Our modern age has tried diligently to break all bonds that join one to another. The result is a whole bunch of individuals floating around like so many cheerios in the cereal bowl. But this isn’t the world God actually made. The real world is covenantal all the way up and covenantal all the way down. But that’s just one of those Zen Presbyterian things unless we understand it, so let’s give it a go.

Basically what it means to say that reality is covenantal is that the bonds between people are real things, not imaginary constructs that we invented. So when a man takes a wife, he is a real thing made by God, she is a real thing made by God, and the marriage is a real thing made by God. The glue is real. And this flows from the life of the triune God. Stay with me now.

Augustine explained the person of the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son. Whether this is literally true or not is beyond our ken, but it remains true that a world made by one God who exists in three persons has the possibility for there to be true unity in human relationships, for the bonds between people to be real things.

Practically speaking, the implications of this are staggering, but only one need concern us now, namely church membership.

The bonds between Christians in a local church are real, the vows you take are real, the authority of your elders is real, and the blessings of faithfulness are real. This is not something we made up or that exists only in pretend world. Rather God gave the authority of his church into the hands of pastors and elders, and the pastors need to know who is in their care, and the congregants need to know who their pastors are.

So if you are not a member of a local church, if you have not bound yourself to the people of God and to the authority of God’s ministers, well, the application should be pretty straightforward. And if you are joined to the local people of God, do not forget that the bonds are real and the duties are real and the authority is real and the blessings are real.