshipped. It is the same word, proskuneo. If Matthew had wanted to distinguish between what Satan was demanding and what people were offering to Jesus, he would have used a different word. In replying to Satan, Jesus quoted the Law (Deut 6:13). Although he accepted worship, he did not demand that Satan, or anyone else, worship him.
Likewise in his gospel, John uses the word nine times in chapter four in describing the nature of true worship. But when the formerly-blind man of chapter nine bends his knee, although John uses the same word, according to NWT it was nothing more than an empty gesture of obeisance.
The last instance in Matthew is Jesus’s parable of the merciful king and the slave with debts that were impossible to repay. The slave did proskuneo towards the king. This story is illustrative of our situation. We are subject to sin and death; there is nothing we can do to change that. But through Jesus Christ, God has forgiven our debt as the supreme act of love and mercy, a debt that we can never hope to repay by our own endeavours. Should appreciation for that not move us to worship?
Mark’s two instances of obeisance refer to Legion of the Gadarenes and the mock worship offered by the soldiers in the palace. Luke also uses proskuneo in the Satan account and of the eleven, but only this latter is rendered ‘obeisance’. In Acts, Stephen notes the idolatrous worship of the Israelites towards Moloch, and that the Ethiopian and Paul went to Jerusalem to worship. But in chapter ten Cornelius worships Peter. Peter, quite rightly, refused to accept that worship. NWT has this as ‘obeisance’.
John uses proskuneo eleven times in his gospel. All bar two are translated ‘worship’. The exceptions are the blind man expressing adoration for having been cured of his affliction, and some Greeks were worshipping at the feast. Nine are found in chapter four in his conversation with the Samaritan woman and the nature of true worship, that it is based in spirit and truth. Paul uses it but once in referring to an unbeliever being convicted and thus worshipping God (1 Cor 14:25). In Hebrews 11, Jacob worshipped while leaning on his staff. But 1:6 is interesting. Here all God’s angels are required to worship His firstborn. This is a quote from Deut 32:43 from the LXX, a passage not found in the critical texts, and so not in NWT; fortunately they have not been forced into changing worship to obeisance in two places.
Twenty-three of the Revelation instances are rendered as ‘worship’; apparently those of the synagogue of Satan will only do obeisance to the Philadelphians.

Now, if we believe that ‘all Scripture is inspired of God’ then we must also accept that what each of these authors wrote was what God wanted them to write. If he wanted to differentiate between worship and obeisance then he would have done so. God is not limited by a shortage of words! On what authority, then, does the WTS take it upon itself to decide that when Matthew, for example, wrote ‘worship’ he didn’t really mean worship but something less, something that looks like worship but that does not involve heart devotion and adoration? Some futile, ritualistic fawning? Is the WTS inspired of God? It claims to be Jehovah’s channel of communication, so perhaps its GB does believe that it is inspired! That is a very brave stance to take.

To whom should we pray?
Table 2 lists several prayers that are recorded for our benefit in the New Testament. There are twenty-three (not exhaustive), which should make for a reasonable sample. Five are from the gospels and are prayers offered by Jesus and are all addressed to Father or God. He wouldn’t pray to himself, surely? His prayer at Matthew chapter six is, of course, the model prayer, addressed to ‘Our Father in heaven’. This is a template for all his disciples to use, although as one studies the subject of prayer, it quickly becomes apparent that this is not to be repeated verbatim. It is a framework upon which we can build our own respectful and humble conversations with God. The three in Luke are offered by Mary, Zechariah and Simeon, when Jesus was but a babe. They knew that he was special and that salvation and deliverance would come through him in some way, yet to be revealed. Their prayers were offered to the Sovereign Lord, God and Saviour. They may have had Jehovah in mind as he was the God of the Jews, but in those days enunciating the divine name was very much frowned upon. Of the others, only Stephen and John address a prayer directly to Jesus. As he was about to expire Stephen says ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’. And right at the very conclusion of the whole Bible, John prays ‘Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints (holy ones). Amen’. All other NT prayers are offered to God and Father, with various epithets attached, such as glorious, hope, peace, grace. Some of these are explicitly directed to God in the name of, or through, Jesus Christ our Lord.

My conclusion is that it is not wrong to pray to Jesus. However, the overwhelming evidence of Scripture is that our prayers should be directed to God, our Father, Jehovah. It was once noted by way of illustration, that references to Jesus in our prayers should be more than a necessity at the end, as if applying a postage stamp to ensure it arrives. That was at a JW convention. Although I cannot remember any suggestions from the speaker on how we should do this, it seems that our prayers should not be entirely Jehovah-centric, to the exclusion of our Lord Jesus. He who has done everything for us, who has all authority in heaven and on earth, should be at the core of our prayerful worship.

Table 1

NB For key to Part of Speech, please refer to biblehub.com

Table 2