My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?
(James 2:1-4) KJV
This is a warning that we shouldn’t treat people differently based on the clothing that they’re wearing. It’s talking about a visitor to the church. When did this become the idea that you can wear whatever you want to church because it doesn’t matter?
Today’s WHY? post, August 23rd, is so small that it didn’t seem necessary to break it up into sections. We decided instead to look at our collection of drafts to see if there was anything which we wanted to finish and publish. It turns out that there are a lot to choose from so we picked the oldest one. It’s from a time in our life when we were being drawn into the day to day leadership of a church and filling a larger and larger role of teaching and preaching. The problem with this is that, technically speaking, we’re not qualified to be in the leadership of a church so it was a time of considerable conflict. We’re happy to say that the situation resolved itself and we’re no longer leading or attempting to lead anything, especially a church.
It was an odd church. They liked their pastors and worship leaders to wear suits, but they didn’t seem to mind if their young people came to church looking like they have just been baling hay or fixing engines. We did the work for a sermon hoping to be able to give them some guidance about what clothes they ought to be wearing for church but it didn’t work out quite the way that we expected. The conclusion that we came to is that the only really solid instruction in what clothes we should wear for worship is that they should be clean, but not fancy.
Come as you are isn’t a Bible passage, in fact, it’s quite difficult to find a statement with this sentiment. What can we learn about how we should dress for church, does it actually matter?
Come as You Are – Navigation
| Section | Title | Scripture |
| 1 | Introduction | James 2:1-4 |
| 2 | Holy and Profane | Ezekiel 22:26 |
| 3 | Change Your Garments | Genesis 35:1-3 |
| 4 | Wash Your Clothes | Exodus 19:10-11, 14, 17 |
| 5 | Come Out From Among Them | 1 Corinthians 6:17 |
| Salvation | Romans 10:9-10 |
Come as You Are
When did this become the idea that you can wear whatever you want to church because it doesn’t matter? Does it matter?
Matty (Headwind) 