Altered at the Altar

     I have been a special education teacher for over 30 years. I have mastered the art of reading upside down when I am sitting across the table from a student who is reading a text right side up. I have deciphered more convoluted spelling than you have probably ever seen and made sense of the ideas my kiddos were trying to write.  I’ve also edited the work of adult writers and found all the small errors that some people wouldn’t even notice.  I’m not a perfect writer myself and I’m sure others could find fault in my writing, but I do think that my spelling and word usage is fairly accurate. 

     Several weeks ago, I saw someone’s Facebook post talking about the wonderful things that God had done that morning in their church at the alter.  The teacher in me mentally took out my red pen to mark the incorrect usage of the homonym for altar, but then the Holy Spirit stopped that train of thought in its proverbial tracks.  It may have been a technical error, but spiritually, it was very accurate.

     In the Old Covenant sacrificial system, an altar was a place where animals were sacrificed to cover the sins of men.  The animals were a substitute so that people did not have to give up their own lives for the wrong they had done.  Rather than getting what they deserved, they offered the blood of the sacrifice.

     The New Covenant is built on Jesus being the sacrifice – once for all.  The cross becomes our altar – the place where He became the ultimate, perfect sacrifice and took away the sin of the world. We don’t get what we deserve because Jesus took on Himself the penalty of the death we deserved. 

     When my friend talked about the “alter”, it struck me that his word choice was a picture of what should really happen at the “altar”.  In the Old Covenant, in the formality of the sacrificial system, sin was covered, but I’m not sure the ritual ever changed many individual lives.  In the New Covenant, we are told that we are new creatures in Christ. When an encounter with God happens at the altar today, our lives can and should change. 

Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

     I know that sometimes I have been guilty of going to the altar to make some whispered promises to God that I have not kept.  Real transformation means allowing the Holy Spirit access into the deepest places in our hearts and being obedient as He directs us.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. (James 1:22-24)

     This morning my church had a baptismal service that was more than just a religious ritual.  It was a celebration of all the amazing things that God has been doing there.  It was a demonstration that the lives of people had been “altered at the altar”.  I heard stories of bondage broken, marriages and families restored, lives transformed, and purpose given.  That’s what is supposed to happen.  I hope it is happening in your life and in your church.  As it does, the church at large can begin to truly touch the world with the power of God.