Why morality will never lead us to worship | Bridging the Gap with His hands not ours.

Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by K. Tanner Barfield in Apologetics

The Gap

There is a gap that exist between us and the Father. It is something that everyone feels and everyone knows is there. This gap didn’t always exist. In the garden man was in communion with God, he walked with God, and constantly worshiped God. This is what the Father designed us perfectly to do, this is what he pronounced as “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Now because of the fall we are separated from this communion. Our rebellion has built a canyon that we can’t cross alone, although we try exhaustively. The gap is essentially our rebellion that keeps us from God and his glory.

Building a Bridge With OUR Hands

If we can see the gap as a canyon then we can see our attempts at crossing it as building bridges. Mankind has been trying to reach the supernatural since the fall.

In ancient times temples were built in attempt to converge the natural and the supernatural. It wasn’t just the Jews that did this. Everyone was trying to meet with their God(s) and they were trying to do so with temples. All cultures had felt such a strong void with the supernatural that their whole society encircled these places of worship.

The temple was a crossroads of the temporal and the eternal, the natural and the supernatural, and heaven and earth. Offerings would be brought to the temple as a payment to get to the eternal, the supernatural, to heaven. If the temple was the bridge, the offerings were the bridge toll.

Today, temples are seen as prehistoric. We no longer build societies around a PLACE that gets us to God but an ATTITUDE of MORALITY that gets us to God. So many truly believe that they are building a bridge to heaven with their works and that because others see them as a “good person” they will be acceptable to God.

The bloody knuckles that come from community service and ministry work are seen much like the blood shed from lambs and goats on the Jewish temple steps. Just like the blood of the animals though, our bloody knuckles of works righteousness are our sacrifices to God in order that you might obtain access to the impenetrable. We keep striving for more and more because it never feels like we are doing enough works. The temple is never big enough, the lamb is never fat enough, the church numbers are never growing enough, the technology in the youth room is never new enough, etc etc… A bridge built with these methods are made with toothpicks and glue.

Building a Bridge With HIS Hands

We can never build a bridge long enough or strong enough, but there is one who did.

It is not the temple nor the works that is the problem, it is the ideology behind them that is our failure. An attitude that a temple, an offering, or a work alone will make you acceptable to a holy God is absolutely false. For without Christ these things are worthless and unacceptable at the throne of God. Christ said that, “You can do nothing without me” (John 15:5).

A gospel that preaches that you should try harder to serve more, preach more, feed more, clothe more, etc. without faith in Christ alone is a FALSE GOSPEL. Christ did not come as just a moral example of what we should do on our OWN in order to obtain access to the Father. Christ came to DIE as an offering for sinners in order to DELIVER them as justified and acceptable to the Father (Titus 3:5), because in our own flesh even with works we are trash in the garbage shoot headed straight for hell (Isaiah 64:6). Christ lived the perfect life that we cannot not live. Christ did the works that we cannot do. Christ had the faith that we do not have. That is why his death is an acceptable sacrifice, because it’s the only death that was unmerited. He was the only man that lived who was perfectly pleasing to the Father and therefore the shedding of HIS blood from HIS hands is the ONLY acceptable offering.

This is why Christ said that He is the Temple.

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. -John 2:19-22

He is our only access to the supernatural. He bridges the gap. Without him we continue to strive and fail and strive and fail over and over again in our works. We are trying in our works righteousness to reach the throne so that we may worship God, but never get there because our works never feel quite good enough, and rightfully so, they are not.

Worship On The Other Side

If we have faith in Christ and the Gospel that justifies by grace alone, through faith alone, and lay prostrate at the throne that is of grace with Christ as our representative then and only then can we truly worship God. It is this reconciliation, the rejoining of creator and creation that causes us to worship. It is what we were created to do.

Christ lifts us up to the Father and says, “You can now walk again together in the Garden because I have paid the penalty for what originally separated you”, and we immediately worship Christ for his representation.

Without Christ we never reach the throne of grace, and if we never reach the throne of grace, Christ cannot deem us blameless and if we cannot be deemed blameless we can never truly worship God (John 14:6).

Tags: altar calls, calvary chapel, featured, gospel, watered-down preaching