Was anyone else in the Bible worshipped like Jesus?

from the old testament

• While the Angel of the LORD bears the title “angel,” it is clear that He is no ordinary angel. He Himself identified Himself as God. For example, in Genesis 22, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son (Genesis 22:2). Yet later, when Abraham was about to kill his son, the Angel of the LORD stopped him, saying, “now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Genesis 22:12). He said that Abraham had not withheld his son “from me,” referring to Himself while also saying he had not withheld his son from God.
• In another example of His being God, the Angel of the LORD visited Manoah and his wife, the parents of Samson. He told them that He would offer a sacrifice to God on their behalf, but when He did, He went up in the flame as well. We read their response: “Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the LORD. And Manoah said to his wife, ‘We shall surely die, for we have seen God’” (Judges 13:21–22).
• It is because the Angel of the LORD is divine that He is distinguished from created angels and can rightly accept worship. For example, when Joshua encountered Him (in an account where He was called “commander of the army of the LORD”), “Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped” and was told, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy” (Joshua 5:13–15).
• While the Old Testament is not as clear as the New Testament regarding trinitarian distinctions, scholars, based on how the Angel of the LORD both acts and interacts with God, refer to His appearance in the Old Testament as a Christophany (or, more accurately, a Theophany). That is, He is the Son of God, as is Jesus, meaning the Angel of the LORD is the Son of God before taking on human nature, whereas Jesus is the same Son after being born human.
• Because the Angel of the LORD was not human, He appeared only temporarily in human form. For example, He appeared to Abraham along with two other men (likely angels) in Genesis 18:1–2. In another example, He appeared before Manoah and his wife, parents of Samson, in Judges 13:3–6. In these and other instances, He appeared in human form to interact with humans, but that form was temporary.
• The Old Testament includes accounts of other people and things being worshipped, but in each case, they were instances of false worship, such as the statue of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 3:5) and the golden calf (Exodus 32:4–8). So, the Angel of the LORD was the only one who rightly received the worship due God.

from the new testament

• The Angel of the LORD was the preincarnate Son of God. The New Testament opens with the Son becoming incarnate, meaning adding on real human nature (Philippians 2:6–7), being born as Jesus (Matthew 1:18–21). From that time on, the Son was no longer only temporarily in human form but had forever added on humanity. As fully God (John 1:1), the Son can rightly receive worship, as Jesus did (e.g., Matthew 28:9). As the Old Testament showed, this was not the first time humans had worshipped the Son. Rather, the worship of Jesus was the continuation of the worship that was given to the Angel of the LORD.
• Note: As with the Old Testament, the New Testament also shows others being worshipped; it was false worship. For example, a city tried worshipping Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:11–13). In Revelation, what John saw was so wonderful that he forgot himself and began to worship an angel (Revelation 19:10) who rightly corrected him, redirecting the worship to Jesus.

implications for today

Worship is the display of love and honor to the one being worshipped. As our Creator, God is the only one who warrants such worship. Jesus was worshipped because He is the Son of God and, thus, also worthy of such worship. However, if we submit to anything else, we are worshipping something in creation. That is both foolish, as creation can’t satisfy the soul, and sinful, as it places God’s creation above Him.

Worship does not always mean bowing down to a physical idol. It’s been rightly said that our hearts are idol-factories, meaning that we can (and usually do) worship anything and everything. It can be pleasure, the desire to marry or have kids, or politics. It can be virtually anything we are passionate about.

How can we tell if we are worshipping something? One easy test we can ask ourselves is: “Am I willing to sin for X?” Sin is a display of disdain for God, so anytime we are willing to sin to satisfy our desire or to make something happen, we are saying we love and honor that thing more than God. We are worshipping and serving it.

How can we stop our idol-factories? We do that by conforming our hearts to Scripture and by pursuing Christ. We read the Bible and apply it to our lives. We attend church and sit under solid Bible preachers. We fellowship and serve in the church. We pray and remind ourselves that God is the source of all that we have. As we do such things, we are training ourselves to think of God as the center of all things, focusing our desire and thus worship on Him.