What Should I Wear to Church?

One of the most frequent questions I get from people who are thinking about coming to worship with us on a Sunday is “what should I wear?”

I always answer the same way: “Clothes. You should wear clothes.”

And I mean that. I’m glad to say that, in our young church, we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about our “Sunday best.” We don’t really talk about our clothes at all. I’m the pastor and most weeks I wear jeans and a button-down shirt untucked. You’ll find people in shorts and t-shirt, in dresses, in khakis and a polo, jeans, blouses, skirts. We wear clothes.

I understand the question, “what should I wear?” Especially in somewhere like the so-called “Bible-Belt”, what you wear to church is a very big deal. The idea is that we bring our best, right? That we dress in the very best clothes we have because we’re coming to worship God. Or maybe (though we’d hate to say it out loud) we wear the very best clothes we have so we can be seen by other people.

But I think that idea is misguided. Central to our understanding of who we are is the idea that we are accepted before God because of Jesus and his righteousness alone. That we are a community founded by his grace and invigorated by his love for us.

We don’t bring our good deeds to God hoping that they’ll be good enough. We don’t sing songs of praise to Him because we think our voices will be pristine and perfect. We don’t pray prayers because we think all of our words will be poetic and fitting. And we don’t search our closets to find the finest piece of clothing thinking that we’ll be more welcomed by Jesus if the tag on our collar is impressive enough.

No. We come in the freedom of knowing that we are clothed with Christ, to use the language of Galatians 3.27. We come knowing that we are justified in God’s sight and welcomed because of the righteousness of Christ credited to us and received by faith alone. That it’s never ever ever a matter of us standing on our righteousness or impressiveness, but that the gospel of Jesus is by faith from first to last, his grace all the way through.

When we gather together on Sunday, it’s not to a fashion show. We come together as people who are far more sinful than we could ever imagine, but in Christ far more loved than we could ever dream.

So what should we wear to worship? Wear clothes. But most importantly, come clothed in Jesus and the worthiness that is yours in him, resting in him alone for life and salvation.

You don’t need anything else.