Sermon Notes: Baptism and Church Membership – Hebrews 13:17

Let’s recall our definition of baptism: “Baptism is a church’s act of affirming and portraying a believer’s union with Christ by immersing him or her in water, and a believer’s act of publicly committing himself or herself to Christ and his people, thereby uniting a believer to the church and marking off him or her from the world.” UB, p. 6, 44.

Our definition connects baptism and church membership, as it should.

All those who call Jesus Savior and Lord and desire to be a member of a local church must have been baptized.

All those who have been baptized should be accountable members of a local church.

One of the metrics that help us be a New Testament church is “Church Membership.” We practice and measure church membership because the Bible does.  

Acts 2:47b (ESV) And the Lord added to their (the church’s) number (a determined amount of actual people that had criteria by which they counted as a number) day by day those who were being saved (the criteria? saved = believe, baptized, being discipled).

“Their” – the church

“Number” – an amount of actual people that were counted according to their criteria (believe, baptized, being discipled)

“Those who are being saved” – saved = believe, baptized, being discipled are added to the church.

If a person is a new Christian, they must be baptized and discipled into church membership.

If a person is seeking to become a member of TRC, the church must be able to affirm they understand the gospel, have received Jesus by faith, and have had that faith affirmed by baptism.

Because of saving faith in Jesus Christ, our union with Christ is portrayed in baptism, and thus our inclusion in the universal church. Baptism also marks us off from the world as members of the local church because the local church is God’s visible and tactical means of doing the work of his kingdom.

Matthew 16 and 18 instruct us that the keys of the kingdom are given to the church for binding and loosing what Jesus gave us to bind and loose. The only way to fulfill Matthew 16 and 18 is for the universal church to become visible in a real, local church of which there is real membership.

So, baptism and church membership are linked, and we must treat them like they are related.

Understanding membership is key to understanding baptism’s relationship to church membership. So, we need to first make a case for church membership.

Church Membership

It is important to make a simple case for church membership because many people are not convinced church membership is biblical. Thus, they may not submit to church leadership regarding baptism since they have no mooring to a fellowship to which they are accountable.

Some people wander between churches, submitted to no spiritual covering or authority, so there is no way to affirm their status with God other than their word. But can we trust their testimony if it does not match what God says? If a person has not gleaned the truth of membership to the local church from their Bible study and discipleship, how do we know they understand the good news? Some of this confused theological soup we live in is the result of a population not submitting to church membership and wandering between spiritual authorities while rejecting spiritual authority.

People argue that the absence of a chapter and verse in the Bible about church membership means there is no such thing as church membership. That argument is like saying because there is no written rule about eating and optimal bodily requirements for healthy nourishment, we should eat whatever we want with no limits.

We all know that logic is nonsense, yet we delight in that kind of logic if we want to justify our resistance to God.

The Bible teaches realities of living under the reign of Jesus that we must mine from the pages of Scripture that are not stated in a chapter and verse, and church membership is one of those that we can easily miss, like missing the forest for the trees.

Let’s read Hebrews 13:17 together:

Hebrews 13:17 (ESV) 17 Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

There are two huge questions we must ask of this verse that are helpful.

First, if there is no biblical requirement to belong to a local church, then which leaders should a Christian or group of Christians obey and submit to?

If there is no church membership, who are the leaders we are supposed to obey and submit to in leading and managing the mission of the church?

If there is no church membership, who is it that watches over your soul? Anyone you choose?

What if they don’t agree to watch over your soul?

How did you choose them?

Did they have a say in it?

I’ve had people who don’t attend TRC or are members but have read something or listened to a sermon say to others that I’m their pastor. My response is always: No, I’m not. My response is a buzz kill, but it’s true. I’m no one’s pastor who is not a member of TRC.

Truthfully, if folks don’t show up, give, and do the other parts of their commitment as agreed upon in our church covenant for an extended time, we are not really their home church. The church is not a country club for which we pay some dues and show up whenever it suits us.

The whole premise behind denying church membership or keeping our commitment to one another in the Lord is ultimately rebellion against God’s word. That rebellion avoids asking and answering the necessary questions raised by Hebrews 13:17 and dealing with the clear implications.

To continue to make the point, Paul says that those who oversee our souls in every way are to be compensated for their work, and church membership is how we get clear on who we are to provide for. Listen to 1 Timothy 5:17-18.

