After more than a year of cancelled retreats and speaking engagements, I’ve been speaking at churches once again. It’s been a sweet time of meeting my sisters in Christ in other places around the country. One of the topics I’m frequently asked to speak on is that of our relationships with one another in the church, based on my book Closer than a Sister. In that book, I wrote about our friendships with one another in the church, how the Bible describes those relationships, and what sets them apart from other friendships we might have. I think that now, more than ever, we see our need for the body of Christ—for our relationships with one another in the church.

I recently participated in a Zoom meeting with a book club in Melbourne, Australia where a group of women recently read Closer than a Sister. We talked about the difference between our friendships with those who are not in Christ and those who are—because there is a difference and an important one. While our non-Christian friends can truly care about us and serve us in practical and needed ways, there is one thing they cannot do for us. While they may love us and accept us, there is one need they cannot meet for us. While they may share a long history with us that our Christian friends might not share, there is a future hope they do not share with us.

What makes our friendships with Christians stand apart from our non-Christian friendships is that our Christian friends long to see us make it home. They want to see us reach the finish line and meet our Savior face to face. They long to see us healed and whole and sanctified. That’s because the friendships we share with other believers is a spiritual one. It goes deeper than even our biological relationships with the members of our family; we share the blood of Christ and are united together for all eternity. We will spend forever together worshipping our Savior face to face.

As we’ve well learned over the last year and a half, we need other people in our lives. God did not create us to be independent people, living as islands unto ourselves. Rather, he created us to be dependent upon him, and interdependent upon one another. This is especially true of the church. The Apostle Paul likens the church to a human body, where Christ is the head and we make up the parts (Rom. 12:4-5). Each part is united together and needs the other parts to function. This means our friendships with those in the body of Christ are crucial. They are fundamental to our life of faith. We simply cannot do life apart from them.

Our Christian friends are on the same path with us to eternity; they walk beside us in that journey. They see us when we stumble and fall and they help us get back up again. Sometimes, they carry us until we can walk on our own. When they see us wander from the path, they call out to us to return. When they see danger ahead, they warn us. They encourage, exhort, and equip us to move forward in the faith. And we do the same for them.

While we will have friendships in many areas of our lives—through school, work, neighborhoods, hobbies and more—our Christian friendships stand apart as unique from the others. Only these relationships are eternal. We certainly shouldn’t forsake one for the other, because after all, the Lord calls us to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. Lord willing, he will bring our unbelieving friends into the Kingdom with us—let us pray to that end! But we also need to remember just how important our Christian friendships are and take the time to invest in them. To cultivate them. To nurture them. Because we need these friendships and they need us.

“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:15-16).

Attend a church for any length of time and we’ll likely discover its imperfections. We may find things we don’t like about it. We may find reasons to miss a worship service here and there. We may even feel tempted to seek out greener pastures.

In the book of Hebrews, the writer cautioned his readers: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25, italics mine). For the Hebrew believers, they were likely fearful of persecution and out of that fear, neglected gathering with their fellow believers.

What about us in the church today? What keeps us from attending our local church? What tempts us to forsake gathering together to worship with fellow believers?

While there are certainly Biblical reasons to leave a church—the pastor engaging in false teaching being one of them—there are also not-so-Biblical reasons we may be tempted to forsake the church. They don’t provide for our particular ministry needs. There aren’t enough people our age or in our stage of life. We don’t like the songs they sing in worship. It’s too big or too small. We’ve heard gossip about the leadership, etc…

When we were in Israel last year, we went to the synagogue in Capernaum, where Jesus taught. “And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching” (Mark 1:21). Have you ever considered the fact that our holy and righteous God, in the second person of the Trinity, attended the synagogue? He knew what holy worship is, for he commanded it. He knew what kind of worship glorified God and what didn’t. More than anyone else in history, he knew what makes a good worship service and had every reason not to attend, yet he did. Faithfully.

As B.B. Warfield wrote: “Have we not the example of our Lord Jesus Christ? Are we better than he? Surely, if ever there was one who might justly plead that the common worship of the community had nothing to offer him it was the Lord Jesus Christ. But every Sabbath found him seated in his place among the worshipping people, and there was no act of stated worship which he felt himself entitled to discard. Even in his most exalted moods, and after his most elevating experiences, he quietly took his place with the rest of God's people, sharing with them in the common worship of the community. Returning from that great baptismal scene, when the heavens themselves were rent to bear him witness that he was well pleasing to God; from the searching trials of the wilderness, and from that first great tour in Galilee, prosecuted, as we are expressly told, "in the power of the Spirit"; he came back, as the record tells, "to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and"—so proceeds the amazing narrative—"he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue, on the Sabbath day." "As his custom was!" Jesus Christ made it his habitual practice to be found in his place on the Sabbath day at the stated place of worship to which he belonged.”

Churches are imperfect. It’s true. They are filled with sinful people. We will have many reasons to be disappointed and frustrated with our churches. And there will be times when it is appropriate to find another congregation. But let us not forsake the church because another church offers more. Let us not neglect meeting together with the body of Christ because we have more pressing things to do. Let us not critique the church against measures the Bible doesn’t even use.

The church is an integral part of our life of faith. We need the sustenance and spiritual nourishment provided through the preached word, corporate prayer, worship in song, and the sacraments. We need the spiritual encouragement of fellow believers and the oversight of our shepherds who protect us from false teaching and wolves in sheep’s clothing. We need the teaching and discipleship the church provides so we can live out the gospel in our lives. We need fellow church members to walk beside us in the trials and sufferings of life, spurring us on with the hope that is ours in Christ. And they need us to do the same.

As the church, we are united to one another through the blood of our mutual Savior shed for us. Each of us is an integral part of the church body, and without her members, the church cannot grow. “…we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16).

We need the church and the church needs us.

Christ went to great lengths to rescue and redeem us so that we would be his. He died to create the church, his bride. Let us not forsake her.