My memories of childhood are inseparable from life in the body of Christ and attendance upon her services. Concrete recollections begin when I was five or six, a non-denominational church in which the preacher was fiery and uncompromising. I remember a Baptist preacher that spoke there one evening, Lester Roloff, not what he said but the directness, conviction, and “heaven or hell” urgency with which he said it. My first sermon notes in an old green Bible, I think, were made at the age of eight and summarized a message on the resurrection, which was preached by the pastor, Brother Carrin. I was baptized in this Primitive Baptist church one Sunday evening at the age of nine. For this reason alone, Sunday evening meetings of the saints have always held a very special place in my heart. It was also in this church that I witnessed a foot-washing ceremony, an extra-biblical ceremony but but certainly a moving one. I remember watching my father wash the feet of a grizzled old man, Brother Watkins, whom we sometimes picked up from the trailer park on Sunday evenings and took with us. From this church, names and faces of older saints march through my thoughts, especially Brother Sims, who always had a pocket full of peppermint for the children.
A sermon preached by Dr. Stanley at First Baptist Atlanta – I think I was about ten – will always stand out. He vividly compared the death of a believer to a “rocket ship into the presence of God;” a low-level metaphor to be sure, but one that to my early thinking helped to remove any fear of death. The “creed” he led us in reciting each Lord’s Day morning, “The Bible says it; I believe it; tithing,” I will never forget, however inconsistent it was with the church’s general stance on the law of God. The memories continue through my early teens: I took my first knowledgeable communion in the first Presbyterian church we attended. During those years, I remember waiting for my father to conclude his part in the called elders’ meetings that seemed constant. The long drives to services are vivid; it seems like we were always driving to hear what my father called “good preaching.” I experienced seasons of conviction and declension. The roll call of pastors – McCurry, Carrin, Hunt, Morecraft – I now understand were so many visitations of God to me, a wretched sinner, faithful men without whom I would not know Jesus Christ, feel so deeply the importance of body life, or my constant sense of need to have and hold God’s precious word in my heart.
Those days are gone. There was not much if any church salesmanship in the congregations we attended, and this rage, I do not think, had yet taken hold in the broader church. At least in my circles, preachers and elders did not so much think about how to keep congregants interested and committed as they did about keeping them faithful to Jesus Christ. If a church had Sunday preaching, mid-week prayer meetings, Sunday school, and the usual round of fellowship gatherings, with opportunities to contribute tangibly to the needs of the body, it was thought enough. I can also remember those churches supporting missionaries, organizing an occasional mission trip for interested church members, encouraging members to tell others about Jesus and bring them to hear God’s word preached, and directing them to live for God’s glory in their callings and family. This is not enough today, for there is no drama here. Biblical spirituality cannot be purchased, packaged, or measured for purposes of church growth. Means of grace have fallen on hard times in the church of our Savior.
By “means of grace” I refer to those things that have God’s specific promise to bless us with his grace and power, with himself, to bring us into closer fellowship with him and the fuller enjoyment of the gifts and graces our Savior purchased for his by his blood, poured out definitively on his church at Pentecost, and continues to bestow upon her as she is faithful to seek him through the means he has appointed. Means of grace are not whatever will keep church goers interested and satisfied. Means of grace are not whatever church leaders feel will attract church members to their services and programs. Means of grace are wholly God-appointed, directed, and ordained. They are wholly word-based. They are not of man’s devising, under his control, or malleable to suit his tastes.
The chief means of grace is God’s word. It alone has the promise of being the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:16). And as faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, Paul, when he speaks of this, brings the preached word to the foreground as the means by which God’s own voice, the voice of our Savior that brings dead men out of their tombs (John 5:25), is heard by sinners (Rom. 10:13-17). The reason for the connection between faith, the word of God, and the word preached by fallible men, is so that God may be given all the credit and glory when this humble and despised means saves and sanctifies sinners (1 Cor. 1:28-32). God tests our obedience and submission at this most fundamental level: whether or not we will submit to hear his voice through human voices. If we will not, there can be no salvation, holiness, or growth in grace, which is the reason our Confession says that outside the church of our Savior – outside her fellowship and apart from submission to her divinely bestowed “keys of the kingdom,” which are the authoritative preaching of God’s word and discipline in terms of God’s word – there is no salvation. This is also the reason that it is a terrible sin to absent oneself from the opportunity to hear God’s word preached. It is not about missing the “roll call” of over-zealous pastors and elders; it is about neglecting and despising the blessing of having our Father draw near to us in his word and by his Spirit.
