Churches must teach and embrace the true gospel. More than anything we must know God’s grace for lost sinners. But not in a simplistic way, mindlessly repeated. We must leave the elementary, simplistic “doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity” in our gospel teaching (Heb. 6:1). Second, churches must properly administer the ordinances or sacraments. Tucked into this mark is the requirement of church discipline by which the elders fence the Lord’s table (see ch. 30). If there are no rules for membership and no consequences for infidelity the church will not be holy. Third, faithful churches must worship biblically. The assembly’s directory for worship mandated worship services that were structured by and saturated with God’s word.

“A Christian without a church is a Christian in trouble.”[i] Like a lion hoping to snatch prey that wanders alone Satan aims to devour professing Christians who are disconnected from God’s family. We need the church.

To become persuaded of this truth we need to know what the church is. It isn’t an affinity group; a club we join because of shared circumstances and interests. It isn’t a teaching center that we visit whenever we feel the need for counsel. In this broken world, the church—which presently groans with the rest of creation—is an essential part of God’s rescue plan for lost sinners.

 The Church Is the Gathering of God

The Greek word for church, ekklesia, means “gathering,” or “assembly.” Christ is building his church (Matt. 16:18); gathered believers, “like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Peter. 2:5). The idea of the church as Christ’s gathering should be understood in at least two ways. First, the church is made up of everyone God is drawing “out of the entire human race … for himself.”[ii] The “whole number of the elect” is invisible to us; many haven’t been born yet. But the church, as it will exist visibly in glory, is already made up of everyone who is organically connected to Jesus by election. She is the true body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27), his one bride (Rev. 21:2), and “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). Scripture’s teaching on an invisible church warns against simply belonging to a congregation and not belonging to God by faith.

Second, the church is the people God gathers into local congregations. Believers “visibly profess the true religion” and assemble locally. The membership of particular churches is not identical to the names of those “enrolled in heaven” (Heb. 12:23). But every true congregation is a microcosm of Christ’s universal church. The church is more than a spiritual entity composed of elect persons. It is also tangible. Despite modern aversion to organized religion with rigorous expectations, that’s exactly how Scripture presents church. Professing believers, and the children they are discipling, gather as Christ’s visible body. Scripture’s teaching on a visible church warns against claiming to belong to Jesus while rejecting the family he is assembling.

As God’s gathering, the church is a manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth. Christ is uniquely present in the church to work God’s will in and through his people. Kingdom is broader than church. But the church is “the most important visible embodiment of the forces of the kingdom.”[iii] This is why “there is no ordinary possibility of salvation outside of the church”—those who have no interest in Christ’s body cannot claim an interest in its head.

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