Basic Elements of a NT Church: Covenant Membership

Review from last week:

Basic Elements:

Corporate Identity

Mission

Covenant Membership

Leadership

Worship

What is a church?

The church is an assembly of baptized (Acts 2:41), gospel-believing (I Corinthians 15:1-4), and gospel-proclaiming (Matthew 28:18-20) individuals who have formally covenanted together (Acts 2:41, Matthew 18:17, I Corinthians 5:2) under the lordship of Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:18) and the authority of His Word (II Peter 3:1-2), and who regularly affirm this sacred covenant through mutually edifying love (Ephesians 4:15-16), ordinance administration (I Corinthians 11:23-26), and the pursuit of biblical church restoration (Galatians 5:26-6:2).

What we expect:

We are assembling in this place not as customers or consumers but as an assembly of worshipers — for the express adoration of the Lord (I Peter 2:9) through God-centered, Christ-exalting, and Holy Spirit-controlled worship (I Corinthians 12:4-7). As an assembly, we expect that through the public reading (I Timothy 4:13), praying (I Timothy 2:1-4), preaching (II Timothy 4:1-2), and singing (Ephesians 5:19) of God’s Holy Word, we will worship and that the lost will be found, the stray will be brought back, the injured will be bound up, the weak will be strengthened, and the unjustly treated will find hope in the just God (Ezekiel 34:16).

Opening exercise:

Handout GBC Church Covenant

Right Now Media - Jonathan Leeman [Minutes 1:00 - 3:55]

What is the goal of this lesson?

To challenge the members to grow in their understanding of the significance of covenant membership

Why is this goal needed?

Symptoms of our wrong thinking: [Excerpt from p. 23, Church Membership by Jonathan Leeman]

1. Christians can think it’s fine to attend a church indefinitely without joining

2. Christians think of getting baptized apart from joining

3. Christians take the Lord’s Supper without joining

4. Christians view the Lord’s Supper as their own private, mystical experience for Christians and not as an activity for church members who are incorporated into body life together

5. Christians don’t integrate their Monday-to-Saturday lives with the lives of other saints

6. Christians assume thy can make a perpetual habit of being absent from the church’s gathering a few Sundays a month or more

7. Christians make major life decisions (moving, accepting a promotion, choosing a spouse, etc.) Without considering the effects of those decisions on the family of relationships in the church or without consulting the wisdom of the church’s pastors and other members

8. Christians buy homes or rent apartments with scant regard for how factors such as distance and cost will affect their abilities to serve their church

How will you accomplish this goal?

By showing passages in Titus which confirm membership and expect covenant.

Does Titus actually support and have this goal in mind? If so, how?

Big Idea:

Covenant membership is an explicitly assumed expectation in the New Testament for churches.

Body:

Three passages that reveal the expectation of covenant membership:

(1) Membership: Oversight & Accountability show expectation.

Titus 1:5 “appoint elders in every town”

Expectation on two counts:

(1) v. 7 oversight and

Christian leaders are made responsible for specific sheep. Peter tells elders, “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care” (1 Peter 5:2). Paul says the same to elders in Ephesus: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28). The elders know whom they are responsible for. - Jonathan Leeman [Ibid]

(2) accountability

Christians are responsible to submit to specific leaders. Obviously, you cannot expel someone from a church unless they belong to a church in the first place. “they did not really belong to us” - Leeman [Ibid]

(2) Membership: Group & Function identifications show expectation.

Titus 2:2-6 “Older men…women…younger...”

Expectation on couple of counts:

(1) groups identified which could not be purely a reference to all the people in the cities

(2) teaching and expectations where you have to know who is being taught and

(3) evidently living together in community that allows for observation of these behaviors.

(3) Membership: Personal Plural Pronouns show expectation.

Titus 3:3-7 The “we” and “us” passages (2:11-14).

Expectation: to speak of “we” and “us” is to also identify those who are not “we” and “us”.

(4) Covenant: Belonging & Community show covenant.

Titus 2:14 “a peculiar people”

This one uniquely references covenant in two ways:

(1) v. 14 to speak of covenant is to speak of oath of belonging and

Illustration:

“What’s the difference between two Christians who belong to the same church and two Christians who belong to different churches?”

If there is no difference, then we’d have to say that the local church does not exist. It would be like saying there’s no difference between my relationship with my wife and my relationship with other women. But the marriage does exist, and so there’s a big difference in the relationships. [Leeman, Ibid]

(2) it is a covenant community where plural, collective words are being used to identify these people.

So what?

How should this shape our expectations?

We should welcome godly oversight

We should expect clarity on who is a member and who is not

We should consider submitting to church membership rather than joining

We should remember we are New Covenant institution.