There is no doubt that the object of the entire spiritual government of the Church is to lead us to Christ, since only through Him do we reach God, who is the ultimate goal of a happy life.” [1]
A hallmark of Sovereign Grace churches in ventura ca one of our seven shared values, is our centrality to the gospel. One of the underlying convictions of this brand is the realization that we cannot exhaust the riches of the gospel. The good news of the kingdom of God cannot be poured out like a gallon of milk. It doesn’t droop like a pair of pants. The good news of the gospel is a fountain that always flows and cannot run dry. It is a beautiful diamond with which we will never become familiar. From the perfect fullness of the triune God flows the glorious grace and goodness of the gospel.
We are and we want to continue being evangelical people. One of the places where this priority is clearly seen is in our corporate worship. We are committed to preaching the gospel, singing the gospel, praying the gospel, and building our church on the gospel. Walk into any Sovereign Grace church around the world this coming Sunday and you will see a people passionate about the proclamation of the perfect life, substitutionary death, victorious resurrection and glorious ascension of Jesus Christ.
As evangelical people, we love reminders of what the gospel has accomplished in our lives. We have received forgiveness, justification before God, reconciliation with Him, adoption into His family, and many other blessings. But it can be easy to miss a primary implication of this good news: we are united with Christ . The gospel not only saves us, but also unites us to Christ, giving us a new identity in Him. This doctrine of union with Christ should have significant implications for the way we worship as a church.
In fact, this union is the very source of our salvation, without which we, as God’s people, cannot be what God has made us to be. Our identity as a church and our basis for relating to and worshiping the triune God is rooted solely in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the church must be tied to Christ at every point of its corporate worship, where, empowered by the Holy Spirit and governed by the Word of God, the church gathers to gratefully receive the revelation of the triune God doing three things: receive from Christ, act on Him, and long for Him to return.
receiving from Christ
The first implication of union with Christ in our corporate worship is that we come together to receive from Him. The church is built on Christ, not offering something new to God, but receiving from God what already belongs to us in Christ: His goodness, grace, mercy and sufficiency. This takes place through the work of the Holy Spirit, primarily through the proclamation of the Word of God.
The church must be tied to Christ at every point of its corporate worship.
When we hear Scripture being read or preached, Jesus Christ is declaring himself to his people. Our God is a God who speaks to us through his Word, so when we come together that Word must be the loudest and clearest voice. Our corporate worship must be steeped in the Bible.
Therefore, our main disposition. Exploring the City when we gather for worship is not to speak and act, but to listen. This means that every time Scripture is read, whether to call us to worship, to prepare for the preaching, or to say goodbye, it is not merely a convenient transition to some other event. It is the main act of our worship, in which God reveals himself to his people through the Word.
acting in Christ
A second implication of union with Christ for corporate worship is that our activity, singing, praying, fellowshipping, preaching, is not done for Christ alone, but takes place in Christ. It can be all too easy to think that after receiving from Christ, it is now up to us to respond. But the gospel means that Jesus is not only the object of our adoration, to whom we offer our praise, but the subject of our adoration, in whom we offer our praise. When we come together to worship, we act together in Christ by the Spirit.
In practice, this means that we are free to simply testify to what God has already said. We gather to bear witness to the “good news of justice” and “your faithfulness and your salvation” (Ps. 40:9-10 NBLA). This applies not only to those who preach, but to all of us. We act in Christ when we speak His Word by singing to one another, praying together, and fellowshipping with others. Our words must be shaped and flow from the Word of God revealed in the pages of the Bible.
We also act in Christ by acknowledging our constant dependence on Him. Our worship is not made holier or more special through whatever we do, but is accepted in what Christ has done, empowered by the Spirit.
longing for Christ
A third implication of union with Christ in our corporate worship is that it points us to the future. Gospel-centered people know something about the future: Jesus Christ will come again. Although Christ is present by the Spirit, his ascension tells us that he is physically absent from us. That’s why we long for him to come back.
Peter describes the church as “strangers and strangers” (1 Pet. 2:11). Because of who we are in Christ, this world is not our home. We come together and remember which kingdom we belong to. We remember the place for which we have been created.
