Preparing for corporate worship November 27

“The just for the unjust.” That five-word phrase in I Peter 3:18 – “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit” -- is at the heart of the Christian faith. It also will be at the heart of our corporate worship this Sunday. Christ, the lone person who was without sin and therefore was and is just, died in the place of and for those who did not and would not live justly, which describes all other human beings – including you and me. It is how Paul could say in Romans 3:26 that God is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” We will gather this Sunday because Jesus has brought us to God by dying as “the just for the unjust.” May our time together reflect this reality -- that we worship God only because we have been counted righteous by the death of the perfectly righteous One as our substitute. That calls for humility, gratitude and fervency in our worship of the one true God. May it be so among all of us this Sunday.