If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “I don’t have to go to church to be saved”, I swear, I would be a millionaire. Throughout my lifetime, I have come across countless people who have said this to me, but upon further questioning, what I have come to find out is that the reason they feel this way is usually because they want to justify their reason for not going to church. In most cases, this is connected to an excuse that justifies their point, that point being, “there are hypocrites in the church. The problem with this excuse is just that, it’s an excuse, and a poor one at that. I mean, to try and use this as a justifiable excuse is just nonsense. If you really think about it, their issue, being hypocrites, opens several other doors that are totally ignored by them. Hypocrites can literally be found anywhere. In fact, in every aspect of our lives, we run into people that could legitimately be labeled as hypocrites, from school all the way to the workplace, yet we have no problem dealing with them there.
True enough, the church is an institution of imperfect people, as it should be, because we are all flawed in one way or another, so it makes for the perfect place for us to come together that we may all get better. I have found that most of the people who use this excuse really have no desire to be in church in the first place. If you really take a deeper look into the idea of “the church”, a lot could be understood. I think in our culture, because we do not really understand what church is about, we dismiss it as if it were not important, yet Scripture is totally against this view. After leading Israel away from Egypt, the house of bondage, YHVH brought them all together at Mt Sinai and spoke to them. As they established their covenant relationship together, YHVH made it clear that they were to be a community that came together, worked together and worshipped together.
In fact, in looking at the word used to describe the people of Israel, we find the Hebrew word “K,hilot”, which literally means “congregation” or “assembly”. This word same word, translated as “ekklesia” in Greek, is where we get our English word, “church”. A lot is lost in translation. If we were to look at this from the Hebrew perspective, there is a more accurate picture of what YHVH was intending for His people. The people were together always, they worked together, broke bread, celebrated and worshipped together. However, in the English translation, the picture is painted merely as a place we go once a week to hear a preacher preach. It is not about the coming together of the people, in addition to hearing the word of YHVH. In the Hebrew sense, the idea is about getting to know one another, it’s about establishing relationships. Apart from knowing one another, how can we ever minister to the needs of those in need?
It is the will of YHVH that we all come together. For this reason, He has established leaders in the church to bring the word to the people. Scripture makes it clear that when 2 or 3 are gathered together in His name, He will be in the midst. In other words, His presence dwells with us when we come together. If this be the case, if we willingly choose to NOT come together with His people, how can we be assured that His presence is dwelling with us, when He says that He is with us when 2 or 3 gather in His name? especially when our reason for not being there is because there are hypocrites in the church. In the time of Yeshua, not only were there hypocrites in the church, but there were even demon possessed people in there as well, yet ever Sabbath, we read that He was faithfully in the church. So if the Lord of lords and King of kings was in the church, how can we really justify not being there?
Yeshua was (and is) the Son of God, and technically, by virtue of who He was, He could rightfully say “I don’t want to be around these people because they are flawed and sinful, yet He chose to dwell with us all the same. Do we really believe that we are so much better than others that we should be exempted from others? With this rationing, we REALLY need to be in the church then because just as Yeshua had a lot to offer the church, surely we have that much and more to offer the church that they may benefit from our presence. In reading the epistles of Paul, he clearly dealt with a lot of hypocrites, yet he constantly wrote the letters and visited them every chance he could. It’s all about being there. It’s about accountability. We actually are our brother’s keeper. A lot was sacrificed that we may have a place where we could come together in worship. The early church had some serious obstacles in their way yet they found a way to come together on the Sabbath. It was important to them.
And even when being a follower of Yeshua was a literal death sentence, we read about there being house churches, where people came together on the Sabbath to fellowship and hear the word. This was so important to them. Their lives meant nothing to them, and they risked it all for the same of the Gospel. We really have it easy over here in the U.S. We have never had to suffer real persecution for our faith. Yeah, we might get clowned, or disrespected or even talked about behind our backs, but we have never had to risk life or freedom for the sake of the Gospel. Every so often, we get reports on the news about “believers” living in places like China, or the Middle East that get imprisoned or even beheaded for being a follower of Yeshua. They were well aware that this was dangerous, yet they still met together, even though it was in secret. Don’t get it twisted though, just because they met in secret does NOT mean they denied their faith. In fact, it was quite the opposite. If they were captured and then interrogated, they had no problem with confessing their faith, even though knowing it would not go well for them. They simply met in secret because that was a wise thing to do. It would be stupid to just blatantly walk into a Christian church and hold service. They would all be wiped out had they done that, however, meeting in secret allowed them opportunity to grow and bring more to the faith daily.
My Rabbi just returned from Israel recently. While there, she told us about a Messianic Church there that met in secret. They lived in a community where converting to follow Yeshua was a death sentence, so they established a secret place to meet and worship together. These people are the real deal. They have literally counted up the cost to be a follower of Yeshua, and have chosen to serve Him in spite of. Although they have no idea when word will get out about them, they meet faithfully at an undisclosed location and worship. They are sold out for Yeshua. Believers who live under this type of fear are the realist when it comes to the faith. When I compare us to them, they are miles ahead of us in regards to their faith. In fact, they would probably look at us like we are the hypocrites that we refer to when trying to justify why we do not go to church. All that to say, those of us who use this as an excuse to not go to church really need to take a look at our motivations.
If we were to be real with ourselves, the reason many choose not to go is because they really don’t want to go. They do not want to submit to the word of God. We want the covenant relationship minus the requirements on our end of the covenant. In other words, we want a one way relationship with Yeshua, a relationship based on our terms rather than His, despite the fact that He Himself did all the work to establish and restore our relationship with the Father. If we never go to church, how can we have relationship with people of God? In fact, when we choose not to go, we are saying by our actions that we choose our relationships with the ungodly over the godly in that we connect with the constantly while shunning the godly. We have become judges of others, but in an ungodly way. And just as we judge the household of faith by faulty standards, those same standards will be used to judge is as well. Is that what we want? I definitely don’t want to be judged by my own standards. I wouldn’t stand a chance to get in if that was the case. I’d end up condemning my own self.
So, I asked a question earlier, do I have to go to church? Well, that’s a hard “yes”. Yeshua went, the Apostles went, what makes us any better than them? Are there hypocrites in the church? Yes, plenty. But does that excuse us from our obligation? Nope! We need to be with our brothers and sisters. If it wasn’t important, I am sure YHVH never would have commanded us to come together. This faith walk is all about community, that’s why He put us together. We need each other. We are called to be a family, but not just family, but a family of likeminded believers assembled together on the name of the Lord. If people under persecution still come together in accordance to the Word of God, we literally have no excuses. All that to say, those who choose not to go to church, keep it real, don’t make up an excuse to justify why you don’t go, just keep it real and just say “I don’t go”, after that, nothing else needs to be said.
