The answer to the previous question lies first and foremost in the Word of God. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus gave Peter and the community of the disciples the authority and responsibility to regulate who may enter into the church and who may remain within it. In Matthew 16:17-19, Jesus responded to Peter’s confession that he was the Christ with the prediction that he would build his church, “upon this rock.” What rock Jesus is actually referring to is a matter of some debate,1 but Jesus’ following statement is of greater importance to the issue of membership. Jesus said that he would give Peter the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” a statement which he explained involved binding and loosing things here on earth. This statement is clarified further by Jesus’ statement in Matthew 18:18. The context of Matthew 18 makes it clear that Jesus is referring to church discipline, or more accurately accepting ones into and removing ones from the membership of the church.2 In these two passages, Jesus gave Peter and the church authority to evaluate not only those who are within but also those who would enter the church.3 This authority was not boundless, as Azurdia explains, “this is not a carte blanche promise that heaven will ratify the decisions of the church, but more significantly, that when the church carries out this work on earth her decisions will reflect the will of God in heaven.”4 This limited authority established a fixed boundary by which those who are within the church can be identified from those who are without.
The closing verses of Matthew’s gospel give another clear statement of Jesus’ plan for the church. He told his disciples that they were to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:19-20) These commands by Jesus involve far more than simple evangelism. His disciples were expected to reproduce themselves among the nations, not just intellectually, but also by teaching others to obey what they had been taught. While these commands involve a commitment of time and effort, the command to baptize them is most pertinent to the discussion of membership. Wilkins states, “In the act of baptism, the new disciple identifies with Jesus and his community of faith and gives public declaration that she or he has become a life-long adherent to Jesus.”5 What is taking place in Matthew 28 then is the practical outworking of the power of the keys given in chapters 16 and 18. According to Leeman, “the church exercises its authoritative keys by baptizing people into the church and teaching them everything that Christ commanded.”6 In order for the church to fulfill the Great Commission, it is not sufficient to evangelize others, but they must be added to the church.
Church membership is also alluded to in the book of Acts in the following ways. First, believers were added to individual churches regularly.7 Dever states, “Without a specific community of people, a church does not exist,”8 therefore, to add ones to the church indicates that there was already a defined group of people who belonged to each particular congregation. Second, churches are identified by specific geographic locations, thereby distinguishing one from another.9 In fact, nearly every reference to the church in the book of Acts is directed either to one specific local church or to local churches collectively found in a particular region or city.10 That there were local churches in Acts is clear, but more important than their existence is the expectation that the majority, if not all, of the believers in a specific place would be involved in a local congregation. This assumption may be seen in the way in which the Apostles instructed the churches concerning doctrine and practice.
While nearly all of the epistles were written to local church congregations, those which were not specifically addressed to a particular church provide support for the idea of church membership even more clearly than the epistles which were. In nearly every case where a church is not mentioned, the letter is addressed to the saints in a particular city. If Paul expected all of the saints in Rome, for instance, to read his letter, he must have assumed that there was some central location where his letter might be made available to them.11 The same would be true of James and Peter, writing to the believers who were scattered throughout the Roman Empire.12 That central location in each city would be the local church.13 Even in those cases where a specific body is not identified, the content of the letter provides a clearer picture of the New Testament practice of church membership.
Paul, in his epistle to the Romans indicates that the church is one body with Christ, and each Christian is a member, “one of another.”14 What exactly is the significance of this relationship between Christ, the church and Christians? On the one hand, this restricts membership in the church to believers, since only those who are actually joined to Christ can be members of his body. On the other hand, this imagery also defines the relationship between the individual Christians who make up his body. The relationship that individual Christians have with Christ informs the relationship they share with each other. Submission to Christ is demonstrated by submission to others, just as love for Christ is demonstrated by a love for others. Volf describes the relationship as follows, “The identification of Christ and the church, however – ‘your bodies [are] members of Christ’ – derives from the union between Christ and Christians, a union that cannot be conceived in physical categories, and a union for which the enduring distinction between the two is of decisive importance. Thus the identification of Christ and the church stands for the particular kind of personal communion between Christ and Christians, a communion perhaps best described as ‘personal interiority’; Christ indwells in every Christian and is internal to that person as a person.”15 In other words, the identification of the believer with Christ is caught up in Christ’s identification with the church, they cannot be separated. That this relationship must be borne out in a local church becomes evident when one considers the instructions given to the church for believers.
