Recently I have been giving a good bit of thought to how it is necessary for Christians to be involved in the local church. There seems to be an ethos in America wherein people think God has promised to make each person His chosen person and that the church is just the weekend hangout for those of us who would have to drive too far to experience God on our walk in the woods. Certainly it is an enjoyable endeavor to try to understand the serenity of a clear blue mountain lake, but the fact is God has never promised to use that serenity to sanctify and comfort His people.
He has, however, explained how the church provides comfort and sanctification to His people. After listing the long list of Old Testament saints in Hebrews 11, the author begins Hebrews 12 by saying that because we are surrounded by all these saints, we should set aside the sins that weigh us down and run faithfully forward. Think also of Paul’s description of the church as the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:14-31. All of the members of the church are designed to work together as a whole, complimenting one another in function so the whole church benefits from the diversity of gifts. This means you need the church to complement the things you are gifted to do, it the church also needs you. We tend to think of an eyeball sitting in a coffee shop by itself or lying in the woods alone as pretty gross. We don't think the lone eyeball is receiving direct experience of God. Why we think differently about lone body parts of Christ’s body. Lone Christians have not outgrown the church. If there is such thing as a lone Christian, it is a deformity, needing to be transplanted back into the body so that it can function again.
The church is not designed for those who think they can meet God outside the church. The church is the place that God designed for meeting His people (using “place” to mean wherever God’s people assemble for worship, not to designate a building). You don't get to show up and steal food off the table of God’s people on communion Sunday if are not an active member of a church. That is a family dinner, so join the family first, but then rush to dine with us.
All this also has bearing for how we read the Bible as well. The Bible remains our one sole determinative source for answers about faith and practice as Christians. For this reason we confess Scripture alone. We are not, however, committed to Scripture alone alone, in other words we do not make this commitment by ourselves, but as members of the church. We stand as a group of people committed to the Bible. How are we to apply the body of Christ metaphor to reading Scripture?
One simple answer is that we do not get to read the Scriptures as if we are the one with comprehensive and infallible insight into the Scripture. It strikes me that there are many people who would revise what the church has always believed that the Bible teaches and they appeal to the idea of Scripture alone. What is interesting about this, however, is that if no one else agrees with you about what the Bible says, you are not so much committed to Scripture alone, as to yourself alone. There is certainly a way to mask a personal agenda and even incipient rationalism behind the shiny veil of Scripture alone.
There are two applications I have from all this. The first is that we not only need to be spending time listening to the preached Word and reading the written Word, but also discussing the Word amongst ourselves. We use the Word to comfort one another. We talk about the Word as we learn new truths from it. We read it together as families. It is a community book, meant to be shared among the family.
The second application might be a little unexpected. I am convinced that a commitment to Scripture alone requires reading other books as well. How does this work? Why do I need to read many books because I am committed to one book?
The reason for this is that writing is a major way that people think through issues and communicate those thoughts to others. In other words, reading books about the Bible is a major way that Christians have conversations with each other about what the Bible teaches. Someone may have spent much more time reading the Bible in light of a certain issue than you have, for example why we even have public worship, and we can come to great new understanding of the Scripture as a whole by reading what that person has to say about what Scripture says.
As you might expect, I think this also means it is incredibly valuable to read what past thinkers have to say about Scripture. There are slews of books written in the history of the church and we should make full use of them. This is not bowing to tradition. This is reading the Bible and listening to the wisdom of our spiritual ancestors. Only the most foolish would say it is worthless to listen to the advice and counsel of our grandparents, why would we think differently when it comes to reading scripture?