A Regenerate Church Membership Series

Outside the church, unaffiliated saints assume a new title—victim. Peter warns, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” [1 PETER 5:8]. It is immaterial whether the believer wanders outside the assembly through ignorance or whether the Christian deliberately walks away from fellowship, to wander about without the protection of fellow believers is to expose oneself to destruction.

A short while ago, I spoke of the joyful acceptance of responsibility whenever the child of God enters the church. Each Christian receives spiritual gift(s) given by the Holy Spirit. Christians are gifted people, and the congregation is to be a continual expression of God’s grace because the membership continually reveals the goodness of God through exercise of their various spiritual gifts. Those gifts have been entrusted to us as individual Christians so that we can invest them one another as we build up the assembly. The local congregation is referred to as the Body of Christ, and it is only as we invest our gifts in one another that we strengthen each other and ensure that the Body fully reflects the character of our Lord Jesus, who is the Head of the Body. When we refuse to affiliate with the congregation where God would set us, we are guilty of prostituting the gifts God entrusted to us because we waste these divine gifts, consuming them on our own desires.

United as a body, Christians not only are able to build one another up, but they also protect one another. Multiple eyes see danger before it is imminent. Multiple hands lift the fallen and encourage the weak. This is one very good reason for urging Christians assembled as a church to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit” [EPHESIANS 4:3]. The unity that is sought, therefore, is not an artificial unity—a unity of name or association—but it is a practical unity. There is a mystical union of believers, but throughout the New Testament, the unity expected from believers is concrete and it is determined by shared truth.

Our Lord deliberately refers to Christians as sheep. The Master sent His disciples on mission, referring to them as “sheep in the midst of wolves” [MATTHEW 10:16]. Christians are Christ’s sheep—wise as serpents, but gentle and harmless as doves. United, we have a measure of protection since we are a flock and under the leadership of the Chief Shepherd. Alone, we surrender all protection afforded through unity because we have voluntarily removed ourselves from the oversight of Christ’s shepherds.

The believers baptised at Pentecost joyfully accepted responsibility to practise the Faith within the context of the assembly. This is evident from the latter portion of the text. The new Christians, together with the one hundred twenty that were first assembled, “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” [ACTS 2:42-45].