Worship Oriented Toward Glory

How the Beatific Vision Shapes Christian Worship (Part 5)

Worship Oriented Toward Sight

Too often, Christian worship is described in functional terms.

It instructs, encourages, corrects, and unites the people of God, and just to be clear, all of this is true, but it is not yet sufficient. Instead, scripture frames worship in eschatological terms.

The gathered church stands between promise and fulfillment, between faith and sight, and when this tension is lost, worship easily becomes primarily geared towards teaching or emotion. The beatific vision restores its proper orientation of worship by ordering it toward the day when God’s people will behold Him face to face.

It is for this reason that we can begin to understand why the Bible consistently presents worship as a movement toward God’s presence. From Sinai to Zion, from tabernacle to temple, the people of God are summoned upward by God Himself. Under the New Covenant, believers now draw near to God through Christ, by the Spirit, and through the Word. This drawing near is real, but it is still mediated and looks forward to final, unmediated nearness that lies ahead. Our worship today acts and lives in anticipation of that day.

In line with this, Calvin reminds us that believers already possess the hope of the glory of God through the gospel, yet he is equally clear that this hope is not exhausted in the present. The church gathers on the Lord’s Day not because the vision has already arrived, but because it has been promised. Thus, each gathering is a response to God’s summons and a foretaste of the final communion.

When believers hear the Word, they are beholding Christ by faith; when they receive the Supper, they commune with Him truly, though not yet by sight. These are not substitutes for the beatific vision; rather, they are preparations for it. The Lord’s Day is therefore not merely a spiritual checkpoint in the week or just something that we do because we are Christians; it is a rehearsal for glory. What is tasted now will be seen then.

Mediated Communion and Future Unveiling

The Reformed tradition has been careful to hold together two truths. First, God truly gives Himself to His people now through appointed means, and second, these means are temporary and belong to the age of pilgrimage. Word and sacrament are clear revelations of God, but they are suited to faith, not sight. Calvin describes them as a “naked and open revelation” of God in this life, yet still a revelation proportioned to our weakness.

With this in mind, one can begin to understand that the beatific vision does not negate the means of grace; it gives them their purpose. They train the believer’s affections and teach the soul to look beyond itself to Christ. In this way, worship forms the people of God for the future they will inherit, as the church learns, week by week, to desire what it will one day possess fully.

Because worship is oriented toward sight, it necessarily shapes desire. As James K.A. Smith explains, what the church loves in worship, she will pursue in life. By implication, when worship centers on technique, novelty, or self-expression, it trains the heart to crave those things, but when worship centers on God’s self-giving Word and Christ’s finished work, it trains the heart for glory.

The beatific vision, then, gives worship its gravity. The gathered church is not performing for God or generating an experience; she is being addressed by God and drawn into communion with Him, and it is this posture that prepares believers to stand before Him without fear in the age to come. Worship becomes a school of longing, teaching Christians to desire God above all else, and preparing them to see Him face to face.

From Weekly Worship to Eternal Praise

Scripture often connects worship now with worship then. Read through the book of Revelation, and you will find that the songs of the church echo the songs of heaven. Earthly worship then ends with the benediction, which sends believers back into the world with the promise that God’s face shines upon them. These movements are not accidental; they reflect the reality that worship now is an echo of worship forever, and that though we may leave the gathering, God’s face will shine on us until we see Him.

The beatific vision clarifies why worship is both restful and demanding. It is restful because God gives Himself to His people, and it is demanding because it reorients their lives. To worship God is to be drawn out of self and toward the One who will one day be all in all. The final vision is not disconnected from this weekly rhythm; it is its fulfillment.

From the opposite side, the danger is that when worship is detached from the beatific vision, it risks being reduced to something manageable. It becomes a tool for moral formation or emotional manipulation, and while both of these things do occur at times, they are not the point. Worship exists because God has promised Himself to His people, and the church gathers because she has been summoned toward a future she does not yet see but already knows. The beatific vision keeps worship from collapsing inward. It insists that the church is always facing forward, always oriented toward the coming revelation of God’s glory.

Looking Toward the End

If worship is the weekly anticipation of the beatific vision, then the Christian life is sustained by a rhythm of promise and fulfillment, and worship becomes an act of hope. God meets His people now, and in meeting them, He prepares them for what is to come.

Every Lord’s Day presses eternity into time and trains the hearts of believers to long for the blessed hope and to wait.

In the final essay of this series, we will draw these threads together. The beatific vision is not only the goal of worship, sanctification, and perseverance. It is the final answer to the question of what salvation is for.

John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948), 206.

James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016), 83.