Decently and In Order

One of the spiritual disciplines of being a Presbyterian is taking Paul at his word when he writes,

All things should be done decently and in order (1 Cor. 14:40).

The spirituality of the law is a gift of God’s gracious covenant. We are free to be responsible for and to each other. Chaos is evil. Decency and order belong to the inner life of discipleship. They describe a way in which the church lives before God.

The question is whether this claim can be heard as gospel. Does it open us into freedom under God’s covenant, or does it baptize our love of control? Does it direct us to the living God who commands, or does it sanctify whatever structures we already have in place? Thinking through these tensions is itself part of the discipline.

Decency and order in 1 Corinthians 14

When Paul writes that “all things should be done decently and in order,” he is addressing a church in which worship has become a venue for spiritual competition. Tongues, prophecy, and other gifts are in full display, yet the result is not upbuilding. The strong overshadow the weak. Voices multiply without mutual attention. Revelation is claimed without discernment.

In that situation Paul does not oppose the Spirit to order. He insists that genuine spiritual life takes a particular shape. Speech is intelligible. The gathered body can say “amen.” Those who speak submit to the discernment of others. The Spirit does not negate creaturely limits such as turn-taking and interpretation. The Spirit inhabits and reorders those limits.

Order is a condition for mutual recognition. If worship collapses into a field of uncoordinated expression, the body cannot listen or respond in faith. Disorder becomes a refusal to be bound to one another before God.

The command of God is concrete and actual—it addresses us here and now. The congregation that gathers around Word and sacrament is not free to invent its own “spirituality” as a private project. It is summoned into a history in which God has already taken the initiative. The order of the church is never absolute, yet it is called to witness to the order of God’s own gracious act.

The spirituality of the law as covenant gift

The spirituality of the law is a gift of God’s gracious covenant. At first hearing, “spirituality of the law” may seem paradoxical. For many, “law” names accusation. It seems opposed to grace. In much Reformed theology, however, law belongs within the covenant as an expression of God’s faithfulness. It orders life under grace.

Law is not primarily a ladder by which we climb to God. Nor is it a neutral code. It is God’s command that accompanies God’s promise. It tells the liberated people of God how to walk in the freedom already given. It shapes a community whose life corresponds, in creaturely form, to God’s own self-giving.

Barth radicalizes this by refusing to separate law from gospel. The one Word of God meets us as promise and command. The same Christ who reconciles us also confronts us as Lord. The law is therefore not an alien supplement to grace. It is rather the concrete form in which grace addresses us and claims our lives.

If we apply this to church order, the implication is not that every procedural rule is automatically holy. The point is that ordered forms of life together can witness to the reality that God has taken responsibility for this people. Where the congregation seeks to listen together, to discern together, to correct and comfort one another under Scripture, the law of God’s covenant is at work as gift, not as mere constraint.

Freedom as responsibility for one another

We are free to be responsible for and to each other. We must resist a widely held conception of freedom as independence or self-determination. In the New Testament, freedom is liberation from sin’s destructive power and from the anxious need to secure ourselves. We are freed for service.

In a Presbyterian key, this freedom is institutional as well as personal. Power is distributed. Authority is exercised in councils. Teaching elders and ruling elders discern together. Congregations are linked to presbyteries and wider bodies. None of this guarantees justice. It does, however, express a conviction that no one is permitted to rule unchecked in Christ’s church.

To say that we are “free to be responsible” is to confess that genuine freedom manifests in concrete obligations. Listening to those who are typically unheard. Providing transparent processes for decision-making. Accepting discipline and offering it with patience. Bearing the cost of time, attention, and inconvenience for the sake of the body’s health.

The human person is a partner in a covenant established by God. The command “You shall” comes after the declaration “I am the Lord your God.” Responsibility is a response to a prior relationship. Freedom is the space opened by grace in which that response can occur.

Discerning what chaos names

Chaos is evil. Taken carelessly, such a statement can be used to crush any form of difference or disruption. Lively emotional expression, protest against injustice, unconventional piety, the voices of marginalized communities, even the shaking of long-settled traditions could all be dismissed as “chaos.” That would be a betrayal of the gospel.

So what does “chaos” name, if the claim is to be received responsibly?

