I Went to Church Yesterday

I Went to Church Yesterday

The fourth of an undetermined number in a series on the character and need for corporate worship.

As fallen mankind sinks more and more into perverse narcissism, thinking of salvation in individualistic terms persists in today's evangelicalism. For example, when we recall the time and circumstances of our coming to faith in Christ, we are still prone to think in terms of my salvation and not God's. We still refer to our conversion experience in such unbiblical terms as "the time that I made Jesus Christ my personal Lord and Savior” or "the day that I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart," and so on.

While the Scripture makes it clear that each person must individually repent and receive Christ alone for eternal life-note for example the focus on the individual indicated by "every one of you" in Acts 2:38– it equally clearly instructs us that the Lord does save his people. The message of God's redeeming his covenant people runs throughout Scripture. For example, it is by this mighty outstretched arm and strong right hand that he delivered the people of Israel unto himself, Dt 5:19; 9:29; etc. It was the church that Christ purchased with his blood, Acts 20:28. It was his sheep for whom he, the Good Shepherd, laid down his life, Jn 10:11-16. Verse 10 confirms "… I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (Emphasis added).
In describing Christ's work in redemption, Peter employs collective epithets drawn from the Old Testament: "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." 1 Pe 2:9-10.
At the end of time and history when the Lord God will sum up all things under Christ, " the dead [plural] in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord." 1 Ths 4:16-17. Our glorification which will occur "when the saints go marching" into heaven, "when believers will be with the Triune God in everlasting joy, when the already and the not yet of our salvation are swallowed up into a timeless perfection with the Second Coming of Christ, is in fact the glorification of the saints and not of the saint.

Further, the Lord does not leave each convert to himself, to live as an undetached "dangling participle" in life. Rather, the Holy Spirit sovereignly constitutes each believer as a member of the church into which he places him. To this end, the apostle Paul writes "For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many." 1 Cor 12:13-14. That our placement in the local church is the sovereign work of our God is emphasized later in v. 18, "But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose." and again in 27, "Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." (Emphasis ours).

Thus, throughout Scripture the corporate, collective, community aspect of divine redemption is convincingly demonstrated. The primary testimony in Scripture is that God saves his people. Salvation, above all, is ascribed a collective dimension. God saves his people.

It is in the context of this divinely ordained collective, the local church, that God is forming a new humanity in Christ, a new ethnicity, produced by the finished atoning work of Christ and realized by the reconciliation of man with man, Eph 2:14-15, resulting from man's reconciliation with God, to whom all persons have equal access in one Spirit, 16-18.

In serving God's people, Christ's sheep, I am gravely reminded that God's community is formed and strengthened in its unity and purity by his Word and sacrament. The preached Word of Christ's Person and work and the sacraments bearing the same message in visible form, are not habit-forming but community-forming. This is the historical language that the church speaks and hears when it is assembled in God's presence. This is God's language that by definition is on a collision course with the raucous, chaotic cacophony with which Christians are bombarded in the marketplace. Therefore, when they come to church, when they assemble corporately, it is the preaching of God's Word and the administration of the sacraments that serve to "detox" them from the world's multiple contaminations.

More specifically, in Word and sacrament, God's people are reminded of his speech and action in history, not in the distant past of a nebulous there and then but most importantly, in the midst of their existential challenges, in the hic et nunc, in the very here and now.

In Word and sacrament, God's people are reminded of his accomplishment of redemption in Christ on their behalf.

In Word and sacrament, God's promises which find their Yes in Christ, 2 Cor 1:20, are brought to bear on the hearts and minds of his assembled covenant people.

In Word and sacrament, God strengthens the faith that he first creates through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Word and sacrament, God's people are lovingly reminded of his gracious transformation of them from aliens and strangers, utterly hopeless and godless in the world, into his own people, into those that are brought near unto him through the blood of Christ, Eph 2:13.

In Word and sacrament, God's community is strengthened and sustained as his people are repeatedly told of his rescuing them from the just deserts of their sin and repositioning them to play new roles in his divine drama of redemption in which he is the chief actor.

In the ministry of Word and sacrament, God's people respond to his gracious overtures in Christ by making vows to him. We are not entirely passive as this drama is unfolded before our very eyes.

The ministry of Word and sacrament is God's primary means of grace by which he transforms his covenant people by causing them to see his Word in action, in Christ, in history and on their behalf, "That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory." 2 Cor 1:20.

The more I go to church, the more I speak and learn these transcendent, transforming truths, the more I want to have them repeated unto me there. That's why I went to church yesterday.