Have you ever thought of your church membership as a covenant relationship?
When I looked up the definition of “covenant” in the dictionary, this is one of the definitions:
“a solemn agreement between
the members of a church to
act together in harmony with the precepts of the gospel.”
Covenant as defined by the Scriptures is “a
solemn and binding relationship which is meant to last a life time.”
Marriage is also considered a covenant. It is a holy covenant between a man and a woman and their God for a lifetime. Even though marriage has become disposable in our society, we can look at God’s perfect plan for a marriage to see what he expects of us in our church membership.
The Baptist Faith and Message describes the church in this way “the New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by
covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel.”
“In ancient times,
covenant was the most
solemn and binding agreement into which two parties could enter. It is tragic that this vital truth seems to have been lost in much of our modern culture, including even in the church, with devastating consequences to American families.” (taken from http://preceptaustin.org/the_covenant_of_marriage.htm)
I would hope that if your marriage was in trouble, you would do everything you could to save it. I would think that you would fall on your face before God and pray that He would intervene and save your marriage. I would certainly not expect you to just walk away and say, “I just don’t want to be married to him/her anymore. I’m going to go find someone else.”
But, this is exactly what we are doing with our “marriage” that we have with our churches today. If things don’t go our way, if someone hurts our feelings or if we don’t like certain things that are happening, we just stop going or find another church. It is not that simple. When you become a member of a church, you are making a covenant with God and the entire body of Christ that is there with you. In sickness or in health, for richer or for poorer, in happy times or sad times…whether you like the preacher or not…you entered into a covenant relationship with that church and you should give it all that you have and pray for it daily.
There are reasons that you would leave a church: if your beliefs do not line up with what that particular church is teaching or if God is leading you to minister somewhere else. After much prayer and soul searching you could move on to another church. But if you do move, you should enter into covenant with that body of Christ and give to it everything you would in your marriage relationship. Loyalty, honor, respect, love, patience, kindness…everything the bible instructs us to do.
In my lifetime, I have certainly took my church membership lightly. I have left one church thinking the “grass was greener” at another, just like some people do in a marriage. And I have been led by God to a church to help with the ministry there. But guess what, just like EVERY marriage, EVERY church has it’s own set of problems. When we make a covenant, we should be in for the long haul, unless God himself moves us into ministry somewhere else.
I believe that if God places so much importance on the marriage covenant, how much more importance does He place on our covenant with Him and His church?? I believe that if we take either covenant lightly, we will be punished. We must grow where we are planted and stay committed to the covenants that God has brought us into. What therefore God has joined together…let NO man separate!!!! (Matthew 19:6)
