If You Love Jesus, Join a Church

Photo by Joseph Pearson on Unsplash

For years I’ve been captivated by the beautiful simplicity of Acts 2:41–47. When I left my first church, which I pastored for eight years, someone gave me a hand-painted cross with “my verse,” Acts 2:42, in the corner. It’s a fitting verse to write beneath the cross, for it describes the community of the cross—the church for which Jesus came to die. “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25), then poured out the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to fulfill his promise, “I will build my church” (Mt. 16:18). Full of the Spirit, Peter proclaimed the good news about the crucified and risen Messiah, and “those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:41–42).

A Real, Living Community

Everyone who received the apostle’s word was also washed with water and added to the church’s number (Acts 2:41; cf. 4:27). They were immediately united with the visible Church—a real, living community in which prayers were spoken and sacramental bread was broken (Acts 2:42). With a bath and a meal, they were welcomed into God’s household. In theology, we distinguish between the visible and the invisible Church because there are hypocrites within the church’s recognized membership—weeds among the wheat (Mt. 13:30; Mt. 7:15; 1 Jn. 2:19)—who do not belong to Christ’s spiritual Body, and will be exposed at the final judgment. But there are not two separate churches. It’s not as if someone can say, “I don’t need to join a church because I’m part of the church.” The invisible Church is always somewhere, always manifested or made visible in a local congregation (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:2). It is not just a people; it is a people in a place. After all, the word “church” (ekklesia) means “assembly”—a group of people gathered together. Christ did not die for an abstraction; he died to found a new humanity, a new Israel, a citizen assembly, a kingdom on earth, a flesh-and-blood communion of saints (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. Ex. 19:6).

Sometimes I wish that the 25 Methodist Articles of Religion or the 39 Articles of the Church of England (from which they were abridged) had a statement on the invisible church, as in the Westminster Confession of Faith (25.1). But it’s significant that Article 13/19 is simply titled “Of the Church.” The opening phrase, “The visible Church of Christ,” acknowledges that what follows can be distinguished from the invisible church, but absolute priority is given to “a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments duly administered, according to Christ’s ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.” The point is unmistakable: If you want to encounter the Church—the one and only Church—you must go to a place where believers in Christ are gathered for word, sacrament, and accountable discipleship. That’s where Jesus promised to be found (Mt. 18:20).

Acts 2:47 goes on to say that“the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”  The shepherd never gathers a straying sheep to himself alone; he carries the lost lamb back to the ninety-nine. The Westminster Confession cites this verse as evidence that outside the visible Church, there is “no ordinary possibility of salvation” (25.2). The Belgic Confession is even stronger: “since this holy assembly and congregation is the gathering of those who are saved and there is no salvation apart from it, people ought not to withdraw from it, content to be by themselves, regardless of their status or condition” (Article 28: The Obligations of Church Members). The Reformers affirmed the teaching of the holy fathers, that we cannot have God for our Father if we will not have the Church for our Mother (e.g., see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.1.1; cf. 4.1.4; Cyprian, The Unity of the Catholic Church, 6; Augustine, A Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed, 1). There may be exceptions in which a real Christian has suffered abuse at the hands of a false or corrupt church and becomes too anxious to join another congregation at once. But ordinarily, a Christian who is not joined to a church is worse than a fish out of water, and will die just as soon. He is a hand severed from a body, a child torn from his mother’s breast, a loose stone plucked from a living building. No one should presume to belong to the invisible Church while refusing to become a member in a local church. John Wesley preached, “Every follower of Christ is obliged, by the very nature of the Christian institution, to be a member of some particular congregation” (“Catholic Spirit,” 10).

If Acts 2:47 is written on one side of the church’s door, 1 John 2:19 is written on the other: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” These are formidable words in a book about how to “know” if we are in God. Those who forsake the visible Church reveal (at least under ordinary circumstances) that they do not belong to the invisible Church; they are not of Christ. How can we forsake the sheep without forsaking the Shepherd? How can we forsake the Bride without forsaking the Groom? How can we be severed from the Body without being severed from the Head?

Jesus and the Body of Jesus

Jesus has made the closest possible identification with his church, and any serious reader of the New Testament will soon see that how one treats the Body is how one treats the Head. When Paul persecuted the church, Jesus asked, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). Jesus warned that when we do not clothe or feed or welcome even the least of his disciples in the church, we do not clothe or feed or welcome him, and we will answer for it at the judgment (Mt. 25:40). Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” and commanded three times, “Feed my sheep” (Jn. 21:17). Peter’s devotion to the church would be the evidence of his love for Christ or lack thereof. John is clear: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death” (1 Jn. 3:14). Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn. 14:15), and his commandments are that his disciples “love one another” (Jn. 13:15); “care for one another” (1 Cor. 12:25); “serve one another” (Gal. 5:13); assemble with one another (Heb. 10:25); confess sin to one another (Jas. 5:16); forgive one another (Eph. 4:32); restore one another (Gal. 6:1); “exhort one another” (Heb. 3:13); “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).

