I am the church

There’s somebody you have to know

W

hat does it mean to belong to Christ?

When I was a young boy, I belonged to a gang. We weren’t a cool or dangerous gang, nor were we a big gang. There were three of us. I can’t really remember what we decided to call ourselves in the end, but I do remember that I was the brains of the outfit - Sasha Van Kessell was the heart and a large Scandinavian boy named Nemo (incredible, I know) was the muscle. There were only two requirements for being in our gang. They were that you had to know us, and that you had to be able to walk all the way across the arm railing of our favourite little bridge in Tatlow Park without falling into the creek below. On such stringent standards are warriors made.

Membership has its rewards, as the tagline for a popular credit card company tells us. It also has its responsibilities. In my childhood gang, the responsibilities (blowing up things with firecrackers) and the rewards (blowing up things with firecrackers) are both relatively small. When talking about belonging to the Kingdom of God, or the Body of Christ on earth, the promised rewards and expected responsibilities are almost too staggering to truly contemplate. What does it mean to belong to Christ, as opposed to belonging to the world? This is really the primary question of life. You can’t be an independent - you either belong to Christ or you belong to the world. “You’re gonna have to serve somebody”, to quote Bob Dylan. If you choose not to serve Christ you have chosen, in effect, to serve that which is “anti” Christ. Scary words, I know, but plainly laid out in Scripture.

In the book of 1 John, what it means to “belong to Christ” is boiled down roughly into four themes: believing in Jesus as the Christ and the son of God; obeying Christ’s commands; avoiding sin; and loving your brothers (in the sense of other believers). This is simply describing what it means to be citizens in the Kingdom of God; it doesn’t make sense to say you follow Christ if you don’t believe in him, if don’t obey him, if you continue to sin or if hate your brother. Living in that way really means that you belong to the world.

The world and everything in it should not be “loved” by those who belong to Christ, it will someday pass away. However, this does not mean we shouldn’t love people - on the contrary Scripture is quite clear that we should. It means that our loyalty and devotion must be absolutely devoted to Christ, not to “the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does.” (1 John 2:16). It means we avoid buying into the world’s system or values, as they are opposed to the Kingdom of God.

It is possible to belong to the church and not to Christ. There are many active Sunday-attending church folk who have signed all the appropriate membership documents and participated in all the required membership rituals, yet who are in no way serving God with their lives. They may belong to the earthly organization of a particular church, but they do not have membership in the Kingdom of God.

Correspondingly you can’t belong to Christ and not also belong to the church. When we receive Christ we get his Body as well - the church, his people, his family. We become members, quite literally, of Christ, and as such become part of the church. Sure, we have various membership requirements for different parts of the church, and different denominational distinctives, but these aside, the bottom line is that when we accept Christ, we are accepted into his Kingdom and into his church. When we belong to Christ, we belong to his family as well. This is a part of the requirement and the reward of membership.

Membership in my childhood gang was a fairly straightforward matter. It was very easy for us to determine whether someone was in the gang or whether they were destined to be splashing around in the creek. The matter of who belongs in the Body of Christ and who doesn’t is not quite so cut and dry, at least from our perspective. There may be no bridge railing to cross, but there is somebody you have to know.

Writer: Aaron White and his wife Cherie, along with their four children and one not-long-for-this-world goldfish, live in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and give leadership to 614 Vancouver, Canada. Aaron is interested in nearly everything, and knows next to nothing.

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