---
title: 'John Murray on General and Specific Worship'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-11-26
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-john-murray-on-general-and-specific-worship
---

# John Murray on General and Specific Worship

“When we are thinking of worship we must distinguish between the generic and the specific. The generic is the devotion we owe to God in the whole of life. God is sovereign, he is Lord, having sovereignty over us and propriety in us, and therefore, in all that we do we owe subjection to him, devotion to his revealed will, obedience to his commandments. There is no area of life where the injunction does not apply: ‘Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God’ (I Cor. 10:31). In view of the lordship of Christ as Mediator all of life comes under his dominion. ‘Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ’ (Col. 3:23, 24).

The specific is the exercise of worship in the specialized sense — prayer, thanksgiving, reading the Word, preaching, singing God’s praises, administering the sacraments. Some of these may be exercised in private, all of them in the public worship of God, which is God’s instituted communal worship in the assembly of the saints. There are exercises of worship that should be attached to other functions or may be properly attached to other functions. Food is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer, and in partaking of food we ought to ask God’s blessing. But a meal is not a part of the instituted worship in the assemblies of the saints. Compare also marriage, the burial of the dead, the convening of political assemblies *etc*.” — [**John Murray**](/authors/john-murray), “Worship” in *Collected Writings of John Murray* 1:165