E-note 5/14: Not to us

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

Our call to worship this Sunday begins with these words: "Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness." What is the ancient church of God saying here? Surely they were not presuming God was about to mistakenly attribute glory to them and they had to convince him otherwise. No. On the contrary, their emphatic "not to us" (emphatic by repetition) was a chastening of all remnants of entitlement that dwelled in their own hearts as they approached God. Thus they begin their praise by humbling themselves ("not to us") and exalting God ("but to your name"). To roll their poetic language into prose for a moment, they are saying, "Lord, there is nothing in us that entitles us to your blessing. All the mercy that covers our guilt, all the good we have done, all the well-being we enjoy, all the hope that lightens our suffering, all this is by your grace and your grace alone. It is given to us freely by your grace, not deservedly by our merits. So Lord, we resist here and now in public praise the temptation to take any glory to ourselves for all we have is from you and that only because of your covenant love and faithfulness to us, so to you be all the glory!"

Now that stretches the poetry of the Psalm a bit thin but I hope it clarifies how God's people rightly enter God's presence. We come to worship each Lord's Day not in order to put God in our debt, we come rather because God has come to us: "to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness." Why is God alone worthy of glory? Because of his "love and faithfulness." This phrase is a reference to God's covenantal love. It speaks to how God initiates and maintains and fulfills a covenant of grace for his people. It speaks to how God bound himself (covenanted) to bring unworthy servants to himself in holiness and righteousness forevermore. This covenantal love and faithfulness of God's is not indiscriminately given to all. God's love is not an untended garden hose on a summer day, showering blessings on whoever is smart enough or lucky enough to get in the way. God's covenant love and faithfulness is toward those whom the Father has given to the Son before the creation of the world: "I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours" (John 17:9).

The focus of the Christian in worship then is not his own coming to God on the day of his conversion or his coming on any given Lord's Day. The focus of the Christian in worship is God's gracious coming to him. Without God's love and faithfulness toward us, we would never escape the corruption of the world nor the wrath of God. We would never know God or have God. So remember, as God calls you to worship this Sunday, Jesus has shed the blood of the covenant on your behalf so his eternal Father could now be your Father, his God your God (John 20:17). He alone is worthy of all glory, praise and honor. Yours in Christ, John