Membership

Reformed churches confess in Article 28 of the Belgic Confession:

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“We believe, since this holy assembly and congregation is the assembly of the redeemed

and there is no salvation outside of it, that no one ought to withdraw from it, content to be by himself,

no matter what his status or standing may be.”

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The fact that in this life the visible church is imperfect and mixed with hypocrites gives no Christian the right to depart from it. As the Third-Century church leader Cyprian put it, “You cannot have God for your father unless you have the Church for your mother. If you could escape outside Noah’s ark, you could escape outside the Church.” Except in otherwise extraordinary cases, a person cannot belong to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church without also belonging to a visible manifestation of the same, which, according to the New Testament, is the local congregation that preaches the gospel, administers the sacraments, and exercises church discipline.

 

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