‘Worship in the Spirit’ in the Acts of the Apostles

Abstract

Pentecostals and charismatics claim that their expressive corporate worship is ‘in the Spirit’. This claim is tested by seeing how Luke in Acts, often taken by Pentecostals and charismatics as providing prescriptions for worship, might respond to the claim. From an examination of those places in Acts where believers’ worship and the Spirit motifs are found together it is concluded that Luke would assume that not some, but that all worship by the followers of Jesus – in the temple or synagogue or homes – was ‘in the Spirit’. For Luke it is not what believers do or experience in worship that would cause him to describe it as ‘in the Spirit’, but what had already been done to them in being filled with the Spirit so that there is nothing about Pentecostal or charismatic worship that would cause him to think it any more ‘in the Spirit’ than other styles of worship.