1 Timothy 5:17-18 (ESV) 17 Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. 18 For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”

Paul’s instruction about elders being taken care of is constructed on Deuteronomy 25:4 and Jesus’ instructions from Luke 10:7. This means the elders at the church of Ephesus lead a specific and delineated group of people (members), and those church members have an obligation to specific elders to honor them appropriately. Church members defined. Membership clear. Members responsible. Members accountable. Members led by committed men who are to be recipients of pay from those members.

NOTE: The fact that Paul cites Jesus from Luke 10:7 indicates that Luke was writing prior to Paul’s death (late 60’s AD), and thus Jesus’ words were preserved before then, making Luke’s gospel account 30 or less from Jesus’ ministry which is an indicator of historical reliability.

The truth is that the local church is made up of committed members, and those members have elders whose task it is to shepherd a specific church made up of members, those elders are to do that work with excellence and be honored by that specific church appropriately.

The only answer to these questions from Hebrews 13:17 is that the local church is to be gathered, organized, and submitted to specific and biblically defined leadership that models the Bible’s teaching on leadership and propagation of that leadership.

This means that the local church and membership are explicit, intentional, and has standards.

Second, who will we, as elders who shepherd the church, give an account for?

I’ve answered this question for you before. If we are responsible for everyone who calls themselves a Christian in our county, I quit.

But that is not what the Bible asks of an elder.

1 Peter 5:1-2 (ESV) 1 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: 2 shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly;

Note here that the exhortation to the elders is to shepherd the church among the elders. That means they are responsible for a specific group of people, NOT a self-identified and un-measurable mass of people.

The only way to exercise oversight is to know who the oversight applies to.

NOTE: This is why if you are a TRC member, you need to be in a RL group, rather than a group of people who are submitted to different groups of leadership spread across the county. What happens if one member of such a group decides to cheat on a spouse with a person from another church of that multi-church group? Which elder of which church gets the say on what to do and how to handle it? Who is in the position of oversight to obey Hebrews 13:17 and 1 Peter 5:2?

Acts 20:28-30 (ESV) 28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. 29 I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.

Pay careful attention to the language. “All the flock IN WHICH the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.” “In which”. This means the Holy Spirit has made them overseers inside a specific group, NOT an overseer over all Christians in a region.

In other words, careful attention should be given to every member inside the specific people of a local church the Holy Spirit has appointed an elder to be accountable for.

These are just a few examples of why 1 Corinthians 5:1-12 teaches us how to hold members accountable for righteousness in church discipline.

It is not possible to hold people accountable who don’t recognize the leadership of a body of elders who they are willingly accountable to in church membership.

There are a host of other passages you should study that make membership necessary to make sense of what the author is telling the recipients who are members of a local church. (SEE: Romans 16:1-16; Acts 2:37-47; Acts 6:1-6; 1 Timothy 5:3-16)

The truth is that church membership is baked into the understanding of the church in the entire New Testament. As we have taught before, the church is the context of the New Testament, and if we miss that, we are missing the forest for the trees.

The Apostles were members of the local church, sent from the local church, and wrote the historical record of Jesus’ saving, spirit-filling, empowering, and sending of the local church.

The gospels were produced on mission by those sent from the local church under a group of elder leadership.

The epistles and letters were written to the local churches addressing issues in local churches for their members, who were saved, baptized, and being discipled in all the Scriptures.

Each of these churches was physically present/on display, populated by actual members, and accountable to each other under the leadership of elders whose job was to oversee the church the Spirit appointed them to be responsible for.  

Application question: If this is true, what is our baptism application?

Repentance/Faith is the only way to be born again into the family of God, the church. Baptism is the way we declare we have believed and are united to the local church.

Our membership in the universal body of Christ because of the saving work of the gospel demands that we put that unashamedly on display in our membership to a local church.

Again, Jesus has been clear. His word is clear.

We must repent/believe to have his justifying work counted for us.

Because we have the justifying work of the cross applied to us by faith, we follow that saving work up with obedience in baptism.

And because we are followers of Jesus and obedient in baptism, we are committing ourselves to a local church.

Baptism is that public act of faith where the Christian declares their faith in Jesus and commits himself or herself to Jesus’ people in the local church as marked off from the world.

