Can a Christian Survive Without Church?

Professing Christians in this country do not prioritize their participation in the body of Christ.

There are more important things to do, so it is thought. More specifically, there are Christians who prioritize church attendance, but nothing that actually goes on in worship is especially important to them, and this is because they do not trust that God actually does something to them through the corporate means of grace. In this article, I want to address those who believe church attendance has little to no implications for the Christian life. This belief that the Christian can live the Christian life apart from the visible body of Christ is a belief which pervades American evangelicalism.

The thought process goes something like this: Since I’m saved, there is now nothing I have to do in order to finally be saved. I have, after all, already been saved. And salvation, after all, is a personal enterprise, not a corporate one.

Usually, when a person says, “I have been saved,” they’re either consciously or unconsciously referring to justification where God pardons their sins and imputes unto them the righteousness of Christ, and also to the new birth which occurs at that same time. For many professing Christians, this past event is the only truly salvific event they will ever experience in this life. From there on out, there is nothing they will experience which has anything to do with them actually reaching the finish line (Phil. 3:13; 2 Tim. 4:7). They become practical hyper-Calvinists, where, so they think, they can sit back and stagnate until they die. God will take care of it all anyway. And when they die, they will marvelously end up in glory. This basically amounts to a soteriology as follows: They are called, justified, they skip sanctification altogether, and then glory.

Instead, we need to understand sanctification as an integral part of our salvation. In 2 Thessalonians 2:13, Paul writes—

But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Sanctification, therefore, is part of our salvation (Rom. 8:13). If a person is to be finally saved, there must be some measure of Spirit-wrought sanctification in their lives. So, the question becomes, How does the Spirit sanctify His people? The answer? He has ordained means by which to do so, and those means are chiefly engaged within the context of the local church. Can the Spirit work apart from means? Absolutely. Does the Spirit work apart from means? Perhaps sometimes, but that is certainly not normative. The Bible tells us that the Spirit uses means to sanctify His people, and these means are primarily exercised within the context of the local church.

So, can a person live the Christian life apart from the church? God could certainly make them stand (Rom. 14:4), and cause them to persevere by His Spirit outside the local church. But the question is whether or not God has chosen to normally work in that way; and I would say the answer is, No. God has instead ordained that His people be sanctified in communion and fellowship with one another (Heb. 10:24, 25). It is, after all, the bride, who Christ is sanctifying, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church… (Eph. 5:25-27).”