Get Real November 23 Devotional
November 23, 2024
ISAIAH 58:9b-10 | 9b If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.
I want to make a distinction to avoid a misunderstanding. We should not conclude from this chapter that it is our purity that makes worship genuine. We always come to worship needing to be cleansed and made whole and we are never worthy, apart from Christ, to enter God’s presence. Such is the gap between human and divine being and between human and divine doing. Our purity cannot make our worship genuine, but our complicity in outright evil can make it false. Hypocrisy, or pretending to virtue belied by our lives, invalidates worship. These principles were established during the Donatist Controversy by St. Augustine. He argued against the Donatists, that it was not the purity of the priests that guaranteed the efficacy of the sacraments, but the gracious decision of God to embrace His penitent followers with His mercy.
Does this distinction make sense to you?
Thank God for His marvelous mercy.
