I heard today that someone suggested that we must stop talking about the unchurched and change the terminology to the unsaved to get to the heart of the matter. My first thought was, “Is the solution really just to change from one unscriptural term to another?’†The scriptures use phrases like blind, dead, and dwelling in darkness to describe these people.
To put best the best construction on this, I understand that the one suggesting this is trying to get people to understand that these people are not just intuitionally challenged but eternally endangered. Their problem is not church membership but separation from Christ.
However, I fear such a change would just be another chapter in the long novel telling people that salvation comes to people apart from the Church of Christ. I could just hear the people on the Facebook group, “Going to Church Doesn’t Make You Any More a Christian Than Going to the Garage Makes You a Car" rejoicing at church a change.
It can be said with absolute biblical support that the unsaved are that way precisely because they are unchurched. Now of course we must not confuse institutional church membership with inclusion in the body of Christ. But neither must we ever speak as if salvation comes apart from the church which by God’s design and grace has been entrusted with the Word and Sacraments.
Spoken in the opposite way. it is also impossible for one to become saved without becoming churched. Salvation could be said by definition to be inclusion in the Church of God where Jesus gives his gifts to his people.
I think people understand that people without Jesus are unsaved. But in our day, I think the greater issue is that fewer and fewer people understand and proclaim that salvation comes through the Church. Yes, the unchurched are the unsaved. The saved are the churched. This we must teach, believe, and bear witness to.
