The Altar She Keeps Going Back To

She knows the shape of the invitation before it is given. Everybody who has been in a church for a long time does. There is a way the music comes down and a way the pastor puts one hand out and a phrase he uses, and about four seconds before he says it, she knows.

She is already partly turned in the row.

Tanya has gone forward for the same thing at this church for eleven years, and at the church before this one for four years before that, which is fifteen, and she has never once told anybody that it is the same thing every time.

People are kind about it. A woman named Beth usually comes and stands beside her and does not say much, which is exactly right, and afterward somebody hands her a tissue and somebody else squeezes her shoulder on the way past, and she means every second of it.

She is not performing. That would be an easier problem.

What is happening is that she believes she was forgiven at the first altar, fifteen years ago, and she has never been able to leave it there, and every time the music comes down something in her says: go now, while it is open.

She is halfway out of the row again tonight.

If you have a version of that, this is written for you. And I want to hand you a purpose clause, because there is a small phrase at the end of one verse that tells you what the whole thing was for, and it changes what a person is doing in an aisle.

What it was for

Here is the verse.

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.

Now, everybody stops at the once, and the once is glorious, and other articles on this site take it apart properly.

I want the last clause.

That he might bring us to God.

That is a purpose clause. It tells you what the whole thing was for, which is not merely the removal of a problem but the accomplishment of a destination. And the verb in it is a specific one. It is the word used for presenting somebody at court, for bringing a person into the presence of a monarch, for the act of introduction that a person could not perform for themselves and needed somebody with standing to perform for them.

So the purpose was arrival. Not access, exactly. Arrival. Being brought all the way in and presented.

And here is what that does to an aisle. A woman who goes forward every time the music comes down is, without meaning to, performing the introduction again. She is presenting herself. And the verse says the presenting was the purpose of the suffering and it was accomplished, once, by somebody whose standing to do it is not in question.

You are already brought, presented and standing inside, and the introduction was performed by somebody with the standing to make it. 1 Peter 3:18 puts the bringing in a purpose clause attached to a finished act, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a written arrival and makes it real in a person, so this does not rest on how much of it lands in a row.

Now I have to say something carefully, because a woman who has gone forward for fifteen years could hear all of this as a rebuke, and it is the opposite of one.

Go forward as often as you like. Every week if you want to. There is nothing wrong with the front of a room and there is nothing wrong with a woman who wants to be prayed with, and Beth standing beside her not saying much is one of the better things happening in that building.

What this verse removes is not the freedom to go. It removes the necessity. The difference between may and must is the whole article.

You have had a necessity lifted rather than a habit criticized, and the two are not connected. It is written as a purpose accomplished and not as an instruction against anybody, and His Spirit is the one carrying a lifted necessity into a life, which is why it holds while you are halfway out of the row.

The just for the unjust

There is a phrase in the middle that decides who is qualified to do the bringing, and it is worth a minute.

The just for the unjust.

An introduction at court depends entirely on the standing of the one making it. A person with no standing cannot present anybody. That is the whole reason a person needs somebody to do it for them.

And Peter is precise: the one doing the bringing is the just one, and the ones being brought are the unjust, and the transaction works because of whose standing is being used.

Which means the quality of the person being presented was never a variable in whether the presentation would hold. Nobody at court examines the credentials of the one being introduced. They look at the one doing the introducing.

You were brought in on somebody else's standing, and yours was never assessed at the door. Scripture names the just and the unjust and puts the bringing in the just one's hands, and the same Spirit at work in that letter is the one testifying inside a person now.

Let me put this here, in the middle, in plain sight. If the going forward has grown into something that governs your weeks, if the nights have been getting long, or if the thinking has traveled out past regret toward wishing to be gone, get a person alongside you. Talk to your doctor. Sit down with a counselor. If tonight is a dark one, call or text 988 or your local crisis line and let another human being be with you in it. That is not a lesser road than prayer and it is not a fault in anybody's faith. God has always worked through people, and one sitting with you is part of what He is doing rather than an alternative to it.

The sentence that says itself first

Now the thing that arrives four seconds before the pastor speaks, and I want to look straight at it.

Go now, while it is open.

That sentence has a hidden premise, and the premise is that the opening is intermittent. That there are windows. That access opens when the music comes down and closes when the lights come up, and a wise person uses the window.

Nothing in Scripture supports that and this verse contradicts it directly. The purpose clause has already been accomplished. A person who has been brought and presented is not waiting for the doors to open again on Thursday. They are inside.

And I want to be gentle about where that idea comes from, because it is rarely taught on purpose. It gets absorbed from atmosphere, from urgency in a room, from the shape of a meeting. Nobody stood up and said access is intermittent. It simply gathered.

You are inside rather than waiting at a window, and there is no closing time on a place you were brought into. 1 Peter 3:18 accomplishes the arrival in a finished clause, and the Spirit takes what is written and makes it living in a body.

I am not going to tell you that next time the music comes down you stay in your seat. It has been fifteen years and things that old go at the pace they go, and none of that would mean anything failed. Anybody who hands you a schedule invented it.

You are clean right now standing in an aisle, and standing in an aisle has never once been a witness about anything. It is written and it is accomplished, and it is His Spirit rather than the strength of your agreement who makes an accomplished thing real in a body.