A Place to Belong

After their first taste of persecution, The Bible says of Peter and John, “And being let go, they went to their own company and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them” (Acts 4:23). Let me ask you plainly, do you have your own company? Salvation may be personal, but it is not private. The life of God is meant to be lived out in the community of like-minded believers in Jesus Christ. There is a trend over the last couple of decades of people who say, “Yes to Jesus, but No to the church.” That kind of Christian is an aberration. The New Testament presents belonging to a church community as far more than optional, it’s foundational to Christian identity and spiritual health. This is not just an obligation to fulfill but a blessing to receive, intended to enrich your life and walk with Christ.

I love reading about the Holy Spirit’s outpouring on the Day of Pentecost. The people who heard Peter’s preaching and were convicted of their sin, responded in amazing fashion.

“Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:41,42).

The picture of the church as a place to belong was embodied intensely in the early church. This organic unity of the body of Christ, where members are interdependent and joined in Christ the head is highlighted in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13:

“For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being 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 have all been made to drink into one Spirit.”

We are also told that this is not accidental but strategic, “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased” (1 Corinthians 12:18). This isn’t merely positional or social, it actively disallows individualistic faith centered on the “I.”  Scripture is filled with wonderful images of the church: God’s city, God’s family, God’s temple, God’s building, God’s army, or the Lord’s Body. All of them lead to the same thing: a sense of belonging. Eric Lane wrote,

“To be a member of a family is to belong to a community bound by a common fatherhood. To be a stone in his temple means to belong to a worshiping community. To be part of a body means to belong to a living, functioning, serving, witnessing community. Put together you have the main functions of an individual Christian. Evidently, we are meant to fulfill these not on our own but together in the church.”