Tag Archives: church

Christ Can Ever Maintain His Own Cause

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

When the global church is pressed on every side, from without and within, it is good to remember that the great Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, needs no help in defending His own.

Consider the true words of J.C. Ryle:

“Fear not for the Church of Christ – when ministers die, and saints are taken away. Christ can ever maintain His own cause. He will raise up better servants and brighter stars. The stars are all in His right hand. Leave off all anxious thought about the future. Cease to be cast down by the measures of statesmen, or the plots of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Christ will ever provide for His own Church. Christ will take care that ‘the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.’ All is going on well, though our eyes may not see it. The kingdoms of this world shall yet become the kingdoms of our God, and of His Christ.” (Holiness, Chapter 13, “The Church Which Christ Builds”)

Living in Close Quarters

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

THIS JUST IN: Local church life isn’t for the faint of heart. There are people in those churches, and that means challenges for everyone who dares to engage in a meaningful way. That is as much a reality as gravity. What will we do with this reality? By the way we order our lives, we are choosing one of these options:

Option 1: Forget It

Simply exempt ourselves from it all. The bride has spots and wrinkles, so just steer clear. Sorry, not an option for Christians. Baby Christians might think like that, but people who have lived with that view for a long time need to be asking serious questions about why they are still so disconnected with the mind of Christ. Though she does have spots and wrinkles, Jesus Christ isn’t running away from His bride, He is running towards her: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27).

This text helps correct our inclinations to exempt ourselves from the local church in two ways. First, it forces us to consider that we, each of us individually, contribute to the spots and wrinkles. Not the nebulous “them”. The specific “me”. A heaping helping of humble pie is essential for life in close quarters. Second, if the goal is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ and to have His mind, we need to see the church, and that means our local church, through His lenses of the ongoing, progressive sanctification that He is accomplishing in His people.

Option 2: Find the Perfect Church

There was a perfect church – God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day for two whole chapters, and then came chapter three. Sin entered the world, and churches have never been the same. Deal with it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful about what church we join, and I’m not saying people can never leave one church for another. I am saying that too many people have wasted too many years chasing a fantasy. Find a sound church and literally spend your life there, by Paul’s definition: “And I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved” (2 Corinthians 12:15). As you can see, Paul did not suffer from naivety about church life. He simply pressed forward anyway.

Option 3: Keep It Unreal

Sinners in the church? No problem, we can just keep interaction at the surface level. Pre-damage control, as it were. Minimize the contact, minimize the risk. That way we can love doctrine without having to love people. But wait – isn’t the doctrine so we can love people? Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

If love for God and neighbor is the great frame for all of this law that we are so eager to parse and nuance, if love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10), then loving the law of God without loving each other – as the Bible defines love in 1 Corinthians 13 and elsewhere – is way worse than silly. And for anyone who thinks they can nurture love for God while staying above messy entanglements with fellow believers, check 1 John 4:20, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” It is clear that love for God and love for each other have an unbreakable connection, and that this isn’t cotton-candy emotion only love, it is meat-and-potatoes sacrifice for each other love.

A local church where everything operates at the surface level is a Frankenstein of our own creation, not the Bible’s. Search the New Testament for the phrase “one another” and feast your eyes on how God actually wants us to live together.

Option 4: Embrace, Cultivate, and Maintain the Close Quarters

Oh, that God would give us hearts so full of His forgiveness, grace and love that we could look at the inherent dangers of living in close quarters and say “BRING IT ON!” Let it be said that I feel the full fury of the proverbial three fingers pointing back at me. What rises in my heart during the inevitable dust-ups that occur when we live together in close quarters condemns me for my own lack of love. But I have hope, because I know that I need to be different, I want to be different, and little by little I am starting to be different.

What about you? God brings His people together into close quarters for His own purposes. Proverbs 14:4, “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox.” Do we want clean, or do we want strength for the kingdom of God? We have a big commission, a Great Commission, and when we settle for clean, we must understand how much strength is lost.

