In His Word, God gives us the pattern for worshipping Him, He teaches us the content of what we are to believe about Him, and He gives us a rule for our behavior. This may be summed up with three c’s — as cultus, creed, and conduct.
But we must be careful, because the demons of religiosity are always lurking for us, and just as soon as we learn to worship rightly, to believe rightly, and to act as we ought to, these well-dressed demons are right at our elbow, plucking at our sleeve and whispering.
Rightly understood, Scripture does not teach us to be permanently suspicious of things like appropriate worship, orthodoxy, or good behavior. We praise God for all of them, and acknowledge that we are summoned to them. But we are summoned to them in the right way, in gladness and simplicity of heart.
Approached in the wrong way, all that God gives us is just so much liturgical, creedal and ethical rope, with which we may hang ourselves from one of the beams in the Temple. So we should beware. But if we have that evil heart of unbelief, avoiding these three things is no help at all–we will just figure out a way to dispatch ourselves without the rope.
The answer is always to do what God says to do, the way He says to do it. Come. Eat. Drink. Believe. Trust. Rest. The ability to do this is itself the gift of God–so that no one may boast-—and so we must simply receive what God gives.
In this receiving, we contribute nothing. We come with nothing. We surrender nothing but our refusal to surrender. Jesus Christ is everything. He is the one who invites you. He is the one who has purchased you. He is the one who teaches you to worship, think, and obey in a way that is not self-worship, self-thinking, and self-obeying.
The word that accompanies the sacrament is a gracious word. Give it up. Lay it down. Surrender the point. Release. Accept. Rejoice. Sing.