Church Membership

This morning, we're continuing our look at the church. And in particular, this morning, we're going to be talking about the issue of church membership, of belonging to a church, and in particular to the specific local physical church that we see around us this morning. Hopefully, towards the end of this month, we will be inducting members into this most honoured body that the world has ever known, the church of Jesus Christ. Now whether you agree to that statement or not, hopefully by the end of this sermon, you'll be with me on that point. You see, the initiation fee for this club is actually so high that no human could ever pay for it.

It was the blood of Jesus Christ. They had to pick up the tab for it. The benefits of this club have no expiration date. Your membership card will not expire. It is eternal.

And the fellowship of this club is unmatched. Nowhere would you be able to become a brother or a sister with a fellow club member and you receive an intimate access to the club president himself. Now with such benefits, with such amazing benefits, you'd think that church membership would be of infinitely high esteem. But for some reason, and you may know it, Christians seem to think less of it than ever before. Today, when we hear of the word membership, we do immediately think of a club, don't we?

In a club, a member comes and pays his membership fees, pays his dues, comes to the meetings perhaps, fulfils the obligations of a club member. And then when you move or you no longer have time for the club, you simply withdraw your membership and you move on. This church was also a church of members, and we talk about membership. We have a membership application process which we'll be launching soon. We have a process in how we run and are organised.

There will be rights and obligations of members as well. But no one would say that this church or a church is a club, but many of us treat it that way. Last week, we looked at identity. It's the start. It's the basis of who we are as Christians.

We are people who have been found. We are people who have been rescued, and we are people that have been redeemed by God. We saw that in our identity, in many ways, we have been radically altered, radically transformed and shaped. And although there may be superficial differences in skin tones and accents and favourite foods or sports or music, our identity, our identity, is built on something far more incorruptible and lasting than any of those things. It is built on the unchanging nature of who God is and who we see in Jesus Christ.

Last week, we discovered that it is only in the gospel that the message of a God who radically loves and values us despite our brokenness, in that we find an identity that actually makes us whole. Everything else, everything else that we may try to use to build our identity, our power, our esteem, our wealth, our charisma or our lack thereof, is flawed and is temporary. But this week, we'll see that God doesn't simply save us from ourselves, doesn't simply save us from our brokenness, but He saves us into a new reality. It's not that He simply has saved us from brokenness and corruption. He saves us into a new reality.

He forms us into a new community with a new identity, all sharing in this newfound hope. And the bible calls this bunch of people the church. We are called the church. And it says that we belong to this body or this group like members of a human body. Let's have a read of that this morning.

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 12. 1 Corinthians 12. And we're going to be reading from verse 12 to the end of the chapter. The apostle Paul writes to the church in Corinth, "The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts. And though all its parts are many, they form one body.

So it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body is not made up of one part, but of many. If the foot should say, 'Because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not, for that reason, cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' it would not, for that reason, cease to be part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? But as it is, there are many parts but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you,' and the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you.' On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honourable, we treat with special honour. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honour to the parts that lacked it so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.

If one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church, God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets?

Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have the gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?

But eagerly desire the greater gifts. So far, our reading. The apostle Paul is writing to a fractured church in Corinth, a community torn between very different identities. Some wealthy people and some poor people. Some very charismatic people and less charismatic people, some well educated nobles and some uneducated slaves.

And he builds his epistle, his letter, right up to this point where he tells them that to be a church member, you are actually a member of a body, Christ's body. Just like your finger is a member of your body. To be a Christian is to be part of the body of Christ. His blood runs through us. His Spirit animates us.

His will moves us. He feels our pain. He cleanses us when we get dirty. He nurses our wounds, and He cherishes us with pride. Unlike club membership, church membership is much more intimate, Paul says.

It is an intimate affair. Jesus loves the church because in some phenomenal way, we are His, and He is ours. Ephesians 5:29-30 says this, "No one has ever hated his own body, but he feeds it and cares for it just as Christ does the church for we are members of His body." How could Christ, in other words, ever forsake us if we are His body? No sane person will stop eating or stop caring for their body.

