I Went To Church Yesterday

I went to church yesterday.

While church attendance is a Christian duty required by God, Heb 10:24-25, it is also a delight, an enjoyment every believer should have in his heart. The Christian knows that God seeks those who are authentic worshipers of him, those who worship him in spirit and in truth, Jn 4:24. By this is meant that believers are to worship him according to the manner he demands, with (a) spiritual worship corresponding to his spiritual being or essence and according to the truth of his word which is now enfleshed in Jesus Christ, 1:1, 14, 17; 14:6. Thus, when the Samaritan woman reveals her ignorance of the true character of worship by expressing her doubt whether such worship is to take place on Mt. Gerizim, the sacred place of the Samaritans or in Jerusalem, the sacred place at which the old covenant Jews were commanded by God to observe their three annual festivals, the Lord Jesus Christ gently but firmly diverts her attention to the fact that in him (since his first coming), the essential character of worship has been changed. Accordingly he redirects the discussion from the place of worship to the mode of worship and then to the object of worship, himself. Under the new covenant therefore, true worship extends beyond cultural, racial or geographic bounds, corresponds to the spiritual essence of God and terminates on the Lord Jesus Christ who "In the beginning was the Word, [who] … was with God, and [who] …was God.. [and who] .. became flesh and dwelt among us,.." 1:1, 14.

Consequently, we understand that in attending corporate worship services, we are not really drawing near to God. Indeed, even the Old Testament saints were acutely aware of the immensity of God. (Louis Berkhof in his Systematic Theology states "In a certain sense the terms "immensity" and "omnipresence," as applied to God, denote the same thing, and can therefore be regarded as synonymous. ... "Immensity" points to the fact that God transcends all space and is not subject to its limitations, while "omnipresence" denotes that He nevertheless fills every part of space with His entire Being.") Therefore in his dedicatory prayer to God upon completion of the temple, King Solomon prays ""But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!" 1 Ki 8:27. Rather, when we go to church, we are affirming the reality that we have already been brought near to God. How? "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Eph 2:13, that is, by the substitutionary, atoning death of Christ on the cross on our behalf, in our place and for our benefit. We are demonstrating that by God's sovereign grace alone, we are no longer separate from him, no longer afar off but have been drawn close to him by Christ through whom we have access in one Spirit to the Father, Eph 2:18, and who indeed is our access to the Father, Jn 14:6. After all, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, .." 1 Pe 3:18.

Further, by going to church we demonstrate, not only that we have been drawn near to God but also that we are continually coming to Christ, 1 Pe 2:4, that is, that we are progressing in our Christian walk. We understand and joyfully accept that corporate worship is an integral part as well as a defining aspect of our Christian life. Such a perspective protects us from misguided notions that, since worship is essentially a spiritual matter, then I can worship God however and wherever I want because "the Lord knows my heart"; that I don't have to attend church because the church is corrupt and besides, all the preachers want is my money; that the church is really neither the building nor a physical facility but really the people and all that really matters in the end is that I have "accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my own personal Savior into my own heart." No! The entire testimony of both the Old and the New Testament is that worship is uncompromisingly, unquestionably and fiercely corporate in scope.

It is no wonder then that while the Holy Spirit indwells individual believers, 1 Cor 6:19 -20, He also dwells in the temple of God, the corporate collection of all believers, 3:16. It is the church that Christ purchased with his blood, Acts 20:28. It is in this body that Christ by his cross reconciles all believers vertically to God and horizontally to one another, Eph 2:14-16. It is his church, a holy temple in the Lord, in which believers are no longer strangers and stragglers but in which they are being built together as members of God's own household, into a dwelling place for God by the Holy Spirit, vv. 19-22. It is this very church, his bride, for which Christ gave himself, which he is now sanctifying, ".. having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word," and which he will present to himself at his Second Coming in all her splendor, "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." 5:25-27.

Therefore, in corporate worship, I delight in being among my brothers and sisters. I no longer regard them after the flesh, that is, from a worldly perspective, 2 Cor 5:16, but from the viewpoint of the gospel, as those with whom I am bound together by the blood of Christ with bonds that cannot be broken. It is a Christian axiom, therefore, that blood is thicker than blood. By this I mean that those who have been brought into the family of Christ through the Person and work of Jesus Christ enjoy an eternal union in him that far exceeds the relationship they share with the unsaved members of their biological family. In Christ, we are a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come, v. 17. The church at worship is the most dynamic evidence of this new ethnicity on earth.
Believe me, I did go to church yesterday. There, along with my fellow-citizens of the kingdom of God, I worshiped the Triune God in spirit and in truth.

Believe me, I did go to church yesterday. There, along with my fellow-citizens of the kingdom of God, I worshiped the Triune God in spirit and in truth.