Themes
Judgment • Grace • Sin • Depravity • Alienation • New life • Love • Incarnation • Atonement
If we could just for a moment see the actual state of our sin and what it has done to us and in us and with us and even with our consent, it would become obvious that our fallen condition requires something far greater than a little moral reform, and being good, and acting kind. It requires radical restoration.
Scripture reading
Genesis 6:13 Romans 5:8-10
This call to worship1 is about judgment. It begins in Genesis chapter 6 and ends in the Book of Romans. A call to worship about judgment may not seem like a call to worship, but stay with me, and you’ll see that God’s judgment is an act of grace.
God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life!
Prayer
Father in heaven, it would seem that we fail to see just how corrupt, just how terrifying, just how evil our own sin really is. Our own fallenness and sinfulness are so pervasive, and so every day, and so deeply interwoven into us, and so common, we’ve nearly lost the possibility of ever understanding just how broken we are, just how marred we are, just how twisted our thinking and our psychology and our physiology are, just how distorted we are in the deepest parts of our being, just how alienated we are from You— the source of life and breath and beauty. Our minds have been so broken and our delusion and self-deception is so deep, that there is no shock in us, no repulsion in us, hardly even an irritation in us over our sin, so much so that we find it impossible to comprehend how our sin can reach a crisis point where our very existence stands under divine judgment, where You desire to destroy the earth and all that’s in it. And we find the terror and the possibility of Your judgment unacceptable, and distasteful, and unbecoming alongside our modern intellect, and we are embarrassed to talk about it. We confess that this is the case precisely because we have no idea just who we have become in our fallen and broken state, no idea just how radical is the nature of our sin, no idea just how corrupt humanity has become. We’ve lost the seriousness of our sin. We have no idea of the depth of human wickedness that we have become a part of. If we could just for a moment see the actual state of our sin, Father, and what it has done to us and in us and with us and even with our consent, it would become obvious that our fallen condition requires something far greater than a little moral reform, and being good, and acting kind. It requires radical restoration. It required that You patiently unfold a plan across millennium just so as to prepare the world and reorient our thinking for the ultimate revelation of Jesus Christ. It required that You, Yourself, step into our world and into our own delusions, and find us there, and care for us in them, and carry us out of them. It required the incarnate person of Jesus Christ, in whom You, God, entered fully into the consequences of our sin where You, God, stood as both the Judge and the One judged in our place, where You, God, entered the depth of our fallen human depravity and broke through our corruption to redeem us, and renew us. and restore our communion with You. And so Your grief over our sin. and Your divine judgment, and Your unwavering faithfulness, and Your boundless love for us, and Your deeply personal involvement with us, all reached its climax in Christ's Incarnation and in His atoning work, and cleared the way for new life—for our new life, Amen.
1
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians who gathered at Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, March 23, 2025.