Why do I need to Go to Church?

I live a sincere life and do good deeds, why do I need to go to church? This is the question for the week and the topic of our discussion on Sunday. I see in this question a few different topics. If this is a question about salvation, in other words, why do I have to go to church if I want to be saved? Then the answer is that salvation is not obtained from church attendance. However, salvation is also not obtained through a sincere life and good deeds. If that were the case then Jesus would not have needed to give up his life for us on the cross. No, we are sinners incapable of doing any good deeds on our own.

Now, if the question is why do I need to go to church, which is how I tend to take it, then the answer is one of those that is simple and yet profound. We need to go to church because we need it. The church is the body of Christ. It is in the church that the Holy Spirit daily and richly forgives all of my sins and the sins of all believers. It is in the church where God's people work and live together to support and encourage one another in their lives and discipleship and to be about the work that God has given them to do in making known the love, grace, mercy and forgiveness of God in Jesus.

Now this type of question usually comes up, because the people who make up the church are sinners and they can mess up and give bad impressions. When this happens we tend to focus on the church as an institution and see it in terms of power and organization and all that kind of stuff. But the church is really a community of grace that lives today in God's future reality of tomorrow. They live in the kingdom of God. They experience a foretaste of the feast that is to come.

This is the kind of community that the world needs. Not because they are misbehaving, but because they need the love and forgiveness and mercy that God pours out into the lives of his people, so that they can then have those things mark their lives also. The church does not exist for the sake of the church, but rather for the sake of the world who does not know God.

Our God is about the work of reconciling creation back to himself. He blesses us with the privilege of being ministers of reconciliation too. I think everyone desires to live lives in connection with people. We want to be loved and to love. That is something that the church has to offer. That is why we need to go to church.

God's blessings and peace in Jesus be yours this week and always.

 

Sincerely,

Pastor CJ

 

P.S. This is the last topic I have on the list, so if you have anything you would like to ask or talk about, now is the time to ask. If you don't want to leave a post here, you can e-mail your questions to me at cjransdell@oflc.net