You probably know my answer, but you may not know my reasons.

According to Catholic doctrine, the Church is absolutely necessary. The church father Cyprian declared Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus— “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” After eighteen centuries, that is still official Catholics doctrine. Pope John Paul II affirmed it. Pope Benedict XVI literally wrote the book on it. (Well, it was not a book exactly; it was a 36-page official church declaration.)

Though I would not use Cyprian’s words to stress the importance of the church, I agree that the church is important. A rich and life-transforming knowledge of Christ requires the church. I am not saying that a person needs to attend church services every week, or even attend at all. Christ can transform lives even in circumstances where church attendance is impossible, such as illness, confinement, forced isolation, etc. Nevertheless, the wise God has designed the church to be the medium in which the rich, life-transforming knowledge of Christ is imparted.

In Colossians chapter two, Paul tells believers in Colosse that he has been in a great struggle for them and their neighboring Christians in Laodicea. He struggles so that their hearts may be encouraged as they are “being knit together in love” (KJV). This, Paul knows, will lead to (εἰς in Greek) the “full riches of complete understanding” or, as other versions translate, “the full assurance of understanding,” which will in turn lead to (εἰς again) the “knowledge of the mystery of God—Christ.”

Paul’s ultimate goal is for people to have the knowledge of the mystery of God, which he sums up in one word: “Christ.” If we work backwards from Paul’s ultimate goal, we can see how he expected people to arrive there. Paul understood that the life-transforming knowledge of Christ rests upon “the full riches of complete understanding.” If Christians are to have assurance, it is crucial for them to understand their situation and their story.

I have found that few Christians have a robust understanding of their situation and their story. Without that understanding, it is hard for them to see how the Bible (or a worship service, or a sermon) relates to their lives. They lack the assurance that comes from understanding. They wonder if this is all there is to the Christian life. Other than attending church occasionally (the current norm among self-identifying Evangelicals is 1.3 times a month), their lives are nearly indistinguishable from those of their non-Christian friends.

They need “the full assurance of understanding,” but shouldn’t they already have it if they are reading the Bible and sitting under good teaching? The answer to that question is apparent in Colossians 2:2. The kind of understanding we need comes to people with encouraged hearts. People with discouraged hearts misunderstand what is going on around them. They lack awareness of God and his goodness. If people are ever going to understand the blessing they have in Christ, they need to have encouraged hearts.

As a pastor, I know how important it is for my church family to be encouraged in heart, but that seems like too big a job for me. Will my preaching, teaching, and visiting be enough to encourage our church family’s hearts? Years of preaching, teaching, and visiting suggest that the answer is no. However many sermons I may preach, or podcasts, newsletters, or magazine columns I may produce, I cannot provide the kind of encouragement that leads to understanding, assurance, and the life-transforming knowledge of Christ.

A congregation with encouraged hearts is too big a job for me or for any one of us, but not for all of us—and that is the way God designed it. Together, under the direction of God’s Spirit, we can live and thrive in an encouraged community. This is behind Paul’s goal for the churches to “be encouraged in heart and united in love.” The NIV’s addition of the conjunction “and” in this sentence is misleading, suggesting that being encouraged in heart and united in love are two separate goals. In Greek, there is a participial phrase that (translated literally) runs: “that they may be encouraged in heart, being united in love.”

In other words, peoples’ hearts are encouraged when they are united to each other in love. Being alone discourages our hearts, while being united in love encourages them. And since an encouraged heart leads to the full assurance of understanding, it is critical that our church families are united in love.

There is another thing here. The word translated “united,” like nearly all words, has a range of meanings. This word was sometimes used of marshalling (uniting) disparate facts in order to prove a point. Luke uses it in this way when he says that Saul “baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.” I am not suggesting that Paul intended the word to have that particular sense in Colossians 2. I am saying that when the hearts of a church family are united, the outside world sees powerful “proof” of the reality of God.

In today’s world (as well as yesterday’s), there are many influences working to disunite us. This is not an accident. A church that is united in love will dislodge the devil, conduct itself with assurance, convince doubters, know Christ by experience, and change the world. One of the principal goals of any church must be to unite the hearts of all her people in love. That is certainly God’s goal.

Reaching that goal will require intention and effort from the pastor, the ministry staff, the board, every Sunday School teacher, deacon, treasurer, trustee, worship leader, sound/video tech, and member. Unity is a goal that benefits all of us and requires effort from each of us. But the effort is worth it, for it leads to “the full riches of complete understanding,” which makes possible it possible for us to know “the mystery of God,” which is “Christ” himself.