Baptism is the public press conference announcing to the world that a person has changed allegiances and is no longer on Team Serpent/Dragon but is now on Team Jesus as a member of his church. Simply put, baptism is where one’s faith goes public.

Baptism says that we are citizens of the kingdom of God, and as citizens of God’s kingdom, we are now members of the local church as the outpost of God’s kingdom.

Consequently, there should be no unbaptized members of a local church.

If you have believed the good news and you have not been baptized, you need to begin your lifetime journey of discipleship by getting baptized and then committing to be a member of a local church.

Baptism is Jesus’ prescribed action of faith for the church to recognize who the Christians are.

Membership in the local church marks us off from the world.

Make no mistake, there are members of local churches who have zero gospel clarity and zero clarity on the place of baptism. That does not nullify the truth. That is an indictment of our preaching and teaching ministries. Just because a post-Christian and cultural Christian setting has failed to teach and organize well does not indict God’s truth.

Let me give you an example of what it looks like to be a member of a local church, having believed the good news and followed the Lord Jesus in baptism. If you are a TRC member, this is for your review. It’s a covenant renewal opportunity for you.

If you are an attendee, it is an opportunity to seek to align yourself as you should with a local church if you have believed the good news and been baptized.

The example is our TRC church covenant.

• Make sure you have followed Jesus and been baptized.
• Commit, as a worshiper of Jesus, to live a life of worship that reflects the Glory of God.
• Commit to knowing God and his Word and commit to applying God’s Word by the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
• Commit to be corrected by church discipline if your actions depart from the Word and dishonor Jesus.
• Commit to serving the Kingdom of God through TRC with your attendance and gifts.
• Commit to fellowship and ministry at TRC through involvement in a Radical Life Group.
• Commit to giving financially and materially to the Kingdom of God through TRC.
• Commit to unity in TRC. Do not allow your views on non-essential doctrines (or doctrines different from TRC that are adopted from different traditions), personal preferences, or personality conflicts to destroy our unity.
  • Doctrinal and ministry example of maintaining unity: If a person brings a doctrinal or a tactical distinctive different from TRC, you may be a member, but you might never be in a position to lead TRC so that we don’t divide our church and create a church within a church.
• Commit to love and honor your family of faith above yourself, and to love and honor God above all.
• Commit yourself to the vision and strategy of TRC.

Worship

Listen, we live in a gospel-rich environment in which we take our responsibility to preach the gospel for granted. We don’t preach and teach the depths of God’s word so we can attract fickle crowds. As a result, we have an anemic view of baptism and church membership as well as a host of lacking theological understanding.

We’ve somehow divorced the good news from what the good news produces downstream.

We have farmed out our gospel proclamation to other ministries because we have the comfort, freedom, and economic liberty to just hand it off so that we can consume spiritual goods and become bloated on that spiritual sugar. The result of such “luxury” is we then demand that local churches produce spiritual sugar for us by rotating between them based on our appetites.

I can’t get Gulzar, Rebekah, and the boys off my mind. They are virtually alone. They have no one to share the load with but us.

I think about our friends in Turkey. They have a better opportunity to connect with a few disciples, which is the fruit of their labor, but nothing like we have here. They are grinding out obedience in a spiritual environment that constantly threatens to undo them and years of labor.

These environments that our friends live and work in are not gospel-rich, and their opportunity to worship with a fellowship is usually limited to joining us online or huddled together in a small setting, trying not to draw undue attention.

We have taken the gospel, its implications like baptism and church membership, and thus our worship as local churches for granted.

We assume baptism and church membership to be cold and academic doctrines reserved for the classroom. Perhaps some think it unnecessary to study.

If we do this, we betray that we know very little and are closer to the church at Laodicea than we might like to admit to whom Jesus said this:

Revelation 3:17-20 (ESV) 17 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. 19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

I want to invite you to receive Jesus’ invitation to meet with him. He’s knocking through the strangest of sermons with an invitation to the intimacy of fellowship with him.

Baptism and church membership are sneaky vital doctrines that are easy to take for granted, and if we do that, we might miss the richness of deep relationships that are the source of God’s life in us and his best for us.

I want to invite you to remember the good news and embrace the glorious and good downstream implications of that good news. They are more than baptism and church membership, but you can’t get to them without obedience to baptism and real commitment to the local church.  

If you do this, you will begin to feel the weight of glory, as Paul called it, and we together will be a force for the Dragon to reckon with.

Worship!