Turning from one’s sin and becoming born again is not just a matter of psychological change, it is also a matter of existential change. As one is converted, one becomes a part of Christ’s living body - The Church. 

In all the confusion about who is in the Covenant and who is out, who is of God and who is not, we must not be tempted to draw a line based on our sins against man, as if people who practice a lesser kind of sin against man were in and people who practice a greater kind of sin against man were out. Regarding justification, sin is sin; all sin, no matter what the severity, separates us from God’s redemption. To determine who is in need of salvation and who is not, we must determine who or what a person is worshiping. We should not discern the need of salvation by a person’s degree of sin against man but by their degree of sin against God. The sin I’m referring to is idolatry. But is there a litmus test to determine whether or not a person is in a lifestyle of idolatry and not worshiping God?

The answer lies within the Tables of the Law and its ability to show us the importance of the Church and her relation to salvation. The Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer briefly explains that the Decalogue is divided into two parts. It states, ”I learn two things from these Commandments; my duty towards God, and my duty towards my Neighbor.” Why bother dividing the law into these two parts? We do so because that is how God set forth the commandments. He first gives us the foundation upon which all morality lies: His glory - worshiping Him in a corporate context (fourth commandment), speaking of Him properly (third commandment), worshiping him alone (second commandment), and putting Him first above all things (first commandment).

The gospel is not about us; it’s about God! The gospel is about turning from our autonomy to join God and His authority (Matthew 16:24). If through faith in Christ we obey the first four commandments - the commandments that are directly asking us to give up our autonomy, then the last six will follow suit. By looking carefully at the first four commandments, we can see that the first three culminate in the fourth. In other words, living out the moral implications of having no other gods before us, not turning to syncratism, and speaking of Him and His glory is shown and demonstrated by worshiping Him on the Lord’s Day and submitting to the ordinances of the Church. One will say, “But a person can just become a member of a church, attend worship, and then go out and live like hell the rest of the week.” No, they cannot.  Anyone who tries to worship on the Lord’s day in a catholic church, while living a life of carnality, will fall in the hands of church discipline - the weekly communion of the Eucharist. According to St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, God disciplines through the partaking of the elements. There is no escape! Where the Eucharist is present, so is the accountability of the Lord.

If we skip the fourth commandment of worshiping on the Lord’s Day, proclaiming that obeying the last six commandments shows that we are His, we display arrogance and self-righteousness. In doing this, we are proclaiming that our efforts to obey God are in no need of the teaching and hearing of the Word, the prayers of the saints, the sacraments, and singing: all the things that God has given the priests and deacons to institute during the worship service. This also coincides with Christ’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” because when we submit ourselves to the authority of the worship service, we are indeed “loving our neighbor.” It surely is not love to reject the general calling of the minister and the unification of God’s Covenant community.

With no Church there is no gospel, and with no gospel there is no Church. Christ said that the enemy would never overcome His Church (Matthew 16:18). When one completely rejects the universal Church, one rejects the gospel itself!