Why bother being part of the church?

This is an article for the church newsletter a while back...

      Circle the correct answer: 

      A.      Being a part of the church is a blessing.

      B.      Being a part of the church is hard.

Which one did you choose?  Or maybe you were on to me and recognized right away that the correct answer isn’t one or the other, but both.

The local church is a blessing from God in which believers come together as a visible witness to the reality that they are already one in Christ. Through the local church we receive encouragement from fellow Christians, hear God’s Word taught and preached, receive God’s gifts of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, and have a built in support system to help us in all areas of our lives.  Being a part of the church can be an awesome, inspiring, and edifying.

But the church is made up of sinners and the local church is where we encounter the reality of the sinner/saint.  It’s one thing to talk about how Christians are simultaneously saints and sinners, simultaneously justified and sinful, but it is an entirely different thing when we encounter it firsthand.

And nowhere do you encounter the reality of the sinner/saint in a more direct way than in the local congregation. 

The fact that the church is made up of sinners, who can make it hard for us to like them and certainly can make it hard for us to love them, makes it hard to be a part of the church.  It is hard to love those who have sinned against us.  It is hard for us to love those who have sinned against a loved one.  And if you hang around a congregation long enough, there will be real, hurtful sin, that occurs against you or a loved one.

So why bother?  Why hassle with being a part of a local church when it means that you’ll deal with sinful people who sometimes act in horribly sinful ways?

I suppose I could answer that by going back to the positive aspects of being a part of the church, but there is a deeper, greater, and more profound answer; the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

For whom did Jesus die?  Sinners.  Not hypothetical sinners, but real sinners.  Jesus died for the disciples who abandoned him.  Jesus died for Saul (later renamed Paul) who persecuted Him.  Jesus died for the Roman soldiers who nailed his hands to the cross.  Jesus died for the High Priest and Sanhedrin who held a sham of a trial and condemned Him.  Jesus died for the member of the church who sinned against you.  Jesus died for real, actual, terrible, horrible sinners.

Sinners like you.   

Sinners like me.

Jesus gave His life on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for sinners and in Him we have forgiveness.  In Him, we have eternal life.  Through Him we have unity.

And the local congregation is where this becomes tangible, where we can actually experience this unity.  And when sinners sin against each other, when Satan tries to use that sin to cause division, Christ brings forgiveness and unity.

Sinful pride makes us want to defend ourselves when we have sinned, but through the cross of Christ our sinful pride is put to death and we are humbled to seek forgiveness and confess our wrongs.  Sinful pride makes us want to humiliate a person who has sinned against us, but the wounds of Christ remind us that Christ forgave those who wounded Him and through Christ we will do the same.

Why bother to be a part of a local church when it can be so hard?  Because it is in the local church that the Gospel has its fullest meaning and expression, where the Christian faith becomes more than a theoretical idea and is lived out by real people.  It is in the local church that we receive the love of Christ and through which we learn how to truly love others.

In Christ,

Pastor Meyer