As a new Lord’s Day dawns, it seems fitting that we remind ourselves of the power and purpose of the precious privileges of hearing from God, speaking to God, and belonging to God. As Christians through the centuries have pondered these means of grace, these key habits of the Christian life, they have always felt the need to address two equal and opposite temptations. The first temptation is to neglect the means of grace, and the second is to idolize them.
Some grow weary of the repetition and sheer ordinariness of these means. They find themselves longing for something new, something extraordinary, and are tempted to neglect them. But then others, while practicing these habits day by day and week by week, can begin to find that their spiritual confidence is no longer in Christ but in these habits. They have essentially replaced their faith in Christ with faith in Christ’s means of grace. Some become idle in their use of the ordinary means, while others make these ordinary means into an idol. Thus, William Secker says charges Christians in this way: “Neither be idle in the means, nor make an idol of the means.”
This is why John Trapp warns that “means must be neither trusted nor neglected.” With your heart fixed firmly in Christ, with your trust solely in him and your faith secure in his love, you can practice these means not to gain his favor, but to enjoy it.
