Three Glorious Blessings that Come When We Commit Ourselves to a Local Church

1. Mutual Ministry
Peter indicates in 1 Peter 4:10 that every believer has at least one spiritual gift and that these gifts are given for the edification of the church. He writes, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10). Likewise, Paul exhorts the Corinthians who were seeking spiritual gifts for their own edification rather than the edification of the body, saying “So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church” (1 Cor 14:12). Note that the primary purpose of spiritual gifts is that we might use them to build up those who are part of the church body. This is the purpose for which God bestows spiritual gifts. And since we see here that every Christian has at least one spiritual gift, every Christian is, thefore, called to edify the body in some way. If we’re not doing life together with a group of people in the church, then we will have no context in which to exercise these gifts—we will have no context in which to fulfill the purpose for which God has given us the gift. If we have the gift of encouragement, who are we going to encourage? If we have the gift of mercy, with whom are we going to empathize? If we have the gift of exhortation, whom are we going to exhort? This is why a commitment to the local church is so important. The local church provides the context in which we are able to exercise the spiritual gifts with which we’ve been entrusted. Moreover, participation in the local church also, therefore, allows us to experience the blessing of being built up by others in our church as they exercise their own spiritual gifts in ministry to us. And so that’s what I mean by "mutual ministry." Mutual ministry is what happens when we exercise our gifts to build up others and experience spiritual growth as others use their gifts in ministry to us.

2. Personal Accountability
The second thing we experience when we commit ourselves to the local church is personal accountability. When we join ourselves to a body of believers, we voluntarily place ourselves in a position in which we allow fellow believers to hold us accountable. Our brothers and sisters in Christ help us to see if we’re living in a way that is consistent with our profession of faith. We say that Christ is our Lord and we want to live according to His Word. And so if, for example, we are struggling with the sin of pride, or laziness, or sexual sin, or gossip, or whatever, then our brothers and sisters can lovingly confront us about our sin and encourage us to take the steps we need to take to put these sins to death. Those who are part of our church hold us accountable to live in a way that is consistent with the words we speak—that’s personally accountability.

3. The Rekindling of Our Passion for Christ
A commitment to the local church fans the flames of our passion for Christ. Have you ever noticed that when we get around people who are passionate about the same things we’re passionate about, that we tend to fuel one another’s fire? When you get a couple of guys together who are really into football, the conversation may start off slow. They’re sitting out on the patio, grilling some burgers, and one of them asks, “Hey, did you happen to catch the Nebraska/Iowa State game yesterday?” And so they begin to talk about it and the conversation progresses and they start to talk a little faster and their voices start to escalate, and pretty soon these guys are essentially reliving the game—they’re standing up, yelling about some bad call a referee made, completely oblivious to the hamburgers or anything else going on around them.

Now, how much more true should that be of us as Christians? As Christians, God has given us a passion for Christ. When we come to faith in Christ, God takes our hard hearts and gives us hearts that respond to him in saving faith. These new hearts, then, have within them a desire for God, so that when we come together to study the Bible, and when we begin to consider God’s grace towards us, and as we continue to ponder God’s redemptive work in our lives, the Spirit of God wells up within us and ignites that desire for God within us so that our hearts rejoice in the things of God. Our hearts become stirred as we spend time in God’s Word and have fellowship with other believers—people who are passionate about the same things we’re passionate about—and as we are reminded of the way that God is at work in our midst.

Praise God for giving us a community to which to belong!