Another means of grace is the sacraments he has appointed: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Over the past two millennia, various segments of the professing church have added all manner of rites and attributed various unbiblical meanings to these. Some have over-elevated them so that they contain an intrinsic power to save and illumine sinners. Others, likely out of the fear of the former, have under-elevated them, until we have reached the point today where they are either made into “spiritual moments” or mere ordinances without any saving blessing attached to them. We need not fall into either error if we understand them as means by which God brings to us the blessings promised in his word. That is, the sacraments promise nothing other than what the word promises: union with Christ and cleansing from sin (Baptism) and fellowship with Christ and his body, strength unto holiness (the Lord’s Supper). The Lord knows how weak we are, so he gives us Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to be visible signs of the inward grace he promises to us in his word. They are also seals in that as we partake of them in faith – not faith in the sacraments or faith in our faith but faith in God’s promises to us through Jesus Christ – they really give to us the grace offered in them: cleansing from sin, union with our Savior, and power to live for him. They are a real communion in the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16) and a real cleansing in his blood (1 Pet. 3:21). As such, they are aids to our faith that we must improve at every opportunity, for through them God blesses us with himself as we believe his promises and wait upon his faithfulness.
The fellowship of the saints is another means of grace. In an age of “minister of athletics” and “minister of singles seeking adventure,” we need to be very clear about the nature of fellowship. Fellowship is not merely believers who have common interests getting together to pursue them, though such might and should include real fellowship. Fellowship is more than getting together with other believers to drink beer, discuss politics, or compare notes on the inconveniences and struggles of life. Fellowship, as the word implies, is commonness, oneness in the faith – its joys, struggles, opportunities, and most importantly, its Lord – in which believers participate as they come together in a variety of contexts. Worship is the both the deepest and the highest fellowship of the saints, for it is in worshipping the Lord together that we are most closely united to our Head, Jesus Christ, formed into God’s temple and filled with his Spirit, and enjoy in common the blood-bought gifts and grace for which our Savior died and rose again. Fellowship is intimately connected to the gospel itself, which is the reason Paul celebrates the “fellowship of the gospel” (Phil. 1:5) that he enjoyed with the Philippians by virtue of the fact that together they worshipped the Lord in spirit and truth, clung tightly to his word, and labored to spread his word. Fellowship, biblically considered, is not friendship, though it certainly breeds true gospel friendship, for true friendship – and the world knows nothing of this – is found only when we share with others a common commitment to Jesus Christ that shapes our words, priorities, ideas, even our very soul. True fellowship is known by its Christ-centeredness, transparency, fruitfulness, and transforming power in the lives of those who experience it. And as believers fellowship, grace is enjoyed, communicated, and received, for we are all one in the body of Christ, receiving from him everything not so that we may keep it to ourselves but to share. Grace grows as it is shared. Not all members have the same gifts, degree of faith, or experience of grace. But as each member shares what he has freely received, all are edified and experience growth through the faithfulness of each part of the body (Eph. 4:15-16). Weak links in our fellowship weaken the entire body, depriving it of much-needed love, encouragement, and power.
