I have had a few friends drop me lines about "Christians". They have landed in two categories of questions. The first, is about Christians who "blindly follow" just because they grew up "going to church". The second is about Christians who think "going to church" is all that's required of them to be "good Christians".
Is going "to church" all that is required to be "Christian"? In other words, does going "to church" make one a Christian?
The reason that this is such an important issue is because of what many people in the emerging generations see in the church. They see hypocrisy. They see people put on their "Sunday" face for a few hours on the first day of the week and then act a different way the rest of the time. As more and more people play out their lives in social media the contradictions of their Sunday face and their Monday through Saturday face become more apparent to the tech savvy generations.
Isn't it interesting that during "church" the same person will "amen" Romans 13's admonition to honor the leaders that God appoints over us and then on Monday will post some sort of conspiracy theory about the President planning for mass killings of Americans? Not to mention the discontinuity in other major areas of life (honesty, integrity, etc).
This issue about "is going to church" all that matters comes from the heart of one who wants to know how "church goers" can be decidedly "un-Christian".
The simple and somewhat snarky response is, "No, going to church makes one a Christian in as much as walking into a garage makes one a car."
The entire concept of "going to church" is a problem in and of itself and I wrote about it over here. Attending a worship service is important in the life of the follower of Jesus. It is significant. However, one's attendance is not the test of faith. Our justification and reconciliation with God does not come from attending a worship service.
I remember asking a group of high school students, "What is the gospel?" These were kids that had been going to worship services for years. Their answer, "Believe in God and do good things." This is not the gospel. The gospel is ultimately about the creation, fall, redemption, and restoration by God. It is a holy God declaring a broken people "righteous" by grace through faith in the resurrected God the Son.
The thing of it though is that the church (God's people) must be understood in terms of the visible and the invisible. The visible church are those people that self identify as followers of Jesus. This is very broad. It includes the most ardent faithful follower of Jesus to the "Christmas and Easter" Christians and everything in between. The visible church will always include those who are authentically saved (the elect) and those who are not. The invisible church is comprised of only those who Scripture refers to as the "elect". We cannot read hearts. We are not privy to the mind of God. All that we can see is the fruit of the Spirit,
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. - Galatians 5:22-23
If you claim to follow Jesus check your heart and life against these qualities. Are they growing and being developed? If not, then turn to Christ and repent and trust him in faith. If you know someone who claims to be a Christian, evaluate their life against these qualities. Then determine if their attendance at a worship service makes them "Christian". However, be wary of one thing, the Scriptures are clear that you are judged by the same standard against which you judge.
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