Do YOU Have This BAD HABIT?!

Forsaking the Assembly and the Meaning of Church Membership

Do you have a bad habit of forsaking the assembly of believers? Church isn't a building, it's the people. Okay, well, most people like gathering in buildings and you're never with them. I posted this meme the other day and took a poll asking the question, should a Christian be expected to join himself to a local church or is it okay for a Christian to abstain from gathering with God's people indefinitely?

83 said Christians should be members of churches, 13 said Christians are not required to be joined to a church, and I put the third option in there, Jesus hates organized religion, because I know those people also exist.

I acknowledge you. Repent. We typically recognize the church with a distinction between the local church and the universal church. There is the church you can see and then there's the church at large that you cannot see, the invisible church, and perhaps a lot of times people take that distinction but they misunderstand it and use it as a reason or as an excuse to not be a part of a local church because they are a part of the universal church.

As long as I'm a member of the invisible church, I don't need to be joined to a visible church. But here's what I wish to submit to you. The New Testament does not ever present the possibility that you can be a Christian and not part of the local church.

The Visible and Invisible Church

The universal church is a visible, organized institution made up of particular congregations and the scripture does not allow any space for Christians to exist as part of the universal church floating untethered out there in the ether somewhere without being joined to a visible body.

John Murray says that in the New Testament there is no evidence for the notion of the church as an invisible entity distinct from the church visible. The New Testament letters are written to churches.

They would have been read in the assembly, in the gathering of the visible saints. Visible saints are those who do not contradict their profession by ungodliness or heresy. Within those letters written to churches, when the church universal is mentioned, it is visible rather than invisible.

For example, in Galatians 1 .13, Paul speaks of persecuting the church. Well, he's not talking about one local church there. He's speaking about the universal church. Well, he didn't persecute an invisible entity.

He persecuted actual people who made up visible churches. So, when we speak about the invisibility of the church, we are not saying that you can't see it. Here's what we mean by invisible according to Sam Waldron.

The church is invisible because we cannot directly see the work of the spirit which joins one to Christ. It is invisible because we cannot perfectly judge the truth of another person's grace. It is invisible because the church as a whole is not yet a perfected earthly reality.

Visible churches are only imperfect and partial manifestations of it. So, to say something like, I don't need to be a part of a church because I'm a part of the church is to stain the credibility of your profession because this is a position the New Testament does not even conceive of and because if you love God, you'll love God's people.

If you despise fellowship with the visible church, you cannot think that you are a member of the invisible church. Now, here's something from the comment section to address. If the reason you are not part of a church is because you don't get anything out of it, then you have completely misunderstood what church is about.

Worship, Not Consumerism

The corporate formal gathering of the saints is about worshiping God. It is not primarily about feeding your consumerist mentality. Obviously, you want to be in a church that does feed the sheep from God's word, preferably one that preaches verse by verse through books of the Bible, but that is still worship.

We speak to God in prayer and praise and then he speaks to us through the reading and the preaching of his word and all of that is worship. So, if that's you out there, I would encourage you just to remember that church isn't about you.

No one's there to worship you. It's about God and the offering of acceptable worship that belongs only to him. Also, I should say that if you don't currently have a church home and you are in the process of finding the church, maybe because you had to leave another church because of theological error or anything like that, that doesn't mean that you are in sin until you find one, but understand that that is not the ideal situation.

Why Christians Should Not Isolate Themselves

Voluntarily detaching yourself from a local body of believers and the covering of shepherds is unwise and makes it impossible to rightly fulfill the one another's of scripture, to admonish one another, to bear one another's burdens, and so forth.

Those commands are given to churches. Proverbs 18 .1 says, he who separates himself seeks his own desire. He quarrels against all sound wisdom. As a Christian, it is foolish to isolate yourself from the body.

Cut off a finger from the body and it will decay and die. 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.

The bad habit of forsaking the assembly is a holy note.