Gathering together with other Christians to worship is among the most critical of the things we do as disciples of Jesus Christ. But what is a Church service? How does it work? What is it for? Does it matter if I’m not there? What makes for an authentic act of Christian worship anyway?

Jesus is the only true worshipper, and in His amazing grace He catches us up into His worship of the Father through the Gospel. That’s why Christian worship is shaped by the Gospel, and why it trains us to inhabit the Gospel, and to approach God through the Gospel.

A significant part of the agenda of Christian worshis focusses on what the Holy Spirit is doing in us and to us as we worship. He is training us how to be worshippers, and He is forming us as disiples. Because of this we need to make sure a service is fit for purpose.

Christians live with the ongoing presence of sin. But how are we to make sense of that experience? What is our relationship to that sin now that we are reconciled to our Father, who is the ‘Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty’? And more to the point, what is His relationship to that sin?

Before we focus on sin we focus on God. We hear the declaration of His love and grace; we confront the immensity of His power; we celebrate His desire to forgive, to cleanse and to disentangle sin from our experience. This is the atmosphere in which we can confront the truth about ourselves.

Christianity is a battle for our heart. Despite all that God has done for us in Christ, and is doing in us by His Spirit, we remain dangerously ambiguous creatures. In that ambiguity we think, say and do things fo which we should feel guilty. But where do we take that guilt, and what do we do with it?

How do I know how to repent of sin? By our being trained in the art of confession Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day in our corporate worship. Our liturgy gives us Biblical categories and vocabulary that allows us to repent well, such that the power of that sin is broken in us by the Spirit, and we are liberated to step into a different future.

Everything from this point on in a service is a response to our confession. And that response begins with an authoritative declaration of our being forgiven in Christ. This rehearsing of the Gospel remains critical to combatting our spiritual amnesia, and for our growth into righteousness.