Why Christians Need the Church, According to Hebrews 10

Editor’s note – Ask most Christians why church attendance matters and you’ll get Hebrews 10:25 quoted back at you like a rule. This piece pushes past that and asks what the verse actually assumes: that other believers are depending on you showing up, not just the other way around. It’s a needed correction for anyone who has quietly decided that private faith is enough, and for anyone sitting in a pew every week without ever really considering the person beside him.

“If Jesus saves me, why do I need the church?”

It is not necessarily a rebellious question. Some people ask it because they have been hurt. Some ask it because they have been bored. Many ask it because we live in an age that treats faith as a private possession, something between me and God and nobody else’s business. And it is exactly the kind of question Christians ought to be able to answer.

The usual answer is Hebrews 10:25: “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some.” You need to go to church. The Bible says so.

That is true. But it is incomplete, and the incompleteness is the problem. Pulled out of its context and hung on the wall by itself, verse 25 reads like a rule: good Christians attend. People rightly push back on that, because it makes the gathering an end in itself. And it leaves the person asking the question exactly where he started, weighing whether church is worth his time.

Hebrews 10 does not answer the question that way. It asks a different, and harder, question.

Verse 24 is the purpose of verse 25

Read the two verses together: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Grammatically, verse 25 hangs on verse 24. “Not forsaking” is not a fresh command; it describes how the previous command is carried out. Believers are told to consider one another and to stir one another up. Assembling is the means by which that happens. You cannot consider people you never see. You cannot stir toward love and good works a brother you have deliberately detached yourself from.

That reorders the whole discussion. The gathering is not primarily something the individual believer receives. It is something the individual believer owes.

Look at the verbs. “Consider” translates a word that describes careful, deliberate attention. The writer used the same word in 3:1: “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus.” The attention we give to Christ, we are now told to give to one another. Not a passing glance on the way to the parking lot. Studied, intentional regard for the people God has placed beside us.

“Stir up” is sharper than it sounds in English. The word describes a provocation; the same root appears in Acts 15:39 for the “contention” between Paul and Barnabas that was sharp enough to divide them. There is a kind of provoking that tears a church apart, and there is a kind of provoking that pushes brothers and sisters to love more and do more. The energy is the same. The direction is opposite. Hebrews commands the second.

“Exhorting” describes coming alongside someone and urging him forward. It belongs to the same word family as the name Jesus gives the Holy Spirit, the Helper, the One called alongside. What the Spirit does for us, we are told to do for one another.

Editor’s note – Notice what this does to the whole conversation about “church shopping.” If assembling exists to serve considering and stirring up, then the right question is never which church entertains me best, but where I can actually see and be seen by the people I’m called to encourage. That’s a much smaller, much more local question than most of us want it to be.

The question turned upside down

Put those verbs together and the contemporary question begins to look small.

The consumer asks: What am I getting out of church? Is the preaching good enough, the music engaging enough, the people friendly enough, to justify my Sunday morning?

Hebrews asks: Whom are you considering? Whom are you encouraging? Whom are you stirring toward love and good works?

The question is not merely whether I need the church. Hebrews 10 asks whether other believers need me to be part of the church.

That is a far less comfortable question, because it cannot be answered by evaluating the church’s performance. It can only be answered by looking at the people in the room. Someone beside you is struggling to hold fast. His circumstances have caused him to forget, for the moment, what he confessed. Your presence, your attention, your word of exhortation may be the means God uses to remind him. And someday, perhaps soon, you will need him to do the same for you.

The writer is not speaking theoretically. “As is the manner of some” tells us that in this very congregation, some had already made a habit of not showing up. The pastor is looking at empty seats, and he is not asking the absent to come back for their own sake. He is asking them to come back for the sake of the people they left.

Why the church is not the reason we need Jesus

Here we have to be careful, because there is a bad defense of the church in circulation, and Hebrews does not make it.

The bad defense says: human beings need community, and the church provides it. That is true as far as it goes. But an atheist can have community. A civic club can provide fellowship. Friends encourage one another. Families care for their own. If community is the reason for the church, then the church is one option on a menu, and a person who has community elsewhere can reasonably say, “I’m fine, thanks.”

Hebrews runs the argument the other way around. The passage does not begin with community. It begins with blood: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus” (v. 19). Before the writer tells Christians to assemble, he tells them why they can approach God at all. And the first word he uses for them is “brethren.” The believer is addressed as part of a family before he is told to do anything.

We do not need Christ because we need community. We have community because we have Christ. The church does not solve the problem that makes Christ necessary. Christ solves the problem that makes the church possible.

That is why “I have Jesus, so I don’t need the church” gets the passage exactly backwards. Having Jesus is precisely why you have the church. He bought you, He cleansed you, He brought you near to God, and He brought you near together. John’s Gospel says Jesus would die “not for that nation only, but also that He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad” (John 11:52). Assembling was not our idea. It was His purpose in dying.

Editor’s note – This distinction matters more than it might first appear. A support group can meet a felt need for belonging, but it cannot forgive sins or unite anyone to Christ. Hebrews roots the gathering in the blood that grants access to God, which means the church is not competing with community groups for your loyalty – it’s doing something no gathering of unredeemed people can do.

So much the more

The passage ends with a horizon: “and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

We tend to assume that the more mature a believer becomes, the more independent he becomes. Hebrews says the opposite. The nearer the return of Christ, the more urgently believers need one another, not less. Perseverance in this letter is never a solo project. The grammar will not allow it: brethren, let us draw near, let us hold fast, let us consider one another, assembling of ourselves together, exhorting one another. The writer cannot describe Christian endurance without plurals.

Editor’s note – This point cuts against a common assumption: that spiritual maturity means becoming more self-sufficient, needing less from other believers over time. Hebrews says growth moves the other direction, toward greater need for one another, not less. That’s worth remembering the next time independence gets mistaken for depth.

Two questions

If you are a believer who has drifted from the gathered people of God, whether from hurt, from busyness, or because it simply seemed optional, read verses 24 and 25 as one sentence. Somebody in that room needs to be considered. Somebody needs to be stirred toward love. Somebody needs your exhortation, and you need theirs. The Day is approaching. Lean in, not out.

And if you are a believer who is there every week but has never once thought about the person three rows over, the text is not satisfied with your attendance either. “Consider one another.” Give them the deliberate attention you would give to Christ Himself.

The goal was never a full building. The goal is a people who, having been brought to God by the blood of Jesus, refuse to let one another drift while they wait for Him to come.

A Word from the Editor
The question underneath this whole piece is really about ownership. If Christ purchased you with His own blood, then He also purchased your presence in the body He is building, and no one else can stand in the gap you were meant to fill. Paul asks the Corinthians whether the body could function if every part decided its participation was optional, and the answer is no more comforting there than it is here. Someone near you is counting on you showing up, even if he could never say so. Don’t let him find out too late that you were never planning to.

Editor Comment: Christ's blood already joined believers to Him and to each other, which means church was never optional for the redeemed. I use the term "Lone Ranger Christian" to remind folks that we cannot build our faith in isolation. We need fellowship and accountability.