Going to church isn’t a salvation issue, and other lies we tell ourselves

“I’m a Christian, but I don’t go to church. It’s not a salvation issue.”

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say something like this, or even said it yourself. How would you reply if it was said to you today? Is going to church a salvation issue? And if it isn’t, where does that leave us in responding to this attitude? Should church attendance be encouraged in connection to salvation?

I want to suggest that not only is this attitude wrong, but the framing of the statement is wrong. Understanding why this is the wrong way to think is itself part of the answer—we need to know how to relate the gospel to behaviour.

When we use the term ‘salvation issue’, we are trying to indicate a distinction in the seriousness of disagreements about elements of the Christian faith. A salvation issue on these terms is something that, when gotten wrong, places you outside the historic Christian faith. To persist in a salvation-issue sin or belief without repentance prevents you from being saved.

It is useful to have this kind of diagnostic tool. Another popular way of speaking about these things is to talk about first, second and third-order issues. It’s a first-order issue to deny that Jesus is the Son of God. That belief is a rejection of the gospel and of God’s Messiah. A second-order issue is significant enough to form different church structures over, but not to deny that we are in Christian fellowship. Mode of baptisms, church governance or similar might be good candidates for this. Third-order issues are those we can maintain fellowship within the same church body over but still disagree about.

However, Christians may disagree about which issues rank where. If I were convinced that one must be baptized by full immersion as an adult in order to be saved, I would raise that to a first-order issue.

And so we come to these types of statements:

“Going to church or not isn’t a salvation issue.”

“Salvation is by faith and baptism is just a sign; why do I need to get baptized?”¹

“Saving people from their spiritual poverty is the most important thing; let's focus on that rather than their material poverty.”

All these statements are category errors that excuse disobedience to Jesus because they misunderstand the gospel—but they misunderstand it in a very Protestant direction.

One of the weaknesses of evangelical Protestantism has been to emphasize that the gospel brings salvation by grace alone through faith alone, not to an extent that under-emphasizes ‘works’ but in a manner that excludes works.

Do not misunderstand me here. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that the Son of God died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, which is a gift of grace received by faith and is in no way ‘by works’. This creates the question, “Okay, so why do good works?” Many people in our churches have no good answer to this. But the solution is not to ‘balance’ our teaching by emphasizing grace and works in equal measures; it’s to understand clearly and profoundly, and then practice and preach, that genuine saving faith brings forth obedience as its fruit.

When James speaks about faith without works being dead (Jas 2:17); when Jesus teaches in Matthew’s Gospel that care for the poor (especially fellow believers), forgiveness and several other things are essential marks of a believer (chapters 18 and 25); when the normal and normative practice and teaching of Jesus is that believers get baptized (Matt 28:19; John 4:1; Acts 2:38 and throughout; 1 Cor 1:13)—all these passages are teaching us that to trust in Jesus is to accept his authority and so do what he tells us. This is why love for Jesus is correlated to keeping his commandments (John 14:15). What is the chief command? John’s answer: believe in Jesus (John 6:29; 20:31), and express that belief through love for others (John 13:34–35).

The problem with an attitude of “That’s not a salvation issue, so I don’t have to do it” is that it is operating with a logic that there are certain things that ‘good Christians’ need to do in order to be saved, and things they don’t, and you only need to tick the box on salvation issues. That’s misunderstanding the gospel all the way down. ‘Properly’ speaking, every thing you must ‘do’ is not a salvation issue, because salvation is by faith. In that sense, there are no things you must do to be saved—but there are all sorts of things that you ‘must’ do if you are saved.²

A person who grasps the gospel and trusts in Jesus will, given ordinary circumstances, take on Jesus’ command to be baptized and will get baptized as an expression of their faith, in obedience to the one they have trusted.³

A person who trusts in Jesus will, given ordinary circumstances, care for the poor as the expression of their generosity in response to Jesus’ generosity (2 Cor 8:9), not seeking to limit that only to believers or ‘the worthy’, but asking who they can be a neighbour to (Luke 10:25–37).

A person who trusts in Jesus will, given ordinary circumstances, meet regularly with fellow believers to worship God and mutually encourage each other in the life of faith (Heb 10:25; Acts 2:42; 1 Cor 14:26; Col 3:16).

None of these are done because they are requirements of getting, or staying, saved, but each and always because they are the response of willing obedience to the one who has saved us. They are salvation responses, not salvation issues.

So the next time you find yourself in such a conversation, rather than trotting out Hebrews 10:25, perhaps the place to start is a gentle question about what they think being saved means, then continuing on with a chat about what the implications of that salvation are in their life.

Footnotes

1. I have heard a version of this multiple times from believers.↩

2. All of the following are qualified because there are reasons and circumstances where they cannot or will not be fulfilled. The thief on the cross cannot receive baptism, nor a hypothetical convert reading the Bible alone in a desert. It is possible for a Christian to have no money in the bank or food in their cupboard to give. There are several legitimate reasons not to attend a regular church service, such as geographical isolation, disability or illness. In those circumstances a believer should not feel guilt, but they should seek (with the aid of others) alternative forms of Christian fellowship.↩

3. Despite debates about the meaning, mode and importance of baptism, the New Testament overwhelmingly models some practice of new believers undergoing a water ceremony. In normal circumstances, there are no good reasons to not be baptized.↩