What is the difference between "love" and "worship"? Do "love God" and "worship God" mean the same thing? I've never quite understood the concept of worship and how it differs from the concept of love. Are worship and love the same thing? Or is worship = love + something else? If someone loves God, does that automatically imply that they worship God or vice versa? I would appreciate it if answers include illustrative examples of how these concepts materialize in a concrete way in everyday Christian living.
C.S. Lewis had trouble with the idea of praise and worship, as if God were continually seeking compliments from us. He warmed up to the idea slowly. See this:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/c-s-lewis-on-the-theology-and-practice-of-worship/
One essential aspect of worship is that it is two-way. In praising God through our worship, he imparts his presence and his communicable attributes to us. Like a seal pressed into wax, we waxy people begin to be reshaped into the likeness of the seal. Worship brings wax and seal together. Or God is the light which shines upon us. Our praise lets the light in and we are warmed and energized and made radiant. After Moses met with God, he face literally glowed.
Worship is the treasuring of that which is true treasure, not the junk we store in attics and closets. The act of treasuring the eternal brings the eternal into us and transforms us.
If you read 1 Corinthians 13, the definition of love will confuse you, because love seems to swallow up all the other virtues under its umbrella. Notice how that chapter has negative things to say about some approaches to obedience. Love is not so much the things done as the reason they are done: for the benefit of others, not our own aggrandizement. Thus worship is not love, but love distinguishes acceptable worship from fear, manipulation and bargaining for a benefit.