What Does the Bible Say About Church Membership?
Introduction
Recently, our washing machine broke down and we had a service man come to repair it. As we began to talk I learned that he was a Christian. Almost as soon as we began to talk about the Lord, he brought up the issue of church membership, boasting that in his church, they did not believe in membership because there was nothing about it in the Bible. It was not the first time I had heard this view. In fact, I held the same view myself for several years until I began to see more clearly that the Bible actually has a lot to say about church membership.
But that conversation with the appliance repair man reminded me that many people do not understand the biblical basis for church membership. Some go ahead and join a church because "that is the way things are done," but have no real understanding of what God has said about the matter. Others refuse to join a church at all because they think it is simply a tradition of men that is against the will of God. Still others never bother to join anywhere because they do not see any Biblical mandate to do so and prefer to be on their own. If you are in any of these categories, it is my hope that this booklet will help you to understand the Biblical basis for church membership.
What is a member?
A member is simply: "a distinct part of a whole." For example, we speak of the members of the body--the arms, legs, head, eyes, etc. Each member is different, but each belongs to one body. We speak of the members of a club, such as those who have the privilege to the use the country club because they have paid their membership fees. Each member is distinct, yet they are one club. Christians have the privilege of being members of Christ. Each individual Christian is distinct, but all are one in Christ Jesus. As I Cor. 12:12-14 says,
For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many.
This is the most blessed membership of all! In fact, it is so precious that no believer would ever want to deny it, and in my experience, I have never met one who did. To be members of the body of Christ is to be members of a redeemed body! Christ, the head of the body, has suffered the curse of the law in behalf of every member. To be cut off from this body is to be cut off from salvation.But this membership in Christ's body is also intended to have a concrete, external expression in the community of His people in the world.
Church officers to receive and remove members.
Before Christ ascended into heaven, He instructed His apostles concerning His church and who was to be included in it as a member. After He ascended, He sent the Holy Spirit to give them perfect remembrance of all that He had told them on earth, thereby enabling them to teach and act in perfect conformity to His will. As those who were appointed to establish the foundation of the church, they laid down the principles and guidelines regarding church membership. From their practice and words as they are recorded in Scripture, we have the will of Christ concerning who is to be admitted and who is to be excluded from the church (Acts 2:38-42, II John 9-11, I Cor. 5).
The apostles also established the practice of ordaining elders in every church as overseers. One of the most important functions of these overseers is to receive and exclude members from the church in compliance with Christ's will. These elders are required to be men who know and practice God's truth (see list of qualifications in I Timothy 3), thereby assuring that they will be able act in conformity to the apostolic guidelines for their ministry as they are set down for us in the Bible. It is especially important for them to understand who is to be received into the membership of the church and who is to be excluded.
Much more could be said about the transfer of responsibility from the Apostles to the elders, but what is important for us to understand with respect to church membership is that Christ has called the church to receive and remove members according to the guidelines that He has established (Matt. 16:18-19, 28:18-20). He has revealed in the Bible that individuals and their children1 are to be received into the church by baptism when they repent of their sins and profess faith in Christ alone for salvation (Acts 2:38-42, 8:34-37, 10:44-48, 16:31-34, Gal. 3:26-28). By baptism, they are identified as God's people. While it is true that only God knows who are truly His disciples (which are defined by Jesus as those who continue in His Word), it is nevertheless God's will for all who outwardly repent of their sins and who outwardly profess faith in Christ to be identified with God's people. It is never the duty of the elders to try to read what is in men's hearts, but it is always their duty to include those who say that they trust in Christ and who have outwardly turned from their sins.
However, Christ has also given the elders the responsibility to remove those who do not continue in their outward profession. For example, in Matt. 18:15-18, He instructs the officers of the church2 to remove those who refuse to repent of their sin according to following mandate:
Matt 18:15-17: And if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one of two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer.
To be a "Gentile and tax-gatherer" means to be one who is excluded from the church. This is in keeping with the Old Testament commandment repeated by Paul in I Cor. 5:13 to "put away from yourselves the evil person." Although churches throughout history have been very negligent to obey this command, it is nevertheless the will of Jesus Christ. He explains that whenever the church does this, the elders are simply carrying out on earth His decision that has already been made in heaven:Matt 18:18: Truly I say to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. [Translated to bring out the tenses in the original]
Christ is showing by these words that it is His will that His church officially receive and remove members from the church on earth. It is very obvious, therefore, that He wants there to be a declaration on earth of who is in and who is out of the church. The church on earth has a solemn responsibility to act according to the guidelines that Jesus has appointed because it is His church and He has told us who is to be included and who is to be excluded. God forbid that we should be guilty of including those whom Christ has told us are to be excluded, or that we should exclude those whom He has told us are to be included!Those inside the Church must be readily identified.
As Christians, it is important for us to know who is in the church and who is not. Paul clearly points to the distinction between those who are in the church and those who are "outside" the church in a number of passages that could not be obeyed if there were no recognized membership:
I Cor. 5:9-13: I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters; for then you would have to go out of the world. But actually I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler- not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges.
Gal. 6:10: So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.
I Cor. 6:5-6: Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?
Every Christian is to join a particular church.
The church of Jesus Christ is made up of many particular churches, each with its own elders and members. The scriptures speak, for example, of a church that meets in a house:
Col. 4:15 Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea and also Nympha and the church that is in her house.
Philem. 1:2 ...to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house.
