Stephen Altrogge writes:

We tend to get dressed up for church. Depending on your denomination, getting dressed up might look like wearing a suit and tie or a dress. Or, getting dressed up might look like wearing your best pair of jeans and a collared shirt. We clean up before going to church. We shower and we brush our hair. We want to, at the least, look like we have it together. For the most part, we don’t go to church wearing yoga pants or sweatpants. We don’t roll out of bed and go straight to church.

I distinctly remember one Sunday when a man said to me something like, “When I look around, I see all these people who have their lives together. Meanwhile, my life is a mess.”

Church should be a place where messy people feel comfortable. When I say “messy people”, I don’t mean people who are willfully engaging in unrepentant sin. I mean people who are seeking to follow Jesus, but who often find themselves struggling, and falling, and failing. I’m talking about the weak, weary, and worn out.

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Mike Reeves, author of Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith, delivers a brief but very helpful talk on the necessary relationship between the gospel and the Trinity:

A Trinitarian Gospel

R.C. Sproul writes:

We must see that the righteousness of Christ that is transferred to us is the righteousness He achieved by living under the Law for thirty-three years without once sinning. Jesus had to live a life of obedience before His death could mean anything. He had to acquire, if you will, merit at the bar of justice. Without His life of sinless obedience, Jesus’ atonement would have had no value at all. We need to see the crucial significance of this truth; we need to see that not only did Jesus die for us, He also lived for us.

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4 May 2014 — 10 AM Worship

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4 May 2014 — 3 PM Worship

Barry Cooper writes:

In a shocking revelation, the palace has confirmed that the Prince has married a prostitute.

The woman has not yet been publicly named. But sources close to the palace have revealed that as well as being a serial adulterer, she is also known to be a notorious drunk, an inveterate liar, and a grievous hypocrite.

When asked why he would set his love on such an undeserving bride, the future King replied, “I have always loved her. I loved her before she even knew me. And I will continue to love her, regardless of who she is. Nothing can separate us, not even death.”

Some have complained that, given her profession, such a woman could never become Queen. But the Prince was unrepentant: “If I am King, and I have chosen to marry her, then she is Queen. Whatever she may be, her status changed forever when I joined myself to her. Whatever she may do, she has been irrevocably welcomed into my family. Everything I have is now hers. And everything she has, I have taken upon myself.”

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Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, published in 1520:

“Who can even begin to appreciate what this royal marriage means? Who can comprehend the riches of this glorious grace? Christ, the rich and divine bridegroom, marries this poor, wicked whore, redeems her from all of her evil, and adorns her with all of his goodness. It now is impossible for her sins to destroy her, for they are laid on Christ and swallowed up by him. She has her righteousness in Christ, her husband, which she now can boast is her very own. She can set this righteousness over against all of her sins and, in the face of death and hell, say with confidence: ‘If I have sinned, nevertheless, the one in whom I trust, my Christ, has not sinned. Through our marriage, all that is his is mine and all that is mine is his.’”