Duane Litfin: Clothing Matters: What We Wear to Church

A thought-provoking article from Mr. Litfin. What do you think?

From Christianity Today online.

What’s going on here? Could it be that our delight in the security of our standing before God—that is, that all who have “put on” Christ (Gal. 3:27) stand fully accepted in him—has blinded us to a different issue: the acceptability of ourworship offerings? It would be the cheapest of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” to suppose that because we are secure in Christ, whatever we bring to God in worship, however inferior or mediocre, pleases him (Eph. 5:10).

Not just anything will do when we come before God. He is still honored by what is holy, what is our best, what is sacrificial. The kingdom to which we have come, says the writer to the Hebrews, requires us to “offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe,” because “our ‘God is a consuming fire'” (Heb. 12:28–29, emphasis added). A blasé, casual attitude toward worship may indicate that we have failed to grasp this important point, a sign of our being more conformed to this world” than so transformed in our minds that by testing we are able to discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2, emphasis added).

Read it all.