Understanding the local church is imperative in comprehending how we give ourselves to the mission of God. In this message, Pastor David Platt defines the local church and explains its commitment to one another. As the body of Christ gathers as one, believers are able to build up one another in greater alignment with God’s Word.
- The Local Church is Committed to One Another
Watch Full Message Of “Secret Church 9: The Body of Christ“
What is a local church? The local church is a local body, a gathering of believers in Christ covenanted together to glorify God by serving him in this world. Now, here’s why I want to emphasize that. By that I don’t mean that in order to be a local church, you have to have a church covenant. But this word, I just don’t know a better word to describe how when you have a gathering of believers, and they have said they have identified themselves as a church. So this is why Matthew 18, “Where two or three are gathered, there you’ve got a church.” As long as you got Christians in the plural, you got a church. No total abuse of Matthew 18, and it misses the point.
The Local Church Is Committed to One Another
The church is a gathering of believers, but not just sitting down having coffee together. The church is a gathering that is committed to one another, that is committed to loving each other, and caring for each other and spurring each other on toward Christ, and doing all the activities we’re about to walk through. They do together and they identify themselves as a church, and they align themselves with what God’s word says is the church. And so when you’ve got a local body of believers that gathers together, and we see this popping up all over the book of Acts.
We see instructions and Act, Acts, and the New Testament letters as believers gather together, they identify themselves with each other, and they commit to each other and they grow together and they give themselves to the mission of God together, they worship together, they’re baptized together. That’s what’s happening in a local church. That’s what I mean by covenant together.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
