systematically and methodically Mr. Darby’s word for mere “personal reverence and homage.”
In this way, the apostles themselves exclude the worship of Christ from the New Testament, and Mr. Darby is only following in their footsteps, and has done just as they did!!
Behold, then, reader, what the apostles have done, and how they did it; and how blind everyone was who thought that Christ was worshipped in the New Testament, until an advanced teacher of the nineteenth century comes to enlighten us, and tell us that the apostles designedly used a word which would be “falsified in a material point” if used for the worship of Christ. Alas, alas, what have we come to! The apostles of Christ have carefully excluded the worship of Christ from the New Testament!
ANSWER.
Will the reader be greatly surprised if told that Mr. Darby’s word for worship, “in the modern English sense,” is never used for worship at all in the Greek Scriptures. It occurs in the New Testament twenty-one times, and is translated, even in “English,” but three times by the word, “worship”—twice in the Acts, and again in Phil. iii. 3. In the first of these (Acts, vii. 42, 43) it is distinguished by the inspired writer from proskuneo, and refers to Israel serving other gods. In the next (Acts, xxiv. 14) it refers to the vows, etc., that St. Paul took on him in the Temple; and in Phil. iii. 3, it refers to the self-dedication to God in the spirit, in contrast to circumcision in the flesh, as the Apostle himself explains in the subsequent verses. In short, that which of old belonged to the ritual and divine service of the people and sanctuary, and that which in Christianity appertains to the self-dedication and service of the Christian, gives the sense of latreuo. It means to serve, as the following will sufficiently prove:
“Ye shall keep this service” (latreian), viz., the Passover (Ex.xii. 25). The Levites were appointed “to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the congregation to minister (latreuin) unto them” (Numb.xvi. 9). “Gifts and sacrifices which could not make him that did the service perfect (ton latreuonta) as pertaining to the conscience.” (Heb. ix. 9.). “We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat who serve (hoi latreuontes) the tabernacle.” (Heb. xiii. 10.) “Who worshipped and served (elatreusan) the creature more than the creator.” (Rom. i. 25.)
These are examples of the general and universal use of the word
