No human is worthy, period. Not of our exaltation. Not of our worship.
The adoration of humans has to do with feelings. When I say, I adore you to a fellow human it is basically a way of saying I feel a super amount of love and affection for you.
Adoration of God has more to do with Awe. When I adore God, when I have gotten a glimpse of His glory and have felt his presence, there really isn't a lot of talking that can be done. I am totally undone. I realize how completely unworthy I am of one bit of his favor and yet he loved me. When I consider the cross, I am in awe of God and my actions are that of adoration. It isn't just a gushy feeling, it is a realization of our own unworthiness and God's holiness, grace, goodness, etc., Largely, it is worship. Human adoration isn't even close.
Thanks that helps.
What I'm seeing, the obvious, duh, is that "worthy" requires a modifying prepositional phrase. In this case: of worship, of exaltation. So exalt, adore, love are the primaray definers of "worship."
And, I believe, we've further qualified adore and love as a matter of degree, with the added quality of "awe" in adore. We could of course be in awe of other people though not to the same quantity and not in the same quality as our awe of God.
Exalt would have a dimension of quantity or degree also, I think. We "exalt" the Heisman Trophy winner for example. Not to the same degree as exalting God though.
Would it therefore be correct to say that exaltation, adoration and love are distinguised as woship by their degree? And that awe has a difference of degree with an added difference of quality?