Learning the Difference

Sharing Options

Grace is a river that consistently overflows the banks. The goodness of God is always in flood stage. We, afflicted with various forms of unbelief, are always quick to believe that God is somehow trembling on the threshold of a miserly disposition. If we provoke Him just one more time, He will throw all His promises away, and separate us from the goodness of the gospel, as far as the east is from the west. But of course, this is perversion. It is grotesque. The cultivation of this kind of attitude is not godly or holy, but quite the reverse. God calls us to humility, not to the vocation of being a head case.

So, you are coming to worship God right now, and must therefore fix these things in your mind. He delights in our approach. He welcomes us as we come. When the gates of heaven open, as they are right now, and we come in, He smiles upon us. This makes us tremble, as it ought to. It fills us with awe, as it should. But the glorious fear that makes us tremble at this point must not be a servile or craven rejection of His promises. Love and faith tremble in one way. Guilt and condemnation tremble in another way. One of our basic duties in worship is to learn this difference. If we do not learn this distinction, and pursue the promises, then we will either implode in a frenzy of self-condemnation – or, as many have done, we will drift into a worship that is nothing more than a complacent middle class approval of decency and traditional values that will simultaneously not tolerate the Christian faith being questioned, or observed.

So take courage. Embrace fear. Worship your God now, in the beauty of holiness.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments