CCC Gainesville | Blog
Each of our worship services includes a time of confession. This part of our liturgy has always interested me, largely because it is a practice found across various religious traditions. So why do we do it? There’s a lot to that answer, and I’ll unpack it over the course of several weeks. To understand how corporate confession of sin could find a place in protestant worship, consider the grand context of our worship. When we gather to worship our God, we are recounting the gospel story, illustrating it through our own experiences, and reiterating our assurance in it. Everything we do on Sunday points to the cross. That’s why, when we confess our sins, we remind ourselves that we were lost, in need of something we could not secure on our own. And it is equally important to be reminded, as often as we confress together, that Christ’s work satisfied his wrath once and for all. Jeff Purswell, of Covenant Life Church (the worship team’s host August 10-14), adds some depth to this conversation:
…it is through the power of the gospel that we are transformed to live new lives by the power of the Spirit. It is through the gospel that we are freed from selfishness to give our lives in service of others. Sure, the scope of Christ’s redemption is the whole cosmos (Colossians 1:20), but at the center of his redemptive concern are rebellious image-bearers whom he is ransoming to be his children. But all of these entailments, implications, and promises are founded upon the rock-solid, unchanging accomplishment of God through the gospel of his Son. It is this message that is God’s power to save sinners, to comfort the grieving, to motivate the listless, to encourage the downhearted, to assure the guilt-stricken.
This message never changes; this message is always true; and so our hope is always secure.
Read the full article here. See you Sunday.
“We are told in Exodus 19:1 that the Israelites arrive at Mt. Sinai 3 months to the day after they have left Egypt. In Numbers 10:11 they leave Mt. Sinai ‘on the 20th day of the 2nd month of the 2nd year’, about 10 days short of a 12-month stay (at Sinai).”
–Peter Enns
In Exodus 19 God started by telling His people what kind of God He was, and then He told them what kind of people they were supposed to be: a precious people with a special purpose.
Three work days in, and we’re still plugging away. The girls were busy cleaning the gym today and working at the Palmer Home’s thrift store. The fellas swept floors and organized stuff at the thrift store in the morning and continued moving the new house parents into their cottage. The group is doing well. We had fun making a Wal-Mart and Sonic run last night. Please continue to pray for us, that our relationships would go deeper and our hearts would be conformed to Christ. The kids are working hard and very tired. Here are some pics.
Sonic. Yum!
This dresser was very, very heavy.
All the stuff we moved.
Sorting clothes at the thrift store.
KJ found a game to play at the thrift store.
I think Luther is right: “Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.”
So here is John Stott to do that:
In these verses an important word occurs for the first time in Galatians. It is central to the message of the Epistle, central to the gospel preached by Paul, and indeed central to Christianity itself. Nobody has understood Christianity who does not understand this word. It is the word ‘justified’. The verb comes three times in verse 16 and once in verse 17, while the noun ‘justification’ occurs in verse 21.
In this paragraph, then, Paul unfolds the great doctrine of justification by faith. It is the good news that sinful men and women may be brought into acceptance with God, not because of their works, but through a simple act of trust in Jesus Christ. Of this doctrine Martin Luther writes: ‘This is the truth of the gospel. It is also the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consisteth. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.’ In other places he refers to it as the ‘chief’, the ‘chiefest’ and ‘the most principal and special article of Christian doctrine’, for it is this doctrine ‘which maketh true Christians indeed’. He adds: ‘if the article of justification be once lost, then is all true Christian doctrine lost.’
Similarly, Cranmer wrote in the first Book of Homilies, ‘This faith the Holy Scripture teacheth: this is the strong rock and foundation of Christian religion: this doctrine all old and ancient authors of Christ’s Church do approve: this doctrine advanceth and setteth forth the true glory of Christ, and beateth down the vain glory of man: this whosoever denieth is not to be counted for a true Christian man, nor for a setter forth of Christ’s glory, but for an adversary of Christ and His gospel, and for a setter forth of man’s vain glory.’
If the doctrine of justification is central to the Christian Religion, it is vital that we understand it. What does it mean? ‘Justification’ is a legal term, borrowed from the law courts. It is the exact opposite of ‘condemnation’ (Cf. Dt.25:1; Pr.17:15; Rom.8:33,34). ‘To condemn’ is to declare somebody guilty; ‘to justify’ is to declare him not guilty, innocent or righteous. In the Bible it refers to God’s act of unmerited favour by which He puts a sinner right with Himself, not only pardoning or acquitting him, but accepting him and treating him as righteous.
Many people find Paul’s language alien to their vocabulary, and his argument intricate and complex. But is Paul not writing about a universal human need, as pressing today as it was 2000 years ago? For there are at least two basic things which we know for certain. The first is that God is righteous; the second is that we are not. And if we put these two truths together, they explain our human predicament, of which our conscience and experience have already told us, namely that something is wrong between us and God. Instead of harmony there is friction. We are under the judgment, the just sentence, of God. We are alienated from His fellowship and banished from His presence, for ‘what partnership have righteousness and iniquity?’ (2 Cor. 6:14).
This being so, the most urgent question facing us is the one which Bildad the Shuhite asked centuries ago, ‘How then can man be righteous before God?’ (Jb. 25:4). Or, as Paul would put it, ‘How can a condemned sinner be justified?’ His answer to these crucial questions is in this paragraph. First, he expounds the doctrine of justification through faith (verses 15,16). Then he argues it (verses 17-21), dealing with the commonest objection to it and demonstrating the utter impossibility of any alternative.
