Law and Gospel in Worship: It’s All About
God’s Gifts By Rev. George F. Borghardt
There is a direction to Lutheran worship.
It moves from God to you. It starts with God and goes to you. It’s the German word, “Gottesdienst” or Divine Service. God serves you! The Lord Himself does the acting, working and giving. He does the doing. He does the giving.
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The Lord begins worship in His Name—the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Divine Service is all about Him delivering His love to you, and you soaking up the Father’s love for you in the giving up of His Son. His sacrifice on the Cross does you no good without its delivery to you today! The Divine Service is where the Spirit gives to you all that the Son did for you. Faith flows from the Spirit’s gifts! Faith receives them and it opens your ears to hear the Words of Christ. Faith is watered in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And faith tastes forgiveness in Christ’s Body and Blood in your mouth in the Sacrament. God does the doing; faith does the receiving. You are saved. Faith saves because it receives Jesus’ cross and resurrection. That’s how God wants to be worshiped—by faith alone. “Surely,” you think, “I have something to offer to God. I certainly do something. I praise Him. I feel it. I experience it. That makes it real for me.” That’s the divine service of the Law! It starts with you. It also ends with you. You offer God your works, your thoughts, your feelings. You think these things matter to you. I do, too.
So they must matter to God too, right? They must hold some weight with Him as well. Our hands are filled only with what we have done—our sins. We have done what we shouldn’t do and failed to do what we should have done. That’s what we have to bring to God. We bring to God our sins! The worship of the Law ends with us. It stops there. It’s centered on what we do. And it’s as incomplete and flawed as we are. It may be the worship we think we need and what feels the most effective for us…but it’s not the worship that pleases God. Faith alone pleases God. He gives you salvation and He wants you to receive it. He delivers forgiveness, emptying your hands of all your sins. That absolution was achieved by Jesus’ holy life and bitter sufferings and death, and it is delivered to you in this time and space in His gifts. The one called by God, your pastor, has been sent to you and he doesn’t just forgive some of your sins, He forgives all of them. You are made at peace with God. But isn’t the receiving something I do? Well, does the person who is brought back to life by a doctor say, “I’m alive today because I decided to live.”? Does the baby make a choice
