Free to worship. Free to fellowship.
I come from a background where people cited Hebrews 10 as the reason for mandatory church attendance. As we know, Hebrews 10 says that we should not forsake the assembling … and people would largely ignore the context and the rest of the verse, merely highlighting how important it was to show up every week.
It established a surface-level relationship, but it was not about the fellowship the verse called for. It wasn’t calling on people to make it a practice to see what they could do to stir each other up to love and good works. It was about going through the motions and having the feelings as you stood up, sat down and shut up while the expert at the front gave you the message to feed you for the week.
The two great commandments were to love God and love others. Dig a little further, though, and those two great commands were about worship and fellowship. The commands set people free to worship and fellowship. Worship God and fellowship with those in their sphere of influence. It is a command to guide those created in the image of God to reflect that image vertically and horizontally. It is a command because it is not the natural expression of fallen man.
The fallen man worships anything and anyone other than the one true God. We need the command to worship God, and we need the freedom we find in Christ that enables us to worship God. We have the opportunity to develop that worship individually and personally through the practices we can cultivate at home. That is led by prayer; it is served by learning the Bible; it is all about following the way of the Master in spending time honouring, delighting in, and marvelling at God. It’s done by the Spirit and expressed through our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.
When we gather together, there’s got to be a sense in which people experience the permission and encouragement God gives to encounter and worship Him there. It’s not something that has to be enforced, but it is something for which there is a space for that to be expressed, and any impediments to that should be addressed. Impediments could include a sense in which the worship is very limiting, and the culture frowns on that freedom to express love for God.
A crucial impediment to the vertical interaction is the horizontal issue. This leads to the freedom to fellowship. The practice is not about ensuring everyone gets along with everyone as we gather. That won’t necessarily be the case. But Jesus makes it very clear that if you’re coming to offer something to God and there’s an issue between you and someone else, then leave the offering and sort out the relationship. This is part of a stream of critiques God gives about how folks miss the vertical because of their unjust horizontal relations.
Sadly, many can go through the formality of congregational worship whilst experiencing no sense of fellowship in that congregation. A lot of gatherings can come across as something you can pop in to get your good feeling, then pop back out again, with nothing changing the quality of the fellowship. Yet those who have engaged in the wonderful love of God in Jesus Christ know that this should fuel love for others, enabling them to feel comfortable worshipping God in fellowship. It’s more than forgiveness; it’s the desire to see folks feel free to connect with the family of God and be embraced by them.
This is a command because we’re not like this. We’re used to cliques. We’re used to people being seen as undesirable and shunned and ignored. We’re used to that. The Body of Christ is called to be different. As their worship of God in freedom encourages freedom to fellowship in contact with the brothers and sisters.
Such is the importance of the freedom to love God and love others in the life of the Kingsman.
For His Name’s Sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
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