Matthew 16:18: "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
A true church exists where our triune God is worshiped, confessed, and communed with in spirit and truth; where the pure gospel is proclaimed; where the Word of God is preached faithfully; and where the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are administered properly, which requires the consistent practice of church discipline. Sadly, it’s getting harder and harder to find a true church. We live in a day when the church has become increasingly worldly and the world has become increasingly churchy. In many places, there are churches on every corner, but that doesn’t mean that the gospel is preached on every corner. It has even become difficult to find churches to recommend to others who are seeking a faithful church because many churches are rapidly changing and caving to the cultural zeitgeist (the spirit of the age).
One of the primary ways that churches are changing is through the abandonment of church membership. In many places, church membership is seen as old-fashioned and offensive to people’s individualistic sensibilities. But even churches that still have church membership often fail to make it meaningful because they do not consistently administer church discipline. Christ ordained church discipline for the spiritual care of professing believers; for the peace, purity, and unity of the church; for the corrective discipline of the unrepentant; and for the full restoration of the repentant. Simply put, churches that do not account for their members and that do not consistently practice church discipline do not truly care for people’s souls and are neither faithful nor true churches (see Belgic Confession 29).
Many churches that have abandoned membership and church discipline have done so because of pressure from the world, which labels us as unloving for obeying God. According to the world, it is not loving to ask people to commit themselves with membership vows to one local congregation where they pledge to give of their time, talents, and treasures and attend weekly to the ordinary means of grace in gathered worship. What’s more, according to the world, it’s certainly not loving to place people under church discipline because of their unrepentance over their sin. In our day, people want to be “loved” by being left alone to do, be, think, and believe whatever they want. But as Christians, we know that that is not true love. True love honors the Lord Jesus Christ and His church by caring for His flock just as He has commanded us so that we would shine brightly as a beautiful and pure light to the dark world around us.
Dr. Burk Parsons is editor of Tabletalk magazine and senior pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla. He is co translator and co editor of A Little Book on the Christian Life by John Calvin. He is on X at @BurkParsons.
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