Trust God. He is right about the way we should live together. He is teaching me how to live in close quarters in a local church for His glory, and He is teaching you the same. Don’t exempt yourself. Call off the search for the perfect church. Commit yourself to a sound one and get below the surface in close quarter relationships for a long time. When we do that, though life together won’t always be “clean”, we will have the strength for serving God that we need and want.

Blessing Awaits Those Who Cross Two Lines

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

This series of posts about church membership has focused primarily on Scripture, providing Biblical underpinnings for the practice. Now a few personal observations, based on three decades of church life spanning a number of different churches.

Observation 1: Two Critical Questions Form Two Critical Lines in the Sand

When I look at how casual local church life has become, with people drifting from church to church in far less time than it takes to be genuinely shepherded and involved in the lives of the brethren, I see two questions going continually unanswered:

Can I submit myself and my family to the doctrine and authority of these leaders? This is a BIG decision, and it shouldn’t be made overnight. You have to know the doctrine. You have to know the men. And then you have to decide whether or not it would be a good thing for you and any in your charge to be under that teaching and authority over the long haul.

Can I commit myself to these people? Let’s face it – there are groups of people where you can see yourself making a thirty year investment, and groups of people where a pleasant afternoon together is both nice and enough. And you know in your heart of hearts that the long term destination will be very different, depending on which you pick.

When we don’t stick around long enough to answer these questions, there are corresponding lines in the sand that we never cross, and it means that we never really commit. We become the Christian equivalent of that forty-five year old guy who has dated so many women and will only ever do more of the same. He has lots of great jokes, but everyone understands how pathetic his life really is.

As quickly as possible, we should find a home where we can answer “yes” to both questions and run-not-walk across those lines.

Observation 2: It Matters

This is no intellectual exercise, the parsing of a fine point that has little impact on real life. Whether you will or will not answer those two questions, cross those two lines, and send roots down deep into a good local church will determine so much about the welfare of your soul.

The person who carefully chooses a local church home where they can joyfully submit to godly leaders and invest in the lives of other sincere believers, and then stays on that track for decades, becomes a very different person than the counterpart who never really lands. Being in serious, committed fellowship with both authorities and peers for a long period of time has a transforming effect. There is no substitute. The transformation requires the investment.

The “me and Jesus” mentality has not been good for the church. We need more “God and His people” in both thought and life.

Observation 3: Those Who Dare to Cross the Lines Are Blessed

Those who cross those lines find themselves really shepherded, really taught, sometimes rebuked, really encouraged, really known. They find themselves really loved and cared for by God in the everyday means that He has ordained for His church. And they have the privilege of responding in kind, both to God and to their brothers and sisters.

Am I saying that those who won’t cross those lines, in the form of church membership, aren’t blessed? Yep. Not blessed. Not in the same way. Not to the same extent. Can they still be Christians? Of course, but not the Christians that they should have been, would have been, could have been.

Brothers and sisters, go for the blessing! Go see the beauty of God working in your life and the lives of your brothers and sisters, in a faithful community, for a period of decades. With very few exceptions, this is what God has called His people to, for His glory and our good. May we be faithful!

Serious Obligations Require Order

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

Even a cursory glance at the relationships described in the New Testament brings us to an irrefutable conclusion – the local church is serious business. God has called us into weighty accountability with our leaders and meaningful obligations with our brothers and sisters. He requires these relationships to function according to His word, and we not only ignore what God has said to our own peril, we also miss out on the richness of a life that transcends the shallow connections of the “normal” church.

The obligations of those who lead and those who follow

Hebrews 13:17 is striking: “Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.” If that doesn’t give you pause about your choice of a local church, you haven’t thought about it very deeply. Obey. Be submissive. Give an account for souls. This should make leaders and followers equally sober-minded. This is no baby shower, where we show up, chat awhile, eat cake and then go home.

