Should Churches worship services be designed to encourage and strengthen Christians or to appeal to and win non-Christians? The truth is that our worship services should be geared to sinners in need of God’s rescue—and that includes everyone. We all need the deliverance of the gospel. We in church need to abandon the “us” and “them” mentality.
The gospel isn’t simply a set of truths that non-Christians must believe in order to become saved. It’s a reality that Christians must daily embrace in order to experience being saved. The gospel not only saves us from the penalty of sin (justification), but it also saves us from the power of sin (sanctification) day after day. Or, as John Piper has said, “The cross is not only a past place of objective substitution; it is a present place of subjective execution.” Our daily sin requires God’s daily grace—the grace that comes to us through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
We all need to be in the Word daily. Those who are lost need it’s convicting power. Those who are saved need it’s encouragement and guidance. As a church, we are not a social club with those who have been ceremoniously initiated sitting up front and those who are new sitting in the back hoping to be accepted. We are not a university with professors, undergraduates, and graduate students. We are all sinners in the same boat relying on the same Jesus who is delivered to us in the same gospel preached from the same pulpit.
We who have been blessed need to get over ourselves and be a blessing to others. Just how inclusive is that?
Be blessed and a blessing.
Nick
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