What is the Church?

"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near." - Hebrews 10:23-25

I have decided to begin a blog. My brother's death has generated many important discussions about the nature of the church: what it is, what it ought to be, what it ought not to be. Also there has been much debate on the issue of what Christian love is, and whether or not we ought to judge people who are in sin.

Since David killed himself I have realized, much to my grief, that there were many things I never said to him that I wish I had said. Some of these things are personal sentiments, and others are more heavy duty doctrinal arguments that I wish I had had the guts to confront him with. I was afraid of pushing him away, but now, perhaps due in part to my cowardice, he has slipped further than I can possibly reach, and I suppose he now knows more about reality than I do. But still there are many people left behind who are just like him. So I want to address some specific points that I wish I had shared with Dave, in the hope that someone will read them and benefit.

The first question I would like to tackle is this: can someone completely abandon church and still honestly claim to have fellowship with God? This is what I keep running into. There are a bunch of people who say that church is bad for a number of reasons - too hypocritical, too judgmental, it tries to force everyone into a mold, etc. They claim that the essence of knowing God is love, and so all they have to do is love people and God will be happy with them. They don't need to go to church because they can worship God on their own, in their own way. As Dave used to say so often, "Church just doesn't minister to me." It is true that the essence of knowing God is love. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God and your neighbor (Matt 22:37). It is also true that we all ought to have personal worship not only as a part of daily life, but as the very essence of everything we do. But this is not a substitute for corporate worship.

The church is the body of Christ. This means that we who believe in Christ are united with Him by faith, and therefore are also united spiritually with each other. Our union with Christ cannot be properly experienced apart from ongoing interaction and participation with His body. God gave us baptism and the Lord's supper to illustrate these concepts in tangible ways.

Baptism pictures our identification with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. If we believe in Him, it means that when He died, so did we, and when He was raised, so were we - because we are united with Him.

"Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, so shall we also be in the likeness of His resurrection." - Romans 6:3-5

As each individual is united to Christ by faith, we are also automatically united to each other as well.

"For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." - 1 Corinthians 12:12-13

The Lord's Supper is also a symbol of our unity with each other in Christ. As we all partake of the same bread and cup, it symbolizes our communal dependence upon Christ as our only source of spiritual life (John 6:53). In the famous passage about the Lord's supper in 1 Cor. 11, the sin that Paul tells them they must examine themselves about is the sin of disunity. He tells them sternly that they must not share in the meal if they have not resolved their quarrels.

Our unity with each other is a fact whether we act like it or not. The New Testament is full of exhortations for us to live and work in unity with each other. Disunity and factions within the church are a sign of immaturity.

"Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment." - 1 Corinthians 1:10

"For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?" - 1 Corinthians 3:3

Unity shows Christian maturity.

"...being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace...until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man."
- Ephesians 4:3, 13

All this is to say that our corporate worship is not primarily about "just me and God". It is supposed to be about "WE and God." This corporate outlook runs counter to the exaltation of individualism that is such a foundational part of American society. I suspect that is why so many American Christians have a hard time understanding why they need to go to church. We live in a self-oriented culture, and this has permeated the church in many ways. Even the way we talk about the gospel as a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." How weird would it sound to our ears to tell someone that they could have a "corporate relationship with Jesus Christ"? And yet, our relationship with God includes both a personal, and a corporate element. If we elevate either of these elements at the expense of the other, we mess up the church.

On the one extreme, we have people who think that church is anything they feel like making it because it's just them and God. They have no concern for history or tradition, and no sense of communal responsibility. It is out of this framework that statements like, "church just doesn't minister to me," arise. When Dave said this, it revealed that he was only thinking of church in terms of what he could get out of it, not in terms of how he could fit into his unique niche within the larger framework, and use his gifts to serve the larger Body of Christ. So if church wasn't "working for him" he could leave it and God would be okay with that because the corporate entity meant nothing.

On the other extreme, if the personal relationship with God is downplayed, you end up with people thinking that they are saved just because they were born to Christian parents, even though they have never known God themselves. This problem exists in our culture as well, though it is now less common that it probably was a few decades ago. Neither extreme is Biblical.

I have much more to say, and I guess, if I'm going to be a good blogger I will have to learn to be more concise. But then again, what's the point of having a blog if you can't run on and on? Better here than in the pulpit eh? ; )

In coming posts, I will address the issue of church discipline and the false dichotomy between judgment and love, and the oft misquoted, "where two or three are gathered" passage in Matt. 18, which is often used as an excuse to skip out on church even though the intent of the passage is exactly the opposite. I will also discuss what to do when problems come up in church, as we all know they do.