No sane person would ever do that, neither will Christ turn His back on this church or His church. And this, friends, is massively reassuring if you think about it. Because we sit in a time where the church seems so fragile, doesn't it? Just ripped apart by all sorts of sin, established denominations faltering under huge issues. I mean, Christianity seems to be shrinking, where life without God seems so comfortable and so prosperous, the promise is that Christ cannot forsake the church because the church is His body.

That's huge. Christ cannot forsake the church because the church is His body. He will not hate His own body. He will support it and nurture it and grow it. What a relief.

What a hope. But this reality has so much in store for us. It is significantly important to our understanding of what it means to actually belong to this church. If the church is not simply a club, but the body of the living King Jesus Christ, then how we deal with the church matters. Leaving the church then is not simply leaving a club, removing your membership, moving on.

When you walk away, you dismember yourself from the body. Jesus and the rest of the body misses you. Just like you would be causing haemorrhaging and blood loss after you amputate an arm or a leg. Likewise, when you cut yourself off, you are cutting yourself off from the only source of life and nourishment that you have, like a limb that is chopped off. You don't have blood and nutrients running to that hand.

Immediately, you start to wither and die. Now you might be saying already in your head, well, KJ, that is a little bit melodramatic, isn't it? Yes. I am a Christian, and therefore, I believe I should be part of a church community. But on the other hand, I just can't find a local church that I like, or I have too many hang ups with other Christians, or I've been hurt in the past.

Therefore, I'm comfortable to say that I am a member of the universal church, but just not any one local church in particular. But this morning, God's word tells us that being part of the universal church without submitting to a local church is actually neither logical nor theological nor healthy. Being part of the universal church without being part of the local church is neither logical, theological, nor healthy. Firstly, if we say that we are part of Christianity without being in a local church community, we see that it just doesn't make sense. In verse 14 to verses 20 of the passage we read in 1 Corinthians, we see how Paul talks about how inseparable and indispensable the members of the body are to the body itself.

The members of the body are indispensable and inseparable from the body. Verse 14, Paul says, "Now the body is not made up of one part, but of many." If a foot should say, "I'm not a hand and therefore not need it," it would actually not, for that reason, be expendable. If a foot should say, "I'm not a hand and therefore not necessary," that doesn't mean that it's not part of the body. Verse 17, "If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?

It would stop ceasing to be a body." Verse 19, "If the whole body were all one part, where would the body be?" A body cannot be a body unless it is made up of many parts, held together by a dependence on one another. The body itself, in other words, is inseparable from its members, and the different members are indispensable to the body. You can't have one without the other, Paul was saying.

It is logically impossible. It is logically impossible. To imply that you can be part of the broad, spiritual, intangible community of the universal church without first being a part of this smaller, physical, local church is not logical. Just like I can't be part of Westpac Bank International without first having some money deposited in an account in Ashmore. You can't be part of it.

Just like you can't be part of the universal human species without first being part of a small immediate family. Similarly, you can't be part of the universal church of God without being part of His local expression on the Gold Coast where you live. It's just not possible. It's not logical. Yes, KJ, but you forget that I'm a Christian not because I belong to a church, but because I've given my allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Sure. But let me ask you this. Can you be an Essendon football supporter if you never go to any of their games, watch any of their games on TV, never open the newspaper to read any news of them, don't own a jersey or a flag, and never talk to any other football fan about Essendon. You could call yourself a fan of Essendon, I guess. But the question is, are you really a fan?

Are you really a fan? A member without a body is a dead piece of meat. A hand without a body is a dead piece of meat. It's useless for anything, and it's already starting to rot and stink. There's one body, Paul says, but many parts.

The body is inseparable from its members and the members are indispensable to the body. Secondly, being part of Christianity without being in a local church community is not theological. You may hear people argue that there is no biblical evidence for membership. Where should I sign my name? Where should I sign a covenant to be part of this church?

