Subject: A New Reformation? |
Bible Note: Dear Darcy, Check out http://www.reformed.com/pub/church.htm for a different perspective than your own regarding church membership. Is Church Membership Optional? By: Stephen Pribble -------------------------------------------------- “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves” (Hebrews 13:17) God has given us His inscripturated word, unchanging, written in the Bible; He commissions the preacher to expound and apply that word to the situation facing us, driving it home in our lives as the carpenter drives the nail. The preacher speaks for God, because God has spoken in the Bible; His voice resounds with the familiar “Thus saith the Lord.” The church has the responsibility to listen, and to evaluate everything heard in light of God’s revealed truth. We will consider the curious modern phenomenon of the unattached believer. This none-too-rare species fancies himself somehow to be a member of the universal church, but not of the local church. Like Joseph of Arimathea, he is “a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews” (John 19:38). Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the Apostle exhorts his readers—recent converts from Judaism—not to turn back from Christianity, their new-found faith, to the old, comfortable ways of their apostate religion. For these brave souls, embracing Christianity had involved great sacrifice and pain—being cast out by family, friend and community, cast out of the temple and synagogue, cast out by a religion that by this time, through its accommodation and compromise, had become officially recognized by the Roman Empire, and driven to a fugitive band of unproven men and women who possessed no real estate and clung only to the promises of God. Over and over in the book of Hebrews we find strong warnings to these recent converts not to turn back, not to forsake the truth of Christianity at any cost. In our text the Apostle orders these new Christians, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves.” It is to these two commands of Scripture—obey and submit—that we will direct our attention. What do they mean, and how can we obey? John |