How would you describe the difference between a couple who love each other and live together, but are not married, and a couple who are? That’s become a difficult question for our culture to answer. Some might say, “It’s just a piece of paper,” or “It’s just an old-fashioned ceremony.” Some Christians might add, “What does the Bible say about weddings anyway?”
Why marriage needs a beginning
While the Bible does use the words “marry” and “marriage,” rather than add an eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt have a wedding,” there’s a commandment not to commit adultery. And you begin to realize that if it’s a sin to sleep with someone who is not your husband or wife, then there must be some formal way to identify where a marriage begins and ends. In a world without weddings or marriage, adultery would be impossible to define. Because the lines were never formally drawn, it would be impossible to nail down when you’d actually crossed them. In that sense, church membership is a little bit like marriage.
Why the church needs a process for belonging
Like commandments about weddings, it’s tough to find lots of verses mentioning church membership. Instead, there are lots of teachings and commands that are impossible to fulfill without some kind of process of church membership underpinning them. So, for instance, Paul exhorts the leaders in the church at Ephesus to “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock” (Acts 20:28), but without some process of membership, it becomes difficult for leaders to know who they are responsible for.
Similarly, the author of Hebrews writes, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:17), but without church membership, we’re in the same position as someone trying to obey the adultery verses without the concept of a wedding. Which Christian leaders do you have to submit to: John MacArthur or Benny Hinn? And surely God can’t hold a leader accountable for every Christian alive.
Church membership is the process by which a Christian says, “I submit myself to this church and its leadership,” and in return, the church welcomes you into a church family committed to serving one another and reaching the community.
How commitment strengthens love
When a couple lives together without a wedding, they might say, “We love each other, and that’s what’s most important.” But in the back of their mind, there’s always the question, “Doesn’t he love me enough to make a commitment to me?” Without church membership, there is a distance between a believer and the church that says, “I’m keeping my options open.”
How commitment leads to growth
While I know that God uses many things to encourage us in our walk with Him, I believe His main strategy is the church. While it can feel like a small technicality, without a clear commitment as a member of a specific local church, a Christian can be like a student who, instead of registering in a particular school, drops in on classes they find helpful, hands in homework they feel they’d benefit from, and otherwise keeps their distance from the administration. That would be an unlikely path to academic success.
Talking about love and marriage is a lot more fun than talking about a wedding licence. But the former is richer and more secure because of the latter.
In awe of Him,
Paul