That the idea of committing yourself to one physical church through a membership process, etcetera, is not found anywhere in the bible. But asking where the bible commands you to be a church member is like asking where in your marriage vows does it insist that you be a human. Wearing your marriage vow as a house doesn't insist you be a human. It's taken as a given. And people listening to you assume that you are a given.

You don't have to say, "I, KJ Trump, a human being living on planet earth, take you to be my lawfully wedded wife." It's assumed. The whole bible, friends, is addressed to the church. Wherever the bible is studied, wherever it's reflected on, prayed over, and discussed, that is where the church is. It is taken as a given.

Every letter, for example, in the New Testament assumes Christians are members of local churches. Every New Testament letter, the letters themselves are addressed to local churches. And if they're written to persons like Philemon or Timothy, they're still written with the expectation that Christians in other churches are going to read them. That's why they were later included in the canon. The canon meaning the list of biblical books that we have.

Even in the Old Testament, these parts of scriptures were written for a community to be read in a community for the purpose of growing the community. In verses 21 to 26 of our passage again in 1 Corinthians, we see Paul discussing how these various members of the body interact with one another. The eye can't say to the hand or the head to the feet, "I don't need you." Verse 25 says, "There should be no division in the body, but all its parts should have equal concern for each other." And we, as the body of Christ, have been formed into this new family, a theological entity, a new organism, a new kingdom.

These are all biblical metaphors for the church. Family, kingdom, nation. And all of scripture teaches us how to get along with those members. All of scripture does. How we encourage the weak in the church.

How we treat unrepentant sinners in the church. They command us how to submit to our elders, how to encourage us to go and pray for those in the church that are hurting us. It's all to do with the church. An eye needs to serve a hand, and a foot needs to serve the head, Paul says. And all of these things are impossible if you aren't part of a local church, if you aren't part of the body.

So to say that the church, the Bible doesn't talk about church membership, I'm sorry. It's just not in the Bible. Because the question is, can you really invest in that invisible, spiritual, out there universal church? Can you really invest in that? Can you really practise your gifts in that church?

Can you really show love in that church? You can't. The apostle John writes in 1 John 4, "For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." In other words, is it possible to love God if you don't love your brother? And John says, it's actually not.

"Whoever loves God must also love his brother." And where is your brother? Where is your sister? They're sitting in the pew next to you. He's in your cell group.

She's helping you clean and help out at the church garden. The last thing, the final thing, living without church membership is not healthy. Autonomy. Autonomy, the desire to choose for yourself how you live, what's right and what's wrong, is at the heart of sin. It drives us to idolise everything except God.

And ultimately, we believe as Christians that autonomy is not good for us. It starts to break down every good thing actually in our life. It leads to an emptiness that is soul destroying. And it is something that Paul addresses so strongly in this letter of 1 Corinthians. You see, after Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 deals with the members of the body, these very different people with wealth and poverty, with education and lack thereof.

How these interact, Paul says, comes in in 1 Corinthians 13. And in fact, Paul talks in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 about the body, leads into the gifts, the apostles, the prophets, the teachers, and also all those sort of things. And then he sort of stops. And in this giant parenthesis, writes 1 Corinthians 13 about love. And then he goes on and talks about gifts of prophecy and tongues.

So in between the body and the gifts or the body and its members, there's this thing wedged in there, 1 Corinthians 13, this majestic explanation of the most important, the most healthy, and according to Paul, most excellent way, love. Without love, he says, I can be the most gifted, the most spiritual, the most well read, even the most zealous Christian and miss the whole point. If I have not love, I am a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. I gain absolutely nothing. Have a look at verse 4 in chapter 13.

"Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud.

It is not rude. It is not self seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." And while these words are great at weddings and still applies to marriages, the proper context here is that love is to be lived out in the community of the church. The church is one body with many parts, must love like this. And the biggest cause of people not committing themselves to the church, to a church, doesn't come down to Gen Y commitment issues or lack of trust, but a underdeveloped love, a stunted love, a love that should be enduring, that is patient, that is kind, that is not rude nor self seeking, that is not easily offended or angered. A love that rejoices in the truth and forsakes sin. A love that perseveres and presses on.

