Where in the Church is the Gospel? (Part 4)

February 9, 2014 Series: Where in the Church is the Gospel?

""We go to Church, we sing our psalms to God, we intercede for the world, we listen to the sermon (too often simply an exhortation), we offer our money, time and talents to God. No doubt we need God’s grace to help us do it. We do it because Jesus taught us to do it and left us an example to show us how to do it. But worship is what we do before God. In theological language, this means that the only priesthood is our priesthood, the only offering our offering, the only intercessions our intercessions. Indeed this view of worship is in practice Unitarian (rejects the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ, God is one, not a Trinity-J.F.), has no doctrine of the mediator or sole priesthood of Christ, is human-centered, has no proper doctrine of the Holy Spirit, is too often non-sacramental, and can engender weariness. We sit in the pew watching the minister “doing his thing,” exhorting us “to do our thing,” until we go home thinking we have done our duty for another week! This kind of do-it-yourself-with-the-help-of the-minister worship is what our forefathers would have called “legal worship” and not “evangelical worship”—what the ancient church would have called Arian or Pelagian and not truly catholic. It was not Trinitarian."" 

James Torrance, Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace

More in Where in the Church is the Gospel?

March 16, 2014

Where in the Church is the Gospel? (Part 7)

March 9, 2014

Where in the Church is the Gospel? (Part 6)

February 16, 2014

Where in the Church is the Gospel? (Part 5)