Sunday Service - 22 Nov 1953

We are accustomed to ending all our prayers to God with the words, ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’. That is, we offer our prayers to God through Christ. Is this a mere liturgical convention or is there any meaning in it? Are we to understand that we can’t approach God directly and that we can go to him only through Christ? What is the truth behind this and how does this affect us?

The truth of the matter is man alone cannot offer God a worship which can be acceptable. If our worship is to be acceptable it must be made in him with Christ. Let us try to understand that, difficult as it may appear to be.

If we are sincere in our worship we must show our love to God, in return for His love, by our self-giving. Self-giving love should be our response to God’s infinite love. Self-giving should find an important place in man’s worship. In the Holy Communion Service we have the Prayer of Oblation after the Consecration Prayer and there we pray: ‘Here we offer and present to Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto Thee.’ That is an important place in our worship in the whole Service of Holy Communion. Then note what we continue to say in the same prayer: ‘And although we be unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto Thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech Thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences, through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

In worship it is our duty to offer our whole being to God, and yet we are not worthy to offer any sacrifice because of our sins. Because of our sins we are not able to draw near to God and come into His presence. We know from our everyday experience that when we have done something evil to a friend, something which has spoiled the mutual relationship of trust and respect, we thereafter instinctively avoid his presence. The evil act has erected a moral barrier between us. In the same way human sin cuts a man away from God and prevents him offering any worship which means anything. And because man is in the grip of sin, because he is afflicted with an inner condition of sinfulness, which by his own efforts he cannot get rid of, he loses his appointed place in God’s universe and drifts away from God and moves towards that outer darkness of isolation to which Sin leads him.

The Gospel, the good news, is that a way of salvation from this dilemma has been achieved by Christ. The Son of God has taken human nature upon Himself, and in it, within history and human life, has offered the Father perfect worship. Christ’s work on earth was to do Himself what man so far had failed to do, to accomplish in human nature what the Father demanded, but what He had thus far failed to receive: to offer in fact acceptable worship. On the eve of His crucifixion our Lord said to His Father: “I have glorified Thee on the earth having accomplished the work which Thou hast given me to do.” What was the nature of this glorifying? It was the unbroken loyalty to the Father’s Sovereignty offered in loving self-giving. “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me.” In His life He acknowledged God’s sovereignty and love, and every word he uttered, every deed and every thought was an honouring of that acknowledgement. In short His life was perfect worship.

It was because He offered the Father that perfect worship that we are able to come to God and offer our worship. Our worship is acceptable only in so far as we offer our worship in union with Christ. When we are united to Christ we will be willing to give our obedience to God as Christ did. We come to think as He thinks. Our wills and affections undergo a transformation. It is in that relationship to Christ that we offer our prayers to God the Father. Let us therefore keep in mind always that the ending of our prayers, ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’ is not a mere convention, but the expression of the fundamental nature of what we are doing, without which our worship would be valueless.