Summary
There Are No Lone Rangers in the Church
The masked rider of the old West rode alone—self-sufficient, accountable to no one but his own moral code. It makes for thrilling radio drama, but it makes for terrible theology. When it comes to the Christian's walk of faith, God does not call us to be lone rangers. The same Holy Spirit who calls us to faith and empowers that faith through Word and Sacrament also gathers us together into the Body of Christ. The Lone Ranger 5-1-22
Paul opens his letter by writing "to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" 1 Corinthians 1:2. Three things are packed into that greeting. The church is made up of those who have been sanctified—made holy through the atoning work of Christ—and who are saints, that is, believers. And that local congregation is bound up "together with all those who in every place" call on Jesus' name. The local church is always part of the one holy catholic (universal) Church, the worldwide Body of Christ confessed in the Creed.
Scripture's picture of the Church is relentlessly plural. "In one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" 1 Corinthians 12:13. We are "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation" 1 Peter 2:9—a race, a priesthood, a nation, never a solitary citizen. And this gathering is even larger than what we can see on a Sunday morning. Paul bows his knees "before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" Ephesians 3:14-15. When the Church on earth lifts its praise, it joins the saints already in paradise who at this very moment worship before the throne. The believer who is homebound, or kept away by illness, has not been cut off from the Body; he or she has already been gathered in.
Our sinful nature, of course, fights against what God joins together. The pull of our age is toward isolation—toward becoming our own island, our own authority, even our own church with a membership roster of one. Faith gets redefined as something purely private, formed at one's own choosing, under the authority of one's own teaching, rather than under the called and ordained ministry of the Word and the discipline of the congregation. As one writer put it well, "Spiritual isolation usually results in spiritual disaster." We lose the mutual consolation of the brethren, the loving correction of fellow believers Galatians 6:1-2, and the corrective of teachers bound to Scripture and the Confessions.
The danger is not merely social; it strikes at the Gospel itself. The lone ranger lives by a code: one must always pay for what one has done. Transferred into the realm of faith, that code becomes works-righteousness—the crushing project of being good enough, impressive enough, religious enough to open heaven's gates by one's own effort. God will have none of it. He sent His Son to the cross to make full payment for sin. Jesus bore the wrath we deserved, cried "It is finished" John 19:30, and was raised from the tomb because the payment had been accepted.
Having been redeemed, we are not left as solitary souls with a private Savior. God restores the vertical relationship with Himself through the cross, and then He moves us outward into horizontal relationship with one another. We were never wired by our Creator to live outside of community, and our life of faith was never designed to be lived outside the community of the Church. The Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies—and the gathering is not optional scenery. It is the shape of the Christian life itself.
Video citations
- "The Lone Ranger" 5-1-22 — Would you open your Bibles please with me to first Corinthians the first chapter for our study today? If you're using a Pue edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that in the New Testament,…