Prayer is a vital means of grace, perhaps the most personal means of all. What is prayer? At its heart, prayer is seeking God according to his word. It is praising him according to his word. It is asking for those things that he has promised in his word and thanking him when we receive them. It is waiting upon him and watching until he blesses us with the gospel treasures made known to us in the gospel. It is a means of grace because God himself has attached promises of grace and mercy to those who seek him in prayer (Matt. 7:7-8). It is a means of grace in that as we prostrate ourselves before him, confess our sins, and seek him, the Holy Spirit himself groans within us and intercedes for us according to God’s will. It is a means of grace in that it is a coming unto Jesus Christ, if it is believing and authorized prayer, as our sole Mediator and hope of receiving anything good from our Father. Prayer was a chief mark of the apostolic church (Acts 2:42). An apostolic church cannot meet often enough to pray. Perhaps we have lost some of this urgency because prayer requires a certain habit of mind and attitude of heart that our culture loathes and does everything it can to dissipate: quietness, focus, humility, a sense of total dependence, and fear of the Lord. Earnestness, regularity, and faith in prayer among church members is a certain sign that the Spirit of the Lord is working in our midst and will do great things for us (Eph. 3:20). Neglect of believing, biblical prayer, individual, familial, and corporate, is the most common cause of spiritual weakness, despair, frustration, and temptation to seek one’s good elsewhere than in God.
There are many counterfeits masquerading as means of grace. Music is a common one. Music is one of today’s idols. How often do we hear a person speak of “my music,” as if it is some kind of private world in which others dare not intrude, with which they could not possibly identify, or toward which they should not offer criticism? In reality, there is no such thing as “my music;” this is really a synonym for “my image,” “my escape,” or “my god.” In Scripture, music is never identified as such as a means of grace. Now, it can in one sense elevate our soul in praise to God and encourage us, and this is legitimate only if it is word-based and dominated, in its content and style, which latter, I know, is very problematic. Things that are problematic, however, are not necessarily things that are insoluble, provided we go only so far as God’s word allows without being led astray by our emotions, imaginations, and preferences. What I mean by this is that God-honoring music in the church does not focus primarily upon style, instrumentation, or tune but upon God’s word. If the music helps us know and love God’s word better, if it directs us in praise to God according to his word, if it leads us to depend upon God’s word and rejoice in his promises, if it brings us to glorify the worthy Lamb that was slain, it can help us seek God’s grace. Thus, the question with music in the church is not whether or not I like the style or tune but whether or not it brings my attention to God’s word and promises. Other considerations are secondary, if even legitimate. Certainly, much of the music in the church today has no other consideration than to elevate the emotions and gratify the flesh, and as such, it is a counterfeit, for it does not lead us to God’s word, to his Son, or to true fellowship with one another. It creates the emotional energy of a rock concert. This is dangerous and anti-Christian. The temple of God has and must have nothing to do with the temple of idols (2 Cor. 6:16).
The means of grace are precious. They are far more than simply a point of doctrine. They are our life. Each time I have struggled with sin, fallen prey to temptation, grown disgruntled, or struggled with despair, I come back to them. I might very well look around and seek other sources of my sins, weakness, and problems. I would be in good company for so doing, for this is definitely an age of guilt manipulation and blame-shifting. When everything is potentially a product to be marketed, every person a customer to be satisfied, how could it be otherwise? Nothing is ever my fault. In my heart, I know otherwise. My Savior’s grace is sufficient. Since this is so, why I am struggling, weak, or faint-hearted? Why is my family weak, my marriage hurting, or my heart despairing? It must be due to my need for more grace from Jesus. Where can I find it? In the very means he long ago ordained and provided for me, for all his people. Ah, I will return to his word as the food and drink of my soul. I will seek him in prayer with his people and turn to him with all my heart. I will seek legitimate relationships in which through Christ-centered fellowship I can be challenged, held accountable, and delivered from my bubble of autonomy and miserable delusion of self-sufficient judgment and sentiment. I will seek cleansing from my sins and strength through his sacraments so that I may be able to use his talents to build his church. Contrary, then, to the reigning consumer jaundice and word-severed faith that is turning the church into a silly supermarket of spirituality, an impoverished ghetto in which the world is imitated rather than overcome by grace, these are the things our Savior calls his church to pursue. These are the means of grace through which he gives himself to us. These are our strength. These are enough.