Did the Apostles Worship Yahweh?
By W.R. Selvig
I agree with the sentiment: the first disciples were Jewish, they read the Scriptures, they met in synagogues, and they quoted Moses and the prophets constantly. That’s the air they breathed. Of course their language came from those texts.
But look at what they actually did after Jesus revealed the Father. They didn’t march back under the old system; they walked forward into a different household.
First, the Temple and sacrifices quietly fall away from the story. The early church doesn’t rebuild the sacrificial rhythm Yahweh required. Instead, they break bread from house to house, practicing a table that mirrors Melchizedek—bread and wine, relationship, communion. Hebrews spells out the transfer: a change of priesthood necessitates a change of law. “For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law.”(Hebrews 7:12) That’s not “Yahweh, continued.” That’s jurisdiction moved.
Second, when the movement faced its first doctrinal crisis—Do Gentiles have to come under Moses?—the apostles didn’t put everyone under Torah to honor Yahweh’s covenant. They did the opposite. Acts 15 hands down a light, temporary list for table fellowship and unity, not Sinai compliance. Peter calls the law “a yoke… which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.”(Acts 15:10) That’s a decisive moment. If they were anchoring themselves in Yahweh’s administration, that’s where they would have required it. They didn’t.
Third, listen to their language after Jesus. Paul doesn’t summon converts back to a law covenant; he calls them into sonship and intimacy: “You received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’”(Romans 8:15) The center of gravity shifts from legal obligation to family relationship. He contrasts two mountains, two mothers, two covenants, two kinds of children (Galatians 4)—and he tells believers to cast out the slave system. That is not a return to Yahweh’s governance; it’s an exodus from it.
Fourth, Jesus had already set the tone. He spoke of the law as “your law”—“It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true.”(John 8:17)—and repeatedly overrode its terms: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you.”(Matthew 5). He forbids oath-taking with the sober warning “whatever is more than these is from the evil one.”(Matthew 5:37). If oath-making sits at the core of Yahweh’s covenant culture, Jesus marks the source of that practice as something other than the Father.
Finally, the early church’s worship looks like the Son revealing the Father—healing, table-sharing, radical forgiveness, the Spirit poured out on all flesh—rather than like a community refurbishing an older legal apparatus. Their letters emphasize a new and living way: “In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete.”(Hebrews 8:13) Obsolete things aren’t the framework of apostolic worship.
So yes, they were Jewish. Yes, they quoted the texts. But after meeting Jesus, they did not enthrone Yahweh’s system; they opened the doors to the Father Jesus revealed and organized their life around His priesthood—Melchizedek’s table, not Levi’s altar. If the question is, “Did the apostles worship Yahweh?” the evidence says they moved beyond that administration into the Father’s household, where sons and daughters cry “Abba,” and the law gives way to life.