Church Community Is a Necessary Part of Your Spiritual Formation
Christians Don’t Walk Alone
From one perspective, the true Christian can never be truly alone, for he or she is called to be, like Abraham, “a friend of God” (James 2:23). As Richard Sibbes put it, “Christ is our friend in taking our nature to make God and us friends again.”1 Jesus has called us his friends (John 15:15), and as the good shepherd (John 10:14), he will lead us “in paths of righteousness” for his name’s sake (Ps. 23:3). To know God in this intimate way is the greatest comfort that a person can have and is the ultimate answer to fear, anxiety, and loneliness:
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Ps. 73:26)
Having said this, we can also rejoice in the reality that God does not ordinarily ask us to walk apart from other people. Instead, he gives us the good gift of companionship: friends and spouses, pastors and parents, all those who come alongside in the home, the church, and beyond to encourage us in our Christian walk. Let’s begin to explore this theme by considering two of the basic contexts in which we meet other Christians—home and church—and then consider how Puritan authors envisioned those relationships as profound sources of spiritual nurture.
A Heart Aflame for God
Matthew C. Bingham
A Heart Aflame for God explores spiritual formation practices that are consistent with the 5 solas, presenting the riches of the Reformed tradition for 21st-century evangelicals.
Relationships in the Church
Despite the lofty rhetoric used to describe the significance of the household within God’s vision for human flourishing, we should not lose sight of the reality that another family, the church family, actually holds the greatest degree of spiritual significance for Christians. “How refreshing it is for God’s children, being hated by the world, to have communion with each other,” wrote Wilhelmus à Brakel. In so doing, they “make their needs known to each other, and in love and familiarity may enjoy each other’s fellowship.”2 The role of the church as God’s ordained means for our spiritual formation cannot be overstated and is worthy of its own book—in fact, of many books. And so its relatively brief treatment here should not be taken as a suggestion that it is in any way unimportant.3 But while we cannot here give a full account of what the church is and does, we can briefly sketch how Puritan authors viewed the church as that which, by its very nature, puts us into spiritually meaningful relationships with other people and thus becomes a powerful locus of spiritual formation. Just as the household places you into relationships with others by virtue of your birth, the household of God automatically relates you to other people by virtue of your new birth in Christ.
The individual Christian is always understood as one who belongs to the larger people of God. Over and against the distortions of an overly romanticized individualism and the manifest evils of an unchecked collectivism, the Bible exhibits a beautiful balance. When an individual is adopted by the Father, he joins a family of brothers and sisters. Though an individual Christian is one “living stone,” she is placed alongside others within a “spiritual house” of God’s design (1 Pet. 2:4–5). Each individual branch connects to the one true vine and thus, by extension, to all the other branches as well (John 15:5). Throughout its pages, Scripture consistently maintains the reality and integrity of the individual—“Even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Luke 12:7)—without ever losing sight of the community in which each individual is known and valued—“You are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19). Paul’s body metaphor captures the balance perfectly (Rom. 12:4–5; 1 Cor. 12:12–27). Though the eye is appreciated precisely as an eye, distinct from and contributing something different from the ears, hands, and feet, that same eye can only function—and indeed, only really makes sense—within the larger context of the entire body.
The individual Christian is always understood as one who belongs to the larger people of God.
This balance between the individual and the collective is what grounds the necessity and meaning of Christian relationships within the church. Puritan pastors often reflected on this dynamic, insisting that fellowship and worship with other believers conferred special blessings that could not be replicated in private. As David Clarkson expressed it, solitary Christians each enjoy a steady stream of God’s presence, but when “these several streams are united and meet in one, . . . the presence of God . . . becomes a river, a river that makes glad the city of God.” Similarly, while “the Lord has a dish for every particular soul that truly serves him,” there is a special goodness when “a multitude of dishes” come together to create “a spiritual feast.”4 These images communicate a conviction that the body of Christ gathered represents something more than merely the sum of its parts. Though in a sense some of the means for spiritual formation that we pursue in solitude are identical to those undertaken in corporate worship, early modern Protestants were convinced that something special is at work when God’s people come together.
One of those special things, of course, is the opportunity to observe the lives of other Christians up close. Commenting on Paul’s instruction to “keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us” (Phil. 3:17), D. A. Carson wisely notes that “Christian character is as much caught as taught—that is, it is picked up by constant association with mature Christians.”5 Early modern Reformed writers would have eagerly agreed, and they often extolled the tremendous benefit of watching and learning from others. “Each believer furnishes an example that benefits his neighbor,” wrote Campegius Vitringa, and “each one acts to arouse and enliven others, and this greatly fosters the godliness and sanctification of each participant.” Why would this be so? Because in God’s wisdom “we humans are more quickened and stimulated by example than by instructions and warnings.”6 God has made us to be inherently relational creatures, and when we see excellence in others, it draws us up toward excellence. This would hold true across any field of endeavor, whether carpentry, watercolor painting, or playing the piano. But in the context of living the Christian life, there is a special reason why, as Thomas Manton put it, “examples work more than precepts.” It is because “in them we see that the exercise of godlinesse, though difficult, yet is possible.” When we observe that men and women who “are subject to like passions, and have the same interests and concernments of flesh and blood that we have, can be thus mortified, self-denying, heavenly, holy,” we are encouraged to press on in the Christian life.7 If they can do it, fallen and frail as they are, we can do it too.
Notes:
- Richard Sibbes, Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1973), 7:122.
- Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, trans. Bartel Elshout (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995), 2:100.
- See the appendix, “A Brief Note on Spiritual Formation, Individualism, and the Church.”
- David Clarkson, The Practical Works of David Clarkson (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1865), 3:190–91.
- D. A. Carson, Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1996), 69.
- Campegius Vitringa, The Spiritual Life, trans. Charles K. Telfer (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), 133.
- Thomas Manton, “To the Reader,” in The Life and Death of Mr. Ignatius Jurdain, by Ferdinand Nicolls (London, 1655), aV.
This article is adapted from A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation by Matthew C. Bingham.
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