321 – Membership in the Church

SEMESTER 2

321 – Membership in the Church

BIBLE INSTITUTE OF CORRESPONDENCE

COURSE:  ECCLESIOLOGY II LESSON # 21
MEMBERSHIP IN THE CHURCH

Read carefully Acts 1:15-26, I Cor. 12:1-27.

INTRODUCTION:

1. The variation of opinion on church membership is astronomical.

i. One extremity is to assert salvation by church membership.
ii. The other extremity is to deny the necessity of it at all.

I. THE NEW TESTAMENT PRACTICE OF CHURCH MEM­BERSHIP

1. They recognized the names of the congregation. (Acts 1:15)
2. The term “number of the names” seems to imply written record.
3. The voting in Acts 1:26 assures individual eligibility.
4. When new converts were baptized they were “added to,” (Acts 2:41) implying membership.

II. THE NEW TESTAMENT REVELATION OF CHURCH MEMBERSHIP

We need not, nor can we rightly go any farther than our New Testament to establish both the practice of, and pattern for, New Testament church membership.

1. The New Testament definition of church membership is revealed as follows:

i. They have received the word and been added by baptism. (Acts 2:41)
ii. They are members of one body. (I Cor. 12:12)
iii. They are led by the Holy Spirit to unite and identify with that body, by water baptism. Compare Acts 2:37-41 to I Cor. 12:13.

2. The revealed nature of the church is that of a body, a building, or a bride, all involving interdependent union, thus insisting upon the principle of member­ship.

i. Each member has need of the other. (I Cor. 12:14-19, I Cor. 7:4)
ii. Each member is to care for every other. (I Cor. 12:25)
iii. Each member is to enter into suffering and rejoicing with the others. (I Cor. 12:26)
iv. Each member is to exercise his or her gifts and talents, not selfishly but for the benefit of the body.
v. Each member is to exercise fervent love for every other member. (I Cor. 13:1-13)

III. ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH

Most of the discussion on the “difficult subject” of entrance into the church is not a difficulty with Scripture, but tradition.

1. The common “universal” mistake is that we are baptized by the Holy Ghost into the body of Christ. They love to use I Cor. 12:13 and Eph. 4:5.
2. Such an interpretation of these verses is normal, only if you start with a universal concept of the church, or if you are programmed with a universalist’s material.
3. Acts 2:41 clearly states how men are added to the church: They by Spirit conviction receive the word, are baptized, thus the church is added to, and men are added to it.

i. I Cor. 12:13 states that by the influence and leading of the Spirit we are baptized into the body (the local church).
ii. Eph. 4:5 states that the common baptism, into our church, answering to our common faith in the same Lord, demands of every member of every church an endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit. (Eph. 4:1-6)

IV. EXCLUSION FROM CHURCH MEMBERSHIP

This area of church membership receives a great deal of criticism from many, but it seems to me, always as a result of misunderstanding what the church and church membership are. We will cover it more thoroughly in the lesson on church discipline, but in this lesson I want to establish two things:

1. It is a biblically revealed principle.

i. The Lord commanded it. (Mat. 18:15-18)
iii. Paul commanded it and instructed in it. (I Cor. 5:1-13, II Cor. 3)

4. It is not an exclusion from heaven.

i. The church is an organization for earth and time.
ii. Church discipline is honored in heaven, but its purpose is neither entrance into, nor exclusion from heaven.
iii. The purpose is to keep the earthly body pure and functional.