As iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another (Pr 27:17)
Lord, I praise you for your people. I thank you for surrounding me with them.
If you want to be good at something, it helps to see others who are good at it. Doctors do residencies so they can follow other doctors. They don’t learn medicine all by themselves. Instead, good doctors build good doctors. The Christian life is like this.
A basic principle of the Christian life is that it requires a church. You cannot live the Christian life all by yourself. You grow in Christ as you interact with a body of Christians. Christians need each other as soldiers need each other, as teammates need each other, as family members need each other.
Other Christians will pray for you, teach you, encourage you, rejoice with you, challenge you when you sin, and help you walk through a difficult problem. Other Christians understand the difficulties of living the Christian life. They know how hard it is to stand for Jesus in the midst of your culture. They can sympathize with your struggles. They’ve been there. Other Christians can talk with you on a deep level about the most important thing in your life – Christ. Non-Christians cannot do this. They don’t understand. You need Christians. You need a church.
Many people, however, talk about being spiritual without the church. In the West today, such talk is rampant. People want to follow God their own way. They live as if Christianity is merely a preference. You like roses, I like tulips. You like BMWs, I like Toyotas. You like yoga, I like Jesus. They live as if they get to decide what the Christian life is. They become the arbiter of how to follow God, as if God had nothing to say about the matter.
But God does have something to say about the matter, and one of the things He said was that His people should not forsake meeting together. God built the church with the blood of His Son. He loves the church. It is the bride of Christ, and the Christian who lives the Christian life loves the church and is committed to her.
The church is necessary for spiritual growth. One function of God’s people is to build each other up in the faith. Christians who put themselves in healthy churches become part of a community that will help them walk in Christ. Anyone who wants to follow Jesus needs a church. It is one of the tools God uses to sharpen our lives. You cannot follow Jesus by yourself.
And you can be by yourself in different ways. Some people are by themselves because they never attend a church. Others are by themselves in the midst of a church. They attend weekly, but they don’t know the people. They are part of the crowd on a Sunday morning, but they are not part of the life of the church. They listen to a sermon and go home, but they don’t know anyone. To belong to a church requires relationship and not just shoes in the room. When people lack relationship with the body of Christ, they fall away. Their walk with God grows weak, insipid. They become more like their culture and less like Christ. But they think they are spiritually fine because, after all, they are attending a church.
Being part of a church flows out of a desire for Christ. The people with the greatest desire for Christ are in a church . . . by choice. They surround themselves with the body of Christ . . . by choice. Because they have great passion for Jesus, they have great passion for the church. The two passions go together; in fact, you might say that the desire for a church is a visible expression of the desire for Christ. The church is the body of Christ. If you want Jesus, you want to be around those who have Him. This is rather basic.
God designed His people to be together. In heaven all His people will be together in unison. Church on earth prepares us for that day. Would you forsake God’s people in heaven? Then why would you do it on earth? The attempt to have Christian spirituality without Christian community is absurd.
Now I suppose I need to say a word about what a church is. This will be brief. If you want more, go here, here, and here. A church is not necessarily an official organization with a Christian name that meets in a building. You can attend many such meetings and not be with God’s people.
A church is a community of Jesus followers who fit the following criteria: they believe Scripture to be the Word of God and, consequently, adhere to the gospel of Christ; they meet regularly to worship Jesus, proclaim the Scriptures, and build one another up in the faith; they partake of communion and practice baptism of new believers; they share their faith, they desire to live a holy life and care for those who need help; they have elder leadership. These are broad parameters, and in the real world a church can look as different as a megachurch of 10,000 or a house church of four.
Whatever it looks like, this community is necessary for your spiritual growth. Life in Christ involves life in the church. When you intentionally put yourself outside the church, you harm your soul.
And many people today do just that. They harm their souls but have no idea the harm they cause. Let’s just get this straight. The church is not merely a nice addition. It is necessary for life — spiritual life.