And that admonition is far from isolated. Paul says, “And we urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. Be at peace among yourselves” (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13). We see a theme developing. There is very real structure and authority in the church, but it is intended to be anything but adversarial. It is serious but affectionate. Those who follow recognize and highly esteem their leaders in love, and those who lead work hard on behalf of those in the church. Souls are being watched out for. Honor is being rendered.

1 Timothy 5:17 continues the theme: “Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.” Diligent oversight. Labor. Honor.

So the obligations are serious. No one could deny that. Question: What initiates all this? Attendance? On the first Sunday, or the fifth, or the twelfth? How do we decide? For now, let’s simply agree that we must decide. There must be criteria. It cannot be that you have an accountability for my soul, being over me in the Lord, and I am obligated to obey you, on the first Sunday and without knowing each other. That flies in the face of any description of New Testament church life. There is something real and significant here, and the very nature of the obligations requires some mechanism of order, some way to understand when this leader/follower line is being crossed.

The mutual obligations of the “one anothers”

The seriousness isn’t limited to the relationships between leaders and followers. In fact, the greater weight may be in the mutual care we should have for one another. This is less than half the list, but here are my favorite “one anothers”:

Be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10)
Bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)
Be kind to one another, forgiving each other (Ephesians 4:32)
Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19)
Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ (Ephesians 5:21)
Do not lie to one another (Colossians 3:9)
Encourage one another and build up one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
Stimulate one another to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24)
Do not speak against one another (James 4:11)
Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another (James 5:16)
Keep fervent in your love for one another (1 Peter 4:8)
Be hospitable to one another (1 Peter 4:9)
As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another (1 Peter 4:10)

Now, there is no arguing that these “one anothers” are to be restricted to only those in our particular local church. Clearly we owe a debt of love to everyone in the body of Christ with whom we come into contact. But look at the list! How many of these can be accomplished to a meaningful degree outside of the week-in-and-week-out rhythm of healthy church life? Not many. I need people sowing into my life through the months, years, and decades, and I hope to have the privilege of doing the same. Few things are as frustrating as investing a year or two into a “we’re not sure who we are” church, only to find out that there are the most fundamental incompatibilities in doctrine or practice. Back to square one. Better luck next time.

We need to be thinking in terms of decades, not weeks or months, and that requires a reasonable basis for longevity. What is my family going to be taught? What is expected of me? What can I expect? People who intend to invest for decades have a right to solid, explicit answers.

All churches have membership

Here is the reality: all churches have membership, even the ones that don’t. What I mean is that there are commands to be obeyed, based on the serious obligations that exist in the local church, and this requires us to order our life together.

I’ll never forget my first weeks as a deacon. Four of us were appointed as a brand new deacon team, none having prior experience as a deacon. We had read the books but not yet served in the office. To shorten the learning curve, we connected with a very experienced deacon from another church. He was so kind to talk us through issues we might face and provide the working documents their team used to keep on top of their duties. Since theirs was a Brethren church, I was more than a little surprised to find a “member since” slot on their benevolence form. When I asked him about it, he explained that they didn’t really have members, but that they needed a way to prioritize the people who had been committed to the church, and this was a way to identify them.

Benevolence isn’t the only area that requires understanding who is who. What about appointing leaders? Do you know of a church that appoints leaders with whoever happens to be present? Would that be consistent with the New Testament admonition to carefully qualify candidates (1 Timothy 3:1-10), not laying hands on them hastily (1 Timothy 5:22)? Of course not.

When you don’t have official church membership, you may very well end up with ill-conceived, informal, impromptu membership. But when matters like these arise, you will have membership, by that name or another.

The punch line is that leaders ought to know with clarity who they are leading and who has actually made the commitment to follow. Implied commitment in either direction is a lousy substitute. And we ought to be on record as being ready and willing to “one another” our brothers and sisters in the local church for the foreseeable future. Nothing less than this forms a sufficient basis for the serious obligations that are part and parcel of the New Testament church.

May God give us such a life together! And may we be faithful to these relationships that have been given to us as a blessing.

Soon I will discuss Argument 4: The Regulative Principle Requires Church Membership (not precludes it).

