The revolution that God started.
A call to worship.
The gospel is not our ascent toward God; it’s God’s decisive, personal descent toward us in Jesus Christ. His sovereign initiative of divine love existed way before we could seek Him, way before we could improve ourselves, way before we could become worthy of grace (not that we ever could). Before all of that, God came among us, assumed our estranged humanity, bore our sin, reconciled us through Christ’s death, and opened fellowship for us with God through Christ’s risen life.
The incarnation was God’s holy revolution. It was a radical new beginning that overturned every religious scheme of self-salvation and every fear that God’s love would have to be earned.
John’s Lamb of God, Paul’s reconciliation of enemies, and Jesus’ seeking of the lost all proclaimed the same thing: salvation originates entirely in God’s being and action. And it doesn’t leave us unchanged!
The love that comes freely from God takes hold of us, casts out fear, and draws our wills, affections, and actions into living participation in the humanity and life of Christ.
Our worship, then, doesn’t begin with our achievements or our spiritual initiative, but with our astonished response to the God who has already come, already given Himself, and already acted for us.
Themes
Divine Initiative • Incarnational love • God’s descent • Unconditional love • Reconciliation • New beginning • Human inability • Christ’s solidarity with us • Atonement • Divine interruption • Grace for the unworthy • End of self-salvation • Communion • Participation • His will • Our will
His love is an ultimate fact that knows no WHY.
Scripture reading
John 1:29 1 John 4:16,19 Romans 5:6–10 Luke 19:9–10
This call to worship1 is telling us to stop trying to find our way to God and to rest in the good news that God has already come all the way to us in Jesus Christ. It is about a love we did not earn, could not cause, and can only receive.
In the Gospel of John, we read this: John — that is John the Baptist — saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" John, that same gospel writer, in one of his later letters, also wrote this: We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. We love because He first loved us. In the Book of Romans, Paul the Apostle writes this about the incarnation: While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die — but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. And finally, Jesus said this to Zacchaeus: Today, salvation has come to this house. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
Prayer
Overwhelmingly and extravagantly loving God of heaven and earth, Your Old Testament saints, Your Old Testament prophets, they all had one expression on all their lips; and that is: “He is coming!” There was an anticipation of a coming — Your coming — that would be entirely new, that had never happened before, unlike Your presence in The Garden, unlike how You walked with Enoch, unlike Your face-to-face friendship with Abraham, unlike Your self-revelation to Moses, a complete descending IN PERSON out of Your Eternity, breaking into time, breaking into our self-alienation, taking on our flesh to be truly near to us, to live as a Man amongst men, to live with us, to talk with us, to bear our sins and take them away, and to restore us to fellowship with You. And so the last of Your prophets lifts up his voice and shouts, “He has come! Behold the Lamb of God.” And so, You did come. You came in the way of sheer, limitless love all the way from Your side of Eternity into our history. You invaded our history. You interrupted our history. You upset our history. You broke in and made for us a radical new beginning… because absolutely nothing on our side of history, absolutely nothing in ourselves, could move at all in Your direction. You did not wait for us to seek You. Nothing in us could seek You. Nothing in us would seek You. Your coming originates with You alone. You did not wait for us to be good. You did not wait for us even to try. Your love is not calculated or prompted or caused by anything in us. You have not loved us because we are of value or because we are worth loving or because we are fit for it. The initiative of Your love toward us lies totally and completely and fully and entirely and absolutely and only with You. Your love is not because of us. It is not responsive to something in us. If it were, there would be no incarnation. There would be no salvation. And You would not have had to break in. But we — we love because of You, because You first loved us — intensely and personally loved us, so much so that You gave all of Yourself to us in Your incarnation when nothing at all in us prompted any of it. And this is perfect love. And this is why Your perfect love casts out all our fear — fear of whether or not we are ever worthy enough. For it was when we were unworthy that Your love for us came free, and overflowing, and abundant, and luxurious — love such as we know Your love to be: absolutely unprovoked and entirely due to only Your sovereign initiative and entirely free from any obligation, spontaneously overflowing, uninhibitedly outflowing from You toward us fully in Your incarnation. Your love is an ultimate fact that knows no WHY. It is uncalculated and incalculable. It is overwhelmingly extravagant. It is unconditional. There is no answer to the question, “How can man come to You?” All other religions are crushed, made senseless, rendered valueless because You have come to us. Your love comes to seek sinners, to seek us, and to save us In the name of Jesus Christ, whose coming was the self-bestowal of God to us, whose coming means that all self-centered approaches to God are set aside, whose coming brings us into immediate touch with God — into a personal relation with God — whose love takes hold of us and changes our whole world, and changes our whole self, and changes everything about how we see and how we live, whose will can become our will, whose affections can become our feelings, whose actions can become our actions, to whom we look as the Author and the Finisher of our faith, Amen
A call to worship given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on December 17, 2023.