The Most Practical Thing in Christianity
In Christian circles today you will hear people bemoan sermons by saying, “But how is this practical?” Putting faith into practice is a good thing and is something we all need to do more of. However, this question can take Christianity from being practical to only being utilitarian. If it isn’t something that tells us what to do, or how to do it, then cut it out.
This can leave us with horrific outcomes. With this perspective we can go down Anathema Lane and not even realize it. But if practice is good and necessary, then what can we do to live out our faith?
Now I must admit that the title of this article can be a little misleading, but I still hope to point you in the right direction. My litmus is this: what are the things that produce the most downstream fruits? With this sole metric I will present my answer.
The Greatest Help
“Believers have no greater help than public worship, for by it God raises his own folk upward step by step.”
- John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4.1.5
If you want to be a practical Christian there is one day out of seven that is sanctioned in its entirety for your practice in public. If you want to practice then practice there! Where will you find any other time to hear the word of God preached, read, prayed, and sung? If that’s not satisfactory to you then what will be?
For “he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:11-14).
Are You a Good Listener?
This is God’s design. He has been gracious in giving and equipping the Church for the administration of the means of grace, the Word, the sacraments, and prayer, to build us up into Christ. Our problem today is not practice, but listening. We are congregations who can’t hear, and we refuse to learn how. If we do not receive these things that God has given us with thanksgiving, then He may remove them from us.
Open the Bible almost anywhere and you will not find, on the whole, things “to do” and things “not to do”. What you will find a passages that speak of the worship of God by the people of God and the admonishment of it. That is the Bible. It speaks of how man may be reconciled to God through the perfect work of Jesus Christ and how he may be given the grace to live out his purpose to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
Public Worship
The public gathering of believers in solemn reverence, for the of confessing their sins and their faith, to attentively listen to the reading and preaching of the Word, to pray corporately, to give offerings to God and to the poor, to partake of the sacraments, and to exhort one another is the most practical thing in all of Christianity. For an hour on each Sunday morning and evening we may enter into the whole realm of Christian love for God.
Where will you find another hour where you do more Christian duties than that? You get to do all of those things just for the price of admission!
And as we are built up into Christ by His public worship so shall we become vessels that pour out the Sabbath into the remainder of the week. Here we are nourished from babes to men, trained from beasts to saints. There is no spiritual duty that has more lasting effects for weeks and years on our worldly duties than public worship.