The Local Church Is a Distinct Biblical Entity

Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

This post is part of a series on church membership. If you missed the introduction, you can find it here.

It could go without saying that by and large, professing Christians have become very casual about the local church. A common view is that membership in the worldwide body of Christ is the thing that really matters, and the local church is simply the gathering of nearby Christians who happen to share a doctrinal persuasion. Because that view only represents a sliver of the New Testament’s teaching on the subject, people come or go, attend or stay home, invest or fritter, with no awareness of how one or the other relates to faithfulness.

I want to argue that the inspired authors of the New Testament actually put forward the local church as a real, distinct entity, one which serves critical functions, and that this has monumental implications for our life together.

Big-C, little-c

Most Christians understand and affirm the existence of the Big-C-Church. This is the universal church, the people of God, past, present, and future. Ephesians 4:4 says, “There is one body”. This is the Church. Simple enough. The author of Hebrews speaks of “so great a cloud of witnesses”(Hebrews 12:1), which includes the great men and women of faith from the preceding chapter – Noah, Sarah, Abraham, Moses, and Rahab, to name a few. One day all those of faith will sit down with them at a great wedding feast. What a Church! What a glorious prospect!

The little-c-church may be a bit foggier in our minds. What exactly are these local assemblies of professed believers, these local churches where we have most of our eyeball-to-eyeball interaction with brothers and sisters in Christ? The New Testament sets forth a clear testimony of the local church as a distinct entity.

View of the inspired New Testament authors

– 1 Corinthians 1:2, Paul writes “To the church of God which is at Corinth”. Can we agree that this is not the Big-C-Church? However the parameters are defined, it is clear enough that this is a church with borders. This isn’t an open letter to Noah, Sarah, Abraham, Moses, Rahab et al. It is a rather personal letter to a distinct group of people. Later in the same chapter, verse 11, Paul bemoans the contentions that have been declared to him, and then in verse 13 he asks, “Is Christ divided?” He means, “Is the Big-C-Church divided?” This is a rhetorical question and the obvious answer is “No!” At first glance it may seem like this argues against the local church as a distinct entity, but actually the opposite is true. It gives us a picture of the local church that mirrors the character of God. Is God one? Yes. Deuteronomy 6:4, “The LORD our God, the LORD is one!”. Is God many? He is Three. Genesis 1:26, Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image”; Matthew 3:16,17, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him [Jesus], and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Here in 1 Corinthians 1 we see the Church and the church, side by side, the one and the many. This is not division, this is the design of God, founded on the nature of God. Are we surprised to discover ways in which the people of God reflect the nature of God?

– Acts 20:17 recounts Paul sending to Ephesus “for the elders of the church.” Again, this is clearly the church, not the Church. Paul is not sending for men who have an accountability for the souls of every Christian, as elders have for the souls in a specific local church. He is summoning real men with real responsibilities as the God-appointed leaders of a local church.

– Revelation 1-3, the letters to the churches. In 1:12-16, our resurrected Lord, in the most glorious form, is walking among seven lampstands. Then in verse 20 Jesus says to John, “the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.” As the succeeding chapters unfold, we see with great clarity that these churches are indeed distinct entities, each with a personality, things to be praised, things requiring rebuke, commands to be obeyed. A nebulous concept of the local church is a thousand miles away from the letters to the churches.

Hand-in-glove

I hope that these texts satisfy us on a critical point: the universal church and the local church, the Church and the church, are both thoroughly Biblical categories. The inspired writers of the New Testament speak of both, fluidly and without a hint of contradiction. So far from being a single category, or two categories which stand in opposition, the universal church and the local church actually represent a compelling vision of how God intends to relate to His people, care for them, and equip them for the work of the ministry. Like all things of His design, they fit hand-in-glove.

If we miss this, we undervalue an entity given to us by God according to the kind intention of His will, miss the blessing, and dishonor Jesus Christ.

In a few days I will engage Argument 2 in the series: The Local Church Is a Flock.

Stay tuned.