The Scriptures give several specific commands for believers to follow. These commands can best be fulfilled within the context of a local church, indeed one might argue that they can only be fulfilled completely within a local assembly.16 Christians are commanded to love one another (Rom. 12:10,18; 1 Thess. 3:12; 4:9; 1 Pet. 1:22; 1 John 3:11), honor one another (Rom. 12:10), live in harmony with one another (Rom. 12:16), edify one another (Rom. 14:19; Col. 3:16; 1 Thess. 5:7; Heb. 3:13; 10:24-25), receive one another (Rom. 15:7; 1 Pet. 4:9), care for one another (1 Cor. 12:25), serve one another (Gal. 5:13), suffer with one another (Eph. 4:2; Col. 3:13), speak truth to one another (Col. 3:9), forgive one another (Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13) and pray for one another (Jas. 5:16). That these commands must be acted upon within a local body of believers is evident, since we cannot possibly live them out to all Christians everywhere.17 When one considers the overall message of the New Testament concerning the church, it is clear that membership in a local body of believers is one expected outcome of true faith.
1 For most of church history, this was understood to refer to Peter, but with the Reformation’s reaction against the Catholic Church’s doctrine of apostolic succession, some commentators argued that Jesus was referring himself as the rock in contrast to Peter. Craig Keener, in his commentary on Matthew states, “Peter is the ‘rock’ because he is the one who confessed Jesus as the Christ in this context.” He also says, “Others who share his proclamation also share his authority in building the church.” Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 1999), 427.
2 David McClister “Where Two or Three are Gathered Together: Literary Structure as a Key to Meaning in Matt. 17:22-20:19,” JETS 39.4 (December 1996): 555. McClister arranges Matthew 17:22-20:19 in a chiastic structure, comparing 18:15-17 to 18:21-35. Concerning vv.15-17 he states, “When we read the well-known passage on church discipline in this context, we find that it is not primarily about the church but continues the idea that disciples are to show concern for each other.” The problem with McClister’s statement is that is assumes that disciples can effectively practice confrontation of sin outside the structure offered by commitment to a local church, a practice which is highly unlikely to occur and even less likely to succeed.
3 Keener, 430. He explains that Matthew 16:18-19 refer to evaluating those who would enter the church, while Matthew 18:18 refers to disciplining those who are already a part of the church.
4 Azurdia, 70.
5 Michael J. Wilkins, The NIV Application Commentary: Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 954-955.
6 Leeman, 191.
7 In Acts 2:41, 47 the believers were added to “the church,” but at that time there was only one local church, namely the church in Jerusalem. Acts 16:5 states that the churches in Galatia increased in number daily.
8 Dever, 47.
9 Acts 8:1; 9:31; 11:22; 13:1; 14:26-27; 15:4; 18:22; 20:17. See also Rom. 16:5, 16; 1 Cor. 1:1-2; 7:17; 11:16; 16:19; 2 Cor. 8:1; 12:13; Gal. 1:22; Col. 4:16-17; 2 Thess. 2:14.
10 One obvious exception is the reference to the “church in the wilderness” made by Stephen in Acts 7:38. This use of the word “church” is different from the other references because it refers to the congregation of Israelites at Sinai rather than the body of Christ.
11 Rom. 1:7.
12 Jas. 1:1; 1 Pet. 1:1-2; 2 Pet. 1:1.
13 Even the epistles written to Timothy and Titus were each written to a man who was a pastor of a local church.
14 Romans 12:4-5 Cf. 1 Cor. 12:12-27; Eph. 4:12-16; Col. 1:18, 24. In these passages, Paul indicates that all believers are members of the body of Christ, which is the church, but he also emphasizes the fact that each Christian is a member of one another.
15 Volf, 143.
16 Vanhoozer, 48. He describes the church as, “a God-ordained means for inculcating and cultivating the salvation that we have in Christ…For the Christian life is not simply a matter of faith’s one-time decision, but of faith’s ongoing nurture – hence the necessity and significance of the visible church.”
17 Dever, 49.