1 Corinthians 13 shows us that without developing this love in a context of Christian fellowship and community, your capacity to love is stunted and is deformed. Without church membership, you are actually unhealthy Christians. And this is huge because I know so many people now that think they can be Christian on Facebook. And just sharing a nice status update or a ministry page is my Christian life. It is not.

It is so far removed from what Christianity is about. You need the humility, Christian, of submitting to flawed elders. You need the encouragement, Christian, of sharing in the victories of your brother and sister. You need the fellowship of sharing in the sufferings, your sufferings, with the church. You need to know that we're all in this life together and we won't walk away from you just because you let us down or we disagree with you.

Together, we build each other up into the image of Christ, a united body. Join. To join this church is a club word, isn't it? It is a club word. You join a club.

Whether it's a country club or a sailing club. You pay your dues. You receive your benefits. You come and you go as you please, and nothing of your identity, identity, changes. No real demands are placed on you. And if they are, then you have the right to leave and say it's not for me.

But the word for membership in the body of Christ, for the church, is submit. Submit is a kingdom word. It's a citizenship word. It recognises the presence of an authority established by a King. It speaks to a changed new identity.

It suggests that you now belong to something new, a new nation, a new people, a new family. To lovingly submit, to submit in love, suggests that all the new benefits you receive as a member of this family also comes with a set of obligations. And that these obligations are not easily dispensed of nor can be separated from without a lot of pain and a lot of bleeding. To submit means you can't just come and go as you please. And it's radical.

The truth is the Christian church is actually a club of sinners. It is the only society in the world in which membership is based upon the single qualification that the candidate is unworthy of membership. We have and probably will make mistakes as Christians belonging to this church, but our eligibility to be part of this community thankfully doesn't come from our ability to love perfectly, but the reality that we have been loved perfectly. This is the church of Jesus Christ. This is His body.

And I want to encourage you to rethink or to think for the first time about the importance of church membership, of committing yourself to this church. Our fellowship may be an affliction at times, but it is a glorious affliction because one day we will be walking into glory together. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your church. Thank you that we are not a museum for saints, but a hospital of sinners.

And Father, thank you, Lord, that you have called us into this reality where we can be free to be ourselves. Of all the places in the world, Lord, we should be free to be loved and valued and accepted as we are. Father, we pray for your church, for the universal out there spiritual theological church, but also for the very real churches that we see around us. We pray for our Macedonian church down the road that seems empty on a Sunday. And our heart is sore for them.

And we pray for the church on the other side of Nareng struggling to make ends meet financially. With plenty of heart and plenty of dreams and vision, but just not the physical resources that it needs. And we pray for the church as it is wracked with sin, sexual immorality, disappointment, loss of trust. Lord, when we say this is your body, this is you on display to the world. And we ask forgiveness, Lord.

Sorry that we have dragged your names through the mud. But at the same time, Father, we thank you for the glorious reality that we are yours and that you are ours. That you are our head. That we are your hands and your feet, your eyes and your ears. Father, help us to love because we know if we love like you have shown us again this morning, if we are patient, if we are kind, if we persevere, if we rejoice in the truth, these issues that we've mentioned will disappear, will be wiped so far away from this body of yours that it will not be close to the image we have over the church right now. Help us to love like this.

Grow us, Lord. As a church, this church, let us develop that in our characters, each member of us. As a father, let us teach our son. As a mum, let us teach our daughter to live like this, to love this, to value this. God, guide us where we should go.

Guide us what we should do, how we can make a difference to our neighbourhood. But let it start in us as well, Father. Let us grow in this faith of ours. Let us understand the gospel so deeply and so richly. Father, make us a family, a community that you would be proud of.

Have your way in us, Lord. We pray. We commit ourselves to you this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.