This “one-another” community is beautifully described in Acts 2:44–46. The Christians after Pentecost were so full of Christ’s love that they sold all their belongings, had everything in common, and met “day by day” to eat and pray together. Today, it’s hard to get many “Christians” to gather consistently for one hour on Sunday morning. Some of this is due to bad experiences in the church or unbiblical teaching about the church’s role in salvation. But ordinarily our root problem is a lack of love for the Lord. Biblical Christianity is never about just Jesus and me; it's about Jesus, the body of Jesus, and me. The Bible knows nothing of Lone-Ranger Christians—nothing of our modern, Western, individualistic, Jesus-and-me mentality. It never separates belief in Christ from baptism into Christ’s body. If we are giving our bare minimum to the church, then we are giving our bare minimum to Jesus, and we might not be Christians at all.

“Devoted”

If you truly believe in Christ but have not been baptized, you need to be baptized. It is the Lord’s command. If you have been baptized, you have been brought into a solemn covenant, not only with God but with his people. The only question is whether or not you are fulfilling the duties of that covenant. The Baptist Catechism of 1677 asks, “What is the duty of those rightly baptized?” and answers, “It is the duty of those who are rightly baptized to join themselves to some visible and orderly church of Jesus Christ” (Question 104).

Acts 2:42 says that the early Christians were “devoted,” and devotion calls for commitment. Church membership is a commitment to help guard the apostolic teaching, which Christ has entrusted to the care of local churches (Jude 1:3). It is a commitment to participate in the church’s fellowship, which means sharing life with real, messy-but-redeemed people. It is a commitment constantly to break one bread with one body, because it is Christ’s body that holds the body together (1 Cor. 10:17). It is a commitment to go beyond vague and general prayers to confessing actual sins to one another and praying for one another that we may be healed (Jas. 5:16).

This is what the church so desperately needs to be healthy—devoted members who resist the half-in, half-out attitude of so many nominal Christians. In his book I Am a Church Member: Discovering the Attitude that Makes a Difference, Thom Rainer writes that “nine out of ten churches in America are declining or growing at a pace that is slower than that of their communities.” He laments that we have nearly lost the entire Millennial generation. But listen to what he says next:

We can blame it on the secular change. And we often do. We can blame it on the godless politics of our nation. We do that as well. We can even blame it on the churches, the hypocritical members, and the uncaring pastors. Lots of Christians are doing that. But I am proposing that we who are church members need to look in the mirror. I am suggesting that congregations across America are weak because many of us church members have lost the biblical understanding of what it means to be part of the body of Christ.

We join our churches expecting others to serve us, to feed us, and to care for us. We don’t like the hypocrites in the church, but we fail to see our own hypocrisies. God did not give us local churches to become country clubs where membership means we have privileges and perks. He placed us in churches to serve, to care for others, to pray for leaders, to learn, to teach, to give, and, in some cases, to die for the sake of the gospel.

Many churches are weak because we have members who have turned the meaning of membership upside down. It’s time to get it right. It’s time to become a church member as God intended. It’s time to give instead of being entitled.

There are many other biblical arguments that can be made for church membership. For example, the simple fact that excommunication is in the Bible and involves removal from something to which one formally belongs (Mt. 18:17; 1 Cor. 5); or that the church has the keys of the kingdom to receive and exclude members (Mt. 16:18–19; cf. 18:15–20); or that when the Bible refers to Christians as “members,” it never refers only to invisible spiritual members, but to formally recognized and identifiable members of a real community, covenanted together for mutual service, edification, and accountability (1 Cor. 12:25; Eph. 2:19; Rom. 12:4, 5; 1 Cor. 12:12, 18, 25, 27; Eph. 3:6; 4:25; 5:30). But as compelling as these arguments may be, I always end up coming back to the beautiful vision of the church in Acts 2:41–47. Membership is about being devoted to a new family, a new community, a new humanity in which God is the Father, and Christ is our Brother. If someone truly loves Jesus, understands what the church is, and isn’t self-centered, it’s hard to see why that person would be opposed to biblical church membership. If you love Jesus, join a church, and make it your mission to build up that body with all the gifts that God has given you.

Johnathan Arnold is Senior Pastor of Redeemer Wesleyan Church in Central PA and founder of holyjoys.org.