Becoming born again is an individual issue. In other words, you need to believe in Jesus for eternal life to have that life.

Your mother can’t believe it for you.
Neither can your father,
or grandfather,
or friend.

You have to come to that point of faith for yourself.

However, while you can only be born again individually, God designed you to grow in community.

You are part of an assembly, a body, a family. And growth happens in that context.

For the Free Grace movement to keep moving forward in Biblical truth, it must promote both God’s way of salvation (i.e., believing in Jesus for everlasting salvation) and God’s way of spiritual growth, including how to function as the church.

We often talk about the local church’s importance for your spiritual growth in our blogs and podcasts. That issue comes up again and again because it is taught in Scripture again and again.

For example, consider the NT’s many “one-another” commands (see here or here). If you study those commands, it will dispel you of any individualistic notions about discipleship and will provide a “thick” overview of the normal Christian church life (to borrow a phrase from Watchman Nee). There are dozens of “one another” commands because you cannot live the Christian life to the full without other people. For example, you cannot serve, submit, or speak to one another without the “other.”

Christian living assumes a Christian community, and the one-another commands highlight that reality.

Over the next few weeks, I will comment on every one of these “one another” commands in their Biblical order. And by so doing, I hope we can help one another renew our minds about the Christian life, so that bit by bit, we can be transformed and become more like Jesus.