Dear Family at Christ Community,

     This Sunday we will at last reach what Martin Luther has called the most important paragraph in the Bible: Romans 3:21-26 from which we derive the declaration of our redemption by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. As part of our worship, we will have the privilege of coming to the Lord’s Table in celebration of this great truth. The bread and cup will make visible God’s gift of grace to us in the sacrificial death of Christ on our behalf to eternally reconcile us in resurrected newness of life. We will dine as those who have been justified as a display of God’s righteousness in His steadfast love and justice. John R.W. Stott in The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World captures the awe-inspiring beauty of our justification by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone:

Pardon is negative, the remission of penalty or debt; justification is positive, the bestowal of a righteous status, the sinner’s reinstatement in the favour and fellowship of God. Sir Marcus Loane has written: ‘The voice that spells forgiveness will say: “You may go; you have been let off the penalty which your sin deserves.” But the verdict which means acceptance [sc. justification] will say: “You may come; you are welcome to all my love and my presence.”’

     Let us partake and have our faith nourished because of the loving hospitality of our Abba Father offered to us in the death and resurrection of Christ. May we experience in the bread and cup the divine invitation to joyfully relish in the love and presence of God in the power of the Holy Spirit!

In Christ,
Cameron