Holiness Doesn’t End at the Door

On Entering With Reverence, and Living With Remembrance

The Church is not a market.
It’s not a swap meet for sin and redemption.

When Jesus walked into the Temple and saw the merchants, the currency tables, the noise, the transactions…

He didn’t walk out quietly.
He overturned the whole thing.
He drove them out.

Because the Temple had become something it was never meant to be:
a place where people traded with God, instead of meeting Him.

And maybe that’s still the risk today.

That we walk into a church on Sunday like we’re entering a shop.
We bring our sins, pay the price, one hour, a confession, a communion and then we walk out, receipt in hand.
Debt cleared. Business done.
But that’s not the point.

The Church is not a vending machine for grace.
It’s not a ritualized transaction.
It’s a sacred place.
A place of prayer.
Of humility.
Of realignment.

When you step into Church, like really step in, it should de‑armor you.

You don’t enter to prove.
You enter to receive.
To kneel. To breathe. To listen. To repent.
And most importantly:
To remember what holiness feels like,
So you can carry it with you when you walk back into the world.

Because the real test of your time in Church is how you act once you’ve left it.

If someone frustrates you at work,
Would you speak to them the same way if you’d just seen them at the foot of the altar?

If someone cuts you off, ignores you, disrespects you,
What if your instinct wasn’t defense, but the humility you carried from Sunday?

Don’t treat the Church like a sanctuary for one hour and forget it the moment you close the door behind you.
Let it echo into your Monday.
Let it linger in your voice, in your replies, in your glances.
Let the humility follow you.
Because you are the temple now.
Not made of stone, but of flesh and soul.

Come to Church humbly.
Leave Church humbly.
And live as if you never left it.

Amen.

Gospel (John 2:13‑22, ESV)

13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money‑changers sitting there.
15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money‑changers and overturned their tables.
16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”
17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty‑six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”
21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.