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Saturday, January 12, 2013
The Local Church and Why It Matters
by
John MacArthur
I
love the church. It’s the center of my life and has been since
childhood. My father was the pastor of a church when I was born, and
I grew up in the church. It’s the place where I was led to the
knowledge of God, where I learned about the Person and work of
Christ, and where I gained the knowledge of saving and sanctifying
truth. It’s where I learned how to pray, how to sing, how to
worship, how to love, and how to serve. And it was in the church that
I experienced the leading of the Spirit of God directing me to a life
of ministry.
I met
my wife in the church. We raised our children in the church, and now
our grandchildren, too. It’s where I’ve made lifelong friends and
partners in ministry. The church touches every part of my life—in
fact you could say it is my life.
People
sometimes ask me why I write so much about issues in the church—why
I can’t just be quiet and enjoy my ministry. The answer is, I love
the church so much that I can’t stand by and watch it struggle. I
want to help it be all God wants it to be, and that means I need to
be a pastor. I love the church too much to do anything else.
And
frankly, I can’t understand people who don’t have a similar love
for the church—who aren’t eager for every opportunity to worship
together with other like-minded believers. I can’t understand
people who go to church on Saturday nights so they don’t “mess
up” their Sundays. Why are they so eager to get away from the
church? Where else would they rather be?
There
was a time when coming to Christ meant coming to His church. As far
back as the New Testament, salvation brought you into union with the
visible, gathered Body of Christ (cf. Acts 2:47). Becoming a
Christian meant entering into fellowship with the people of God.
That’s
changed. The contemporary emphasis in evangelicalism is a believer’s
personal relationship to Christ. Individual faith is the pervasive
theme, and rarely is there any discussion of how believers are
supposed to fit into the church.
When
was the last time you read a tract or heard a gospel presentation
that ends with a discussion of the believer’s relationship to the
church? At best there is a very low emphasis on church involvement,
church membership, and being a part of the family of God in the
visible, gathered household of saints. And in the massive effort to
make salvation personal, the church has been left behind and
overlooked to the detriment of many souls. Too many people today tend
to be ecclesiastical consumers. They’re
only
interested in what they can get out of their church, and they bounce
from congregation to congregation as their whims and interests
change. They don’t have any particular commitment or loyalty to a
specific assembly of saints.
In
fact, they have little to no attachment to the church at all, and are
under no obligation for regular attendance—if they make it, they
make it; if not, it’s no big deal.
For
people like that, their faith is completely anchored in their
personal relationships with Christ—there is no corporate commitment
or responsibility to the people of God. Their Christianity exists
completely outside and apart from the church.
But
the idea of believers living independently of the church is totally
foreign to the New Testament. The Holy Spirit addressed almost every
epistle to a local church, and other books like 1 and 2 Timothy,
Titus, and Philemon were addressed to key leaders in the church. Even
the book of James—which was written to believers scattered by
persecution—assumes the recipients are still meeting together and
deals heavily with life in the context of the church.
Throughout
the New Testament the assumption is always the same: that the people
of God are faithfully gathering together in a local assembly where
the Word of God is being disseminated. That unified gathering—not
just the invisible worldwide church, but the local, visible
congregation—is at the heart of Christianity. The church is the
only institution the Lord established and promised to bless. Why
would anyone who claims to love the Lord want to keep His people at
arm’s length?
The
widespread lack of commitment to the church shows up in many other
ways as well—the rampant neglect of baptism and communion, the
explosion of parachurch ministries, and the forsaking of the biblical
qualifications for church leadership are just a few examples. We’ll
deal with each of those issues later in our series on the local
church.
For
now, we’re going to focus on our responsibility to the church and
the role each of us is called to play in our local congregations. It
starts with the important step of submitting to your local church in
membership, and that’s where we’ll pick up next week.
Available
online at: http://www.gty.org/blog/B130111
COPYRIGHT
(C) 2013 Grace to You
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1 comment:
What a blessing to be a part of a local body of Christ. How each gift from the Father is used to benefit all!!
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