You have often heard me use the word evangelical. What am I going on about? The Scriptures insist, from beginning to end, on the absolute necessity of the new birth. If we are all objects of wrath by nature, and we are, then something must happen to each one of us at some point if we are to be saved.
In liturgical churches, as ours is, there is a constant pressure to rely on the forms as though they were themselves the reality. But without the Spirit, the water of baptism is just water. And the more complicated, beautiful, or interesting those forms are, the easier it is to get distracted by them.
In doctrinal churches, as ours also is, there is a constant pressure to rely on formulations as though they were themselves the reality. And the more challenging, rigorous, consistent, and biblical the formulations are, the easier it is to get distracted by them.
This means that we are going to be tempted both coming and going.
So the central issue is not this form or that one, but rather whether the form is being approached with a living faith. In this sense, there are evangelical Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, and so on. There are also plenty of dead variants of all those same things. We are not saved by choreographed liturgy. The same thing goes for the doctrinal precisionists. We are not saved by nano-theology.
As the old song puts it, “You gotta have Jesus, and that’s all.”