Rampant and rugged individualism ravages the church today. When everything is loosely called “church” without formal organization, there is in fact no church at all. Even organisms have some organization. We spiritually wither for lack of good ecclesiology (i.e. good “assembling-ology”).
Yet thousands of Christians are (sinfully) content to excise the very name church (ἐκκλησία, “assembly”) from their practice of Christianity.
“I’m the church. You’re the church.”
It’s all a showy pretense built upon a plain contradiction of God’s express intention for his people. “Don’t neglect the assembly,” God says. Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
If you fall into the “as is the manner of some” group, you really need to hear the rebuke and amend your ways. In an age when even committed Christians will waive their obligation to assemble for vacation and children’s sports, how much more do we need ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches (i.e. the assemblies)?
Is this just a modern problem? Only in our entertainment-saturated age would we struggle with Christians who profess Christ, call him Lord, but don’t do what he says (Luke 6:46). No. In fact, older writers knew the spiritual pain of seeing Christians separated from local churches in wicked (let’s just call it what it is) disobedience to Jesus.
The assembly is where the bread of life (i.e. the preaching of Christ) is broken. The assembly is where the instruction of Christ is heralded (Matthew 28:20). The saints gather to praise the risen Christ (along with the Father and Spirit) in sincere love and unity. Why would Christians neglect such treasures?
Only because of the lack of a holy appetite for the worship and worshippers that God is seeking in these last days. “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:23). A church-less Christian is a pure contradiction in terms. While David could declare that his delight was in God's holy people (Psalm 16:3), there are professing Christians today who by their neglect say the opposite.
We would do well to listen to Peter Chrysologus, a church father from the fifth century:
“There are those who presume that the congregation of the church can be disregarded. They assert that private prayers should be preferred to those of an honorable assembly… Some, however, endeavor to excuse under an appearance of faith the idleness that prompts their contempt for assemblies. They omit participation in the fervor of the assembled congregation and pretend that they have devoted to prayer the time they have expended on their household cares. While they give themselves up to their own desires, they scorn and despise the divine service. These are the people who destroy the body of Christ. They scatter its members. They do not permit the full form of its Christ-like appearance to develop to its abundant beauty… Individual members do indeed have their own duty of personal prayer, but they will not be able to fulfill it if they come to the beauty of that perfect body wrapped up in themselves. There is this difference between the glorious fullness of the congregation and the vanity of separation that springs either from ignorance or negligence: in salvation and honor the beauty of the whole body is found in the unity of the members. But from the separation of the viscera there is a foul, fatal, and fearful aroma.”
Chrysologus’s point is clear. Christians who remain separated and aloof from the local church have the stench of spiritual death.
What smell do you give off?
Abounding Grace Radio