God has set up the church in this way so that every member of the body of Christ can also be identified with a particular church where he can receive the personal care and oversight that Christ has ordained. Each believer is commanded to |obey your leaders, and submit to them; for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an account" (Heb. 13:17). These leaders have a great responsibility to shepherd the church of God which He has purchased with His own blood (Acts 20:28-31). In order for them to fulfill their responsibility, it is essential for them to know each of the sheep (members) by name. What chaos there would be in the body of Christ if the leaders did not know whom they were responsible to oversee! How would they be able to give an account to God about such members? And how would the members be able to submit to them if they did not know who their particular leaders were? Sadly, this is the case for those Christians who never join a particular church, but drift around from one church to another with nobody appointed to look out for them. They have, in effect, removed themselves from the care that Christ has so graciously and wisely appointed for them.
Believers are to confess Christ formally before men.
Jesus Christ has commanded that every one of His disciples confess Him before men. He punctuated this requirement with these solemn words:
(Matt. 10:32-33) Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.
When you consider that Jesus made this statement at a time when He had some "disciples" who had believed in secret and would not confess Him openly for fear of the Jews (John 7:13, 12:42-43), it makes the duty all the more compelling--it was something that was too be done even when their was a possibility of fatal consequences.In I Tim 6:12, Paul reminds Timothy that he had "made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." Several factors evidence that this confession was not a casual profession of his belief, but a formal vow: 1. Timothy's confession was done before witnesses; 2. the definite article is used, "the good confession," to show that it is a particular confession that Paul has in mind, not a general one; 3. The aorist tense is used (lit. "you confessed the good confession"4) which refers to simple rather than continual action, again indicating that Timothy's confession was a one time event and; 4. Timothy's confession is patterned after the confession of Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate (John 18:33-37), which was an official declaration by Christ (under oath) that He was the King of the Jews.
Perhaps you are thinking, what does Timothy's confession have to do with church membership? Much indeed! When we baptize new members into the church, we require them to publicly confess their faith before witnesses (the elders). This is not simply a tradition that has developed over the years; it is a practice that was begun by the apostles and therefore instituted by Christ. The prospective member is entering into a covenant with God and His church and this cannot be done without words. Paul emphasizes the need to confess Christ in Romans 10:8-10:
The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart--that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
This passage does not teach that faith in the heart and confession with the mouth are equally instrumental in our salvation, but demonstrates that the two must go together. Confession with the mouth without belief in the heart is damnable hypocrisy; and faith without confession is not genuine faith.I have already explained that Timothy's confession was a one-time event, and it seems reasonable to suppose that the time when Timothy officially "confessed the good confession" was the time when he became a member of the New Testament Church. From the very beginning believers with their children were added to the Church5 upon profession of faith. In Acts 2:1-47, three thousand were added in one day. It was possible to count the members because they confessed their faith and were baptized. At his baptism, the believer officially confesses his faith and enters into covenant with God along with his children, and so becomes a member. He is justified by faith alone, but the covenant is signified and sealed by baptism. It is possible to be saved without baptism and church membership (like the thief on the cross), but the person who refuses to be baptized or who denies his baptism by removing himself from the church cannot be regarded as a Christian. He has cut himself off from the covenant and must be regarded as an unbeliever.
The marriage covenant provides an apt analogy of this. A couple may be committed to each other in their hearts, but God has called them to marry; that is, to enter into a covenant relationship by exchanging vows in the presence of witnesses before they enter into the privileges of marriage. The marriage ceremony seals the marriage covenant and makes it official. In the same way, the baptism of the confessing Christian and his children officially seals the covenant which he has entered into with God and brings him and his children into the membership of the visible church with its privileges. The Westminster Larger Catechism outlines these privileges as follows:
The visible church hath the privilege of being under God's special care and government; of being protected and preserved in all ages, not withstanding the opposition of enemies; and of enjoying the communion of saints, the ordinary means of salvation, and offers of grace by Christ to all the members of it in the ministry of the gospel, testifying, that whosoever believes in him shall be saved, and excluding none that will come to him.
No wonder the apostles were anxious to bring all who professed Christ into the visible church as quickly as possible. In Acts 2:1-47, three thousand were baptized and added to the church on the same day they believed. In Acts 16:1-40, the formerly pagan Philippian jailer and his household were baptized in the middle of the night after a single evening of instruction. The apostles did not wish to leave believers and their children outside the pale of the visible church, for that is Satan's territory (I Cor. 5:5) and the place of the "gentile and tax collector" (Matt. 18:17), not the place of the child of God. It belongs to the child of God to be visibly joined to the people of God, and under the care and discipline of the elders of a particular church. "So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household (Eph. 2:19)." This is not merely an abstract, intangible connection, but a visible membership in which mutual care and ministry are exercised among the members.Where are you? Are you in the Church or out of the Church?
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Footnotes:
1 Space does not permit a full discussion of this topic at present. Suffice it to say, the children of believers are members of the visible church and are numbered among the people of God (Gen. 17:9-14). In I Cor. 7:14, Paul points to the distinction between a believer's children who are holy and an unbelievers children who are unclean. What else can this refer to but that such children are set apart to God as members of the visible church? It is their duty to "make the good confession" for themselves when they come to understanding and faith. (back)
2It should be noted that the word "church" in the phrase, "tell it to the church" was used by Jesus to refer to the Jewish church which was the only church at the time of His speaking. The word "church" or assembly was often used to refer to the assembly of elders in the synagogue who were responsible for carrying out discipline. Hence, when Jesus tells the church to remove the impenitent, He refers to the elders. (back)
3 Official simply means a declaration by the officers (officials) as the ministers of Christ. As has been seen, these officers are the elders. (back)
4 wmologhsav thn kalhn omologian (back)
5 To be a member of the church does not necessarily mean that a person is born again. There are two aspects to the church, the visible aspect and the invisible aspect. The visible aspect includes all those who are outwardly in Christ: the visible manifestation of the people of God on earth; and the invisible aspect includes all those and only those who will be heaven. (back)