Mike McKinley: Membership in a church should also help you to grow in hating sin.

Membership in a church should also help you to grow in hating sin. As the Word is preached, you will understand more clearly what sin is, how badly sin lies, and how Christians have better promises to rest in. The world around us does not value the Bible’s teaching on these matters. Television peddles the virtues of lust and disrespect. Advertising encourages greed and envy. The Old Country Buffet down the street stays in business by fomenting gluttony. But in the church you have a place where godliness is valued, expected, and promulgated.

Brothers and sisters in the church must admonish each other (Col. 3:16), teach and train each other regarding what’s appropriate (Titus 2:3–4), and urge self-control (Titus 2:6). So the author of Hebrews tells Christians to continue meeting together to encourage each other toward godliness: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24–25).

In addition, being involved in a church will provide you with an arena in which you will have opportunities to say no to sin. In Galatians 5, Paul lists a whole host of sins that believers are told to reject: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19–21).

Did you notice that string of sins right there in the middle? They are the kinds of sins that emerge in a community. Isolated individuals don’t normally need to concern themselves about jealousy, enmity, or strife because no one’s around to make them jealous or angry. But life in a church filled with sinners like you will give you plenty of opportunities both to experience these temptations and to fight against them.

Life in the church helps us hate sin, and it helps us help others to hate sin.

McKinley, M. (2011). Am I Really a Christian? (pp. 142–143). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

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