In Scripture, chaos often appears as the threat of un-creation. The waters of the deep in Genesis. The roaring seas in the Psalms. The forces that would dissolve form, relationship, and life. Barth speaks of “nothingness” as that which God has negated in Jesus Christ, the destructive power that threatens creaturely being.

If we speak of chaos as evil in this sense, we are not condemning every disruption of our preferred order. We are pointing to realities that undo communion. Manipulation that hides behind pious language. Arbitrary use of power. Violence that tears apart the weak. Cynical refusal to accept any shared norms. These are forms of destruction.

There remains a sharp question. Who decides what counts as chaos? A session or presbytery that has grown comfortable may label any challenge as chaotic. A dominant group may treat the cries of the suffering as disorder. A rigid worship style may be defended as “decent and in order” even when it excludes the gifts and needs of significant parts of the body.

A theology that calls chaos evil must therefore include an equally strong insistence that the church’s order is answerable to the command of the living Christ. Structures can be judged and overturned when they shelter injustice. Familiar routines can be disrupted by the Word of God, which is free and sovereign. There is a false order that is itself a form of chaos, because it covers over the truth.

Ordered life as participation in God’s peace

If we hold these threads together, a particular picture of Presbyterian spirituality emerges. Order is not an idol. It is not the highest good. It is not the church’s salvation. Only Christ is that.

At the same time, order is not morally neutral. Forms of governance and worship participate, in a real way, in the church’s witness to God’s peace. An agenda that allows serious time for prayer and deliberation embodies a different spiritual reality from a rushed meeting driven by personal agendas. A process of discipline that protects the vulnerable and seeks the offender’s restoration reflects a different Lord from one that protects institutional reputation at any cost. A liturgy that is intelligible, participatory, and oriented toward God’s action in Word and sacrament signals a different gospel from one that centers performative spirituality without communal discernment.

To call these patterns “spiritual disciplines” is to recognize that they do not come easily. It is simpler to drift toward informality or bureaucratic habit. It is harder to submit our preferences to shared discernment. It is costly to treat procedural faithfulness as a matter of obedience instead of mere policy.

Here Barth’s emphasis on divine initiative is corrective. The church receives a history in which God has already reconciled the world to himself in Christ. The actual order of the church is a fallible and contested attempt to let this reality become visible in its life. So the discipline is twofold: to accept the need for order at all, and to hold every particular order open to reform under the Word of God.

Practicing this discipline

What might this look like in practice?

• A congregation that treats its constitution as a means of care rather than as a technical manual. Policies are interpreted in light of the gospel and the needs of the weaker members, not simply the convenience of leadership.
• A session that understands its meetings as spiritual work. Time is given to prayer, silence, and honest disagreement. Decisions emerge from listening to those who are affected most, not only from managerial instincts.
• Worship that respects creaturely limits. The service has a recognizable shape, so that newcomers can find their way. Silence and speech are balanced. Leadership is shared. The aim is not constant novelty, yet neither is it nostalgic repetition. The criterion is whether the congregation is being drawn into hearing and responding to God’s address.
• Accountability that is mutual. Pastors, elders, deacons, and members all receive and give correction. Grievances are handled through transparent processes. The church refuses both impulsive chaos and quiet cover-up.

These practices require patience. They require courage. They require a willingness to be slowed down by the needs of others. They also require vigilance, since any structure can harden into self-protection.

Order as a path of grace

If we hear this only as institutional propaganda, it will ring hollow. It will sound like an attempt to defend existing habits. If we hear it through the gospel, another meaning becomes possible. The God who has bound himself to us in Christ also orders our common life so that we do not devour one another. The law of this covenant is not a cage. It is the concrete shape of grace in the life of a people who belong to one Lord.

In that light, Presbyterian order can be received as a spiritual discipline. It trains us to recognize that our lives are intertwined. It teaches us to submit to a shared discernment that we do not control. It confronts our preference for either unstructured spontaneity or unaccountable authority. It presses the church to embody, even in its procedures, the peace of the God who brings cosmos out of chaos and preserves creatures in a reconciled order.

Practicing this discipline faithfully does not eliminate conflict. It does, however, bear witness to a different way of living in conflict: one shaped by the conviction that God’s gracious command meets us here, in the imperfect and ordered life of the church, and that in this ordering God is not our rival, but our keeper.