When I first began to follow Jesus, there were things that
I began to understand well. I got really interested in God’s grace and how big
God was.
I read books that showed me how big he was. I was real interested in
God’s attributes. One of the things it took me a long time to fully understand
was how central the church was to what God was doing. And so I talk to guys all
the time who say, “Hey, I really love Jesus. And I will attend church because I
like to hear good sermons.” But their commitment to the local church isn’t that
much.
You see that a lot even with college students. College is
kind of that age where you just kind of float around in nothingness—almost like
you are not a real person yet. You are trying to figure out what being a real
person is. Almost like: “This is my training stage, and I will really get into
it once I move on to the next adult stage.”
There is no good, healthy, regular pattern of the Christian
life if you are not joined with a local church—if you are not in covenant with
other Christians. It’s not OK just having some Christian friends who you
talk to sometimes. I am talking about the way that God set it out that there
are leaders that you submit to. There are other Christians you covenant to, to
pray for and care for. There is actually something that other Christians can do
to help you if you fall into unrepentant sin—all the beautiful mercies that God
has given us to gather together, to sing together, to sit under preaching
together. That is huge in the life of a Christian.
And so we can’t say: God has adopted me. He is my Father. I
am glad he is, but I am just going to ignore his people altogether. That
doesn’t make any sense, because if you are adopted in his family, you now have
brothers and sisters. So when we become new Christians, our identity changes as
individuals, but also, in another way, corporately. It is like when I got
married, I remember sitting on the couch thinking, “Life as I know it is so
different. I don’t think of anything the same way.”
This is a very similar thing when we get saved. We can’t
just think things individually any more, just like when I get married and now I
am one with another sinner. We have to wrestle with things together. When we
trust Jesus, not only do we become one with Jesus, we become one with this
people. There is a unity that Jesus has already won for us, and we are now
beginning to fight for it. It is just like how I can’t get married and then
decide to ignore my wife. In the same way, you can’t just be adopted into a new
family and ignore your brothers and sisters. It makes no sense. It is
illogical.
So not only are you robbing them of the ways that you can
edify them; you are robbing yourself of the ways they can edify you—and it is
core to what it means to follow Jesus. So I encourage that young man strongly:
Do whatever you can to find a church that preaches God’s word, that is centered
around the gospel and where people want to fight to love him more.
Trip Lee (@TripLee) is an author, teacher, hip-hop artist, and thought leader. He is also a pastor in Atlanta and regularly preaches and teaches at Christian conferences and events. Trip's Website
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