I Went to Church Yesterday

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

I went to church yesterday – – well, really not yesterday or the day before (Tuesday and Monday) because on those days I was ill. Today, as the Lord slowly heals me, I'm trying to redeem the time. But I did go to church on Sunday; I communed with the saints.

Together with all the other believers throughout the world, we are members of Christ's body. That universal body is represented visibly in each specific, local church. As members of the church are in union with Christ through genuine faith in him and his his finished redemptive work, a union that is initiated, sustained and strengthened by the loving initiatives of his grace working through us by the effective work of the Holy Spirit, this union is necessarily reflected in the communion of the saints. This communion is an organic relationship in which all believers share with one another not only a spiritual oneness, but also a doctrinal unity deriving from our common confession of one Lord, one faith and one baptism.

Nowhere is this communion of the saints, the communion sanctorum, more vividly and more vibrantly demonstrated than in our assembling together in corporate worship. Although we come from different homes, different parts of the town or country as a whole, and although we are affected by a great variety of other circumstances pertaining to our birth, education, habits of life, local customs and even bodily constitution, when we come together on the Lord's Day as the body of Christ, when we come together in corporate worship, precisely because we are all united to Christ, all natural distinctions are subsumed under the gospel reality of Christ's finished work on the cross. In Christ all racial, social, cultural and sexual divisions, the source of conflict and injustice, are abandoned and are correctly viewed and understood in their right context, that is, from God's perspective. Being in Christ enables us to grasp that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Gal 3:28. Although these distinctions still apply naturally, we consider them to be an aspect of the diversity of the members of the one church, the corpus Christi, the body of Christ, into whom, Gal 3:27, and into which, 1 Cor 12:13, all members are baptized. As Christ instructed his disciples in the Upper Room, “..you in me, and I in you.” Jn 14:20 [You is plural].

In this holy communion, we are bound together with one another, more closely than peas in a pod or nuts in a shell – we are organically knitted together! In this communion we come together at a common meeting place that is Christ. There, Jesus’ words to the crowd in Jn 12:32, "" And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself,"" signifying both the death that he was about to undergo as well as the cosmic saving impact it would produce, are microcosmically enfleshed when the saints are drawn together to Christ and to one another in worship. There we reflect the magnetic charisma of Christ in a local, visible setting. There we answer the effectual call of the Holy Spirit to assemble together in Christ and at Christ. There we ascend to the high mountain of Jesus Christ. There all that are Abraham's descendants and heirs according to God's promise, Gal 3:29, and their children, come together as one covenant community, the blood-bought people of God whose organic link is clearly denoted by the reality that we ".. are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." Eph 2:19 -22. See also 4:11-16.

As we gather together in Christ and at Christ, we humbly recall the great privilege the Lord has bestowed upon us in this current dispensation. Whereas the Old Testament saints would meet their God in a physical tent called the tabernacle of God as they journeyed through the wilderness, and whereas that physical location was changed to the temple after the Lord had given them rest from their enemies and had settled them in the Promised Land, in these last days God himself has tabernacled among us in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is he, the living tabernacle of God, Jesus Christ, that has pitched his tent among us. As he patiently and pleadingly impresses upon the Samaritan woman "".. the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.""Jn 4:23-24. It is he that spreads "the corner of his garment over us and covers our nakedness.. " Eze 16:8, and that draws us unto and into himself in an unbroken and unbreakable covenant relationship.

Last Sunday, the great devourer, time, did its perfect work and before long we were singing John Fawcett's most encouraging hymn, "Blest Be the Tie That Binds." Thereafter, we lingered around the sanctuary still basking in the afterglow of our rapturous encounter with our living God. Next, we slowly and unwillingly dragged our heavy heels to the parking lot to head home to discuss the events of worship among ourselves and to pray for God's strength to meet the burdens of our secular world in the marketplace where we will bear witness to our Lord and Savior. As we finally left the safe and sublime surroundings of the sanctuary and entered into the hostile environment, we sadly recalled the words of Fawcett’s last stanza “When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain; but we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again.”

I went to church last Sunday. I communed with the saints.