Do You Have To Go To Church?

Keith Green says it well:

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonalds makes you hamburger.

That’s all well and good. We know that those people who go to church are not all saved. Salvation is the result of dying to self. It is the result of becoming alive in God through Christ.

So when you’re saved, you have to go to church, right?

NO!!!

The whole concept of “going to church” is not in the Bible. You don’t go to church, you are the church. The Greek word for church is transliterated eklesia and it means those who are called out.

So if we’re called out of the world (Revelation 18:4), then we should be a separated people. But that doesn’t mean we need to “belong to a local church.” On the contrary, it means that we, as saints, should be in ongoing fellowship with one another, serving each other, and encouraging each other.

That doesn’t have to happen in a local church fellowship. It can, though.

I think that when we “go to church,” too often we run the risk of thinking that simply punching the time card is enough. Before the world was formed, God prepared good works for us to do (cf. Ephesians 2:10). “Going to church” just to sit there and passively listen to someone else tell us God’s word is not a Biblical concept.

I want to challenge you to stop sitting on your blessed assurance and start living for the Lord God Almighty. Live your life. Quit being a spectator.