Over the past few days, I’ve posted some thoughts about the community aspects of the Christian life, from the cultural impact of true community to the biblical commands to practice hospitality. These are difficult concepts for many of us to grasp, particularly as our culture becomes more and more isolationist (both politically and practically speaking).

Though it’s always been possible to be alone in a crowd, many are now seeking this isolation. Personal media devices have taken this to a new level and no one wants a phone unless it also plays music through headphones. Many people literally travel from driving alone to an office or cubicle where they are fairly isolated back home with little to no meaningful human interaction in between. For many, pay-at-the pump and drive-throughs are the standard fair and we feel put out if we actually have to make contact with another person.

This culture of isolation leaves many Christians with a skewed interpretation of Scripture. For many, salvation has become merely a “personal” experience and following through with life in a church community is now presented as optional (for the old-fashioned, the hip have outgrown it almost entirely). How easily we forget that God has ordained that the very transmission of His gospel take place through individual contact or by addressing a crowd, but it must be verbalized and it must be passed on.

The idea that the church is optional has had devestating effects on the purity of the Christian life for far too many people. What we so often fail to miss is that the idea of living in a community is not optional for the Christian life. While there might be extreme circumstances when believers are isolated, this is not the ideal. Rather, we are made for relationship, first and foremost with God and then with other believers.

While I understand the arguments made by some that the “church” as most Americans know it is a very western concept and therefore not entirely biblical, it is not my purpose to address these arguments today. I do think that most Christians would agree that the ideal setting to live out the Christian life is one of community (which is best found in the church).

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 reminds us of the truth of Genesis 2:18, that “it is not good for man to be alone.” Though we are saved as individuals, God has ordained that we live out the Christian life in community with other believers. Without other believers, how can we “fulfill the law of Christ” and bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:1)? The very injunction that we are to “consider others as more significant than ourselves” (Philippians 2:3) seem to preclude living the Christian life at a distance.

Earlier I said that the notion of individualism has had detrimental impact on the purity of many believers, let me explain. Scripture is clear that we are to live in community. Part of this is a blessing, we find our burdens lighter because they are shared. But another aspect of this is that God’s people often speak God’s Word to us, sometimes in the form of rebuke. Jesus gives specific instructions about going to one another when one is in sin (Matthew 18:15-20) and in his first letter to them, Paul rebukes the Corinthians for not addressing the sin in their midst. These things require community.

The idea of church discipline is often misunderstood and misapplied. The goal is always the restoration of the believer but sometimes it results in the exclusion of a professing believer from the community of believers. This would have had tremendous significance to the original readers of Scripture when their church family was often literally closer than their physical families. Yet when we feel as though we can take or leave community, the idea of exclusion from that community carries little weight over us. Yet exclusion from he community of believers and the refusal of hospitality is sometimes the very result of church discipline.

We are to refuse hospitality to false teachers (2 John 1:10-11), but we are also to refuse hospitality to unrepentant sinners when the proper steps have been followed. Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 5:11-13:

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler–not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

Paul says that the unrepentant sinner is to be excluded from the community and refused hospitality. I wonder how many people would be completely unphased by such pronouncements in our day and age. The fact that we have lost touch with the concept of community cannot have positive results and it has caused some to be unaffected by their lack of repentance (if the church practices discipline at all). Exclusion from community was seen as the penultimate result of holding one another accountable and underscores how little we cherish the Body of Christ as our family. When we truly love one another as we ought, then the world will know that we are His disciples (John 13:35), and perhaps we will “yearn” for the company of believers as did Paul (Philippians 1:8) and we will truly bear another’s burdens.

We must strive again for the sense of community which ought to mark the church as Christ’s Body, each member depending on the others (1 Corinthians 12:12-26).

• Read The Hospitality Commands by Alexander Strauch