C, S Lewis: Membership

    This essay serves to clarify a wide-spread misunderstanding among nominal Christians about the nature of church membership.  It is widely felt that being a member of a Christian church means simply having one’s name on the role.  The Biblical concept is quite a different one.

Being a true Christian is to leave individualism–self-concern behind–and be a loving member of a mystical body, the body of Christ.  Lewis emphasizes that by such membership Paul meant: “what we should call organs, things essentially different from, and complementary to, one another, things differing not only in structure and function but also in dignity.” The unity of the church is a unity of people essentially different one from the other, each having a specific contribution to make to the body, and primarily being united to Christ.  He writes:

We are summoned from the outset to combine as creatures with our Creator, as mortals with immortal, as redeemed sinners with sinless Redeemer.  His presence, the interaction between Him and us, must always be the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the life we are to lead within the Body, and any conception of Christian fellowship which does not mean primarily fellowship with Him is out of court. It is this that imparts value to each soul and develops true individualism.

So much for the notion of equality that dominates contemporary thinking.  In the Body of Christ, Lewis emphasizes, all are not “created equal.”  

A definite hierarchy pertains, permeated with love.  “Authority exercised with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live.” Individuals have no value in themselves, but in Christ they have infinite and eternal value, and in obedience to Him they thrive.

Were Lewis given to quoting Scripture, he might well refer to Paul’s extended discussion of the nature of relationships within the true church in II Cor. chapters  6-13.  Today few churches indeed fulfill the ideal.


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