10:24-25 How are we to understand this?
10:24-25 How are we to understand this?
Here Christians are being exhorted to remain in fellowship with each other in their local assembly as the day of Christ - His coming again to take all the saints of God back to heaven with Him - draws nearer.
The purpose for this is so they can stir each other up to love, and to exhort each other to fulfil their ministries and functions in the church. Scriptures stress the importance of belonging to a local church. They teach us that it is not possible to be a Christian independent of the rest of the body of Christ, because God has ordained a place, a purpose and a function in the body for every Christian that no other Christian can fulfil (CP Ro 12:4-8; 1Cor 12:14-27; Eph 4:15-16).
God has set us in the body to suit His purpose, not ours, and if we refuse to join ourselves to a church we are refusing to join ourselves to Christ, because He is the church (CP 1Cor 12:12). It is folly for anyone to assume that they can be intentionally separated from the body of Christ and still be a member of His body.
A body is an organised whole made up of parts and members, and nothing can function as a member if it is dismembered from the body, and neither can members of the spiritual body, the church, function if they become dismembered from it.
The lives of Christians are inextricably woven together in Christ, and for anyone to isolate themselves from the body of Christ is a contradiction, because every Christian is a member of the body (CP 1Cor 12:12-14).