I Went to Church Yesterday

I went to church yesterday. For the past few weeks I've been vacationing and traveling.

Our church has a weekly custom in which one member family hosts the guests and visitors to our service on that day. The hosting family invites our guests to its home and shares a meal, time and glories in the Lord with them. Host families rotate every week. On those occasions that there are no visitors, other members are invited to that family's home. This practice has been met with much eagerness and great delight and from all that I can tell, it has universal acceptance. And why not? After all, hospitality is one of the many marks of a true Christian. For example, Paul urges the church at Rome to "Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality." Rom 12:13. Peter says that this should be without any grumbling, 1 Pe 4:9. Indeed, such hospitality should be extended to strangers because of the profound implications, "for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Heb 13:2. [Note that the Greek word literally means demonstrating love to strangers]. Lastly, such acts of genuine love are required of the elders of the church, indeed, they are part of the qualifications for that office, 1 Tim 3:2; Tit 1:8.

However, I began to notice a pattern developing among our congregants. The term fellowship was being restricted to the after-service love feast or gathering. Thus, fellowship only began to take place after the benediction had been given. This was the emphasis of the remarks I overheard. As I began to reflect on this matter, I began to see that we were missing the mark. How? Because the entire church, the local church, the communion of saints meeting at a specific location, is a fellowship.

The word fellowship means partnership or communion. More specifically, it indicates a sharing and participating in something that is common to all its participants, all of whom are involved in a close relationship. In its verbal form it is found in 1 Cor 10:16 where Paul instructs us that in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, believers participate in the blood as well as in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. As an adjective, common, it is used to refer to the general truth that all believers undergo all kinds of temptations, 1 Cor 10:13. In addition, Paul reminds Titus that together they share a common faith, Tit 1:4, and Jude tells his readers that they share a common salvation, Jude 3. From the latter 2examples, we are already beginning to detect a particularly evangelical nuance. Accordingly, we are compelled to ask whence does such fellowship emerge? What is its source?

It arises from the effectual call of God the Father, who, in faithfulness to his covenant promise, summons those that he chooses before the foundation of the world to be included into the fellowship of Jesus Christ, 1 Cor 1:9. Thus, according to this infallible apostolic teaching, all that were called in this manner by God share (in) a unique fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Trinitarian dimension of fellowship is more strenuously asserted in Rom 8:9: "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him." Therefore, according to the clear testimony of the New Testament, all believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit who himself proceeds from the Father and the Son, Jn 14:26; 15:26. And what is the task of the Holy Spirit? To apply to believers all the benefits that Christ has accomplished in his sinless life and in his death on the cross for their redemption and ultimate glorification. In this way, the Holy Spirit honors and glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ. To this end he is called the Spirit of truth who glorifies Christ by guiding believers "into all the truth" by declaring to them the things of Jesus Christ, 16:13-14.


Yet further in his first epistle, John tells us that the believer's fellowship is with the Father as well as the Son; it is a fellowship that results from believing and receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us-- that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." 1 Jn 1:1-3. Christian fellowship therefore, like Christians and the church, is birthed by the Word and by the Spirit. It is driven by and derived from the gospel.

All of these truths serve to remind us and to reemphasize that true fellowship is demonstrated by and located in the communion of the saints, that is, it is restricted to and circumscribed by the Triune God around those that are authentically Christian. As such, it is demonstrated when believers assemble in corporate worship under the God-centered, Christ-exalting and Spirit-empowered preaching of the Word of God and in the faithful administration of the sacraments of holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper which say the same thing as the gospel of Jesus Christ and which indeed are the gospel in palpable form. In this regard, the practice of the early church at Jerusalem is seminally instructive. There the believers portray four signs of the new Christian life: first, and foundationally, they devote themselves to the apostolic teaching (Calvin: the soul of the church), namely the deep truths concerning the Person and work of Jesus Christ; to the fellowship; to the breaking of bread (although commentators are divided as to whether this phrase refers to the Lord's Supper, to a common meal or to the agape love feasts preceding the eucharist, the greater weight of argument seems to fall in the direction of the Lord's Supper); and to the prayers, Acts 2:42. The point here is that this local gathering of believers came together in fellowship with one another, that is, in the fellowship of the church, in and during the course of official church activities.

Fellowship is therefore a gospel privilege granted to all believers. It takes place primarily during corporate worship but it is also evident when believers come together in a non-worship setting in which the Holy Spirit guides, instructs and illumines their conversation to, along and into the glories of Christ. By definition, unbelievers cannot have this privilege; they are said to hang out or roll or run together in floods of debauchery, 1 Pe 4:4. Their thoughts and declarations flow from themselves, into themselves and are bounded by the dark world whose prince, the devil. On the contrary, the content, tone and tenor of Christian fellowship flow from, outward and upward to Christ, the light of the world. "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" 1 Jn 1:7.

What an awesome benefit derived from an awesome gospel! What an awesome participation! What an awesome Savior who makes this possible by his mediatorial work on the cross for us while we were yet sinners!

I did go to church yesterday.

I Went to Church Yesterday

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

I went to church yesterday. Why not? I had no choice! I'm the preacher/pastor. In addition, I went to church because the other believers and I are the church. In this case the church is a noun and not a verb– we do not do church, as some reconstructionists shamelessly declare, we are the church, the body of Christ, the covenant collective, the communion of saints, inseparably connected to one another by the eternal bond of the Holy Spirit. Our communion is a necessary derivative of our in union with Christ our Head and it is preeminently expressed and experienced when the saints gather together in corporate worship.

The idea of the communion of the saints is fundamentally contra mundum. That is, it maintains a militant stand against this fallen world that cherishes confusion, celebrates chaos, criticizes continuity, condemns coherence and chides community. This communion of saints with its sense of orderliness, system of cohesion, standing in continuity with all the saints of the past and the future, maintains a defiant posture against the very character and claims of a lost and dying world. Though always tempted and in varying degrees impacted by worldly homogenizing tendencies to be relevant and "practical," this communion continues to maintain its distinctiveness from the world by clinging to the symbols of transcendence, by proclaiming the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and by serving as God's instrument by which he ushers in his kingdom. As a living, spiritual organism, the church, the communion of saints maintains its identity and preserves its integrity by resolutely holding fast to its head and King, Jesus Christ, whose agenda it joyfully incorporates as its own. The church gladly acknowledges that it belongs to God who creates and then re-creates his fallen creatures and then, more than placing them in the body of his Son Jesus Christ, he sovereignly constitutes them as Christ’s body. It is there, in the communio sanctorum as the gospel message is faithfully declared and as the sacraments are properly administered, that the people of God are continually transformed by his Spirit from glory to glory.

It is there as these divinely ordained means of grace are offered and received by God's people that they receive his help to inspire and energize them along the way. It is there as this worshiping community mimics the activities in heaven, that its real needs for forgiveness of sins, assurance of salvation, guidance and sustenance for the days ahead, reaffirmation as God's own, peculiar covenant people and for eternal hope, are declared and received. It is there the eternal verities of the character of God, the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit who applies the great truths of Christ's accomplished salvation to the heart's of God's elect, are confidently extolled and consolingly embraced.

With such a perspective and with such principles in hand and heart, this communion is being taught more and more to be what it really is, an other-worldly people proclaiming to a fallen world God's secret wisdom that was once hidden but that is now revealed. It boldly declares to the world that its only hope rests in the true King, the very Lord of glory whom it does not know and indeed, whom it cannot know, for if it could, it and its leaders would not have crucified him, the very Lord of glory, 1 Cor 2:8. But where did I learn all of this? And where did I proclaim all of this? In church, where I went yesterday, where else?