We live in a day when many people are saying yes to Jesus and no to the Church. This is dangerous and unbiblical. The Church matters.

It matters to God the Father it is Church, it is the Church of the Living God (1Timothy 3:15).

It matters to God the Son: He gave Himself for it (Ephesians 5) and joins HImself to it (“We are His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1)”).

And it matters to God the Spirit, we are His dwelling place. He fills us up to all of the fullness of God (Ephesians 3).

In His own inimitable style, Charles Haddon Spurgeon had this to say about those who
decried Church membership as needless…

I know there are some who say, “Well, I have given myself to the Lord, but I do not intend to give myself to any church.” Now, why not? ”because I can be a Christian without it.”

Are you quite clear about that? You can be as good a Christian by disobedience to your Lord’s commands as by being obedient? There is a brick, What is it made for? To help build a house. It is of no use for that brick to tell you that it is just as good a brick while it is kicking about on the ground as it would be in the house. It is a good-for-nothing brick. So you rolling-stone Christians, I do not believe that you are answering your purpose. You are living contrary to the life which Christ would have you live, and you are much to blame for the injury you do.

This is helpful. Each Christian is a living stone designed by God and purchased by Christ and equipped by the Spirit to be part of the walls of His glorious New Temple. If we do not take our place in the Temple, somewhere our absence leaves a gap, a place of instability, a weakness.

And what do we gain from our omission? We become a loose canon, a lonesome brick lying out on the path of life. Such bricks tend to do more harm than good. They become stumbling blocks over which others constantly trip. They can even be used as a weapon to do great injury to others. A function, the devil will only be too willing to prosecute in the lives of that great oxymoronic class of Churchless Believers.

Neil Stewart is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. He serves as Pastor of the Kirk O’ The Aisles Church in Savannah, Georgia. This article first appeared in the church’s Pastor’s Blog and is used with permission.

[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]