Does a person have to attend church to go to heaven?

Not by our efforts, or striving, or religiousness, or church membership can we be saved, but only and altogether through the atoning death of Christ. So the message comes, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must he saved” (Acts 4:12). Many more passages could be quoted, but let these suffice.

And, first, then, as to the material of which God's assembly is composed; it is, in one word, those possessing salvation, or eternal life. We do not enter the assembly in order to be saved, but as those who are saved. The word is, "On this rock I will build my church." He does not say, "On my church I will build the salvation of souls." One of Rome's boasted dogmas is this — "There is no salvation out of the true church." Yes, but we can go deeper still, and say, "Off the true Rock there is no church." Take away the Rock, and you have nothing but a baseless fabric of error and corruption. What a miserable delusion, to think of being saved by that! Thank God, it is not so. We do not get to Christ through the church, but to the church through Christ. To reverse this order is to displace Christ altogether, and thus have neither Rock, nor church, nor salvation. We meet Christ as a life-giving Saviour, before we have anything to say to the assembly at all; and hence we could possess eternal life, and enjoy fall salvation, though there were no such thing as an assembly of God on the earth.

This is a very important lesson, and full of weighty results. It proves that the church does not mean merely people that are saved, or in process of being saved. Salvation was true before the assembly. The Lord took such as should be saved, and brought them into the church. If there had been no assembly to bring them into, this would not have negatived the fact that they were "such as should be saved."

I verily believe that men nowadays have not a thousandth part of the faith which that poor thief had. He trusted Jesus when every possible evidence why He should be trusted was gone — He was dying, refused of man, and forsaken of God, yet then it was the thief confided in Him. We have all the evidence about the Lord Jesus Christ — that He is risen from the dead, has passed into glory, and is thus accepted of God. This the Holy Ghost has come down to tell us, and we have, for the assurance of our faith, all that is given us in the Scriptures. The dying robber, touched by grace, and wrought on by the Holy Spirit, says, "Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom," at a moment when all this was unrevealed. Will you, my friend, trust that blessed Saviour, and give Him the confidence of your heart? Notice now the Lord's answer, "Verily I say to thee, Today shalt thou he with me in paradise." The dying believer got the assurance of present salvation. And observe this, ye who are fond of ritual, he was never baptized, and he never took the Lord's Supper either. And where did he go without either? To paradise that day. How do I know? Because Christ said he should, — "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." It was that day, not the day after, not tomorrow, but that day. Such is grace; and such the reward of faith.

NOTE. — The two thieves furnish a powerful answer to the ritualist and the rationalist. In one, we see a man going straight to paradise who had never been baptised, and never received what ritualists call "the holy communion." — In the other, we see a man who perishes, within arm's length of a Saviour, through a sceptical, rationalistic, infidel "if." Let all ritualists and rationalists ponder these facts.

But, you say, I go to church. Yes, but do not forget that you may go from church to hell. But I am in the membership of the church, you reply. There is no better decoy-duck to eternal ruin at the present day than profession without the possession of Christ. It is that which lures and leads men on to destruction. I have been preaching the gospel for thirty-five years, and, of those above fifteen or sixteen years of age, whom I have seen the grace of God reach and save, ninety-five per cent were "church members," and yet, by their own confession, till then unsaved.

[.] We must be clear on one crucial point: Being a member of any one church or group does not guarantee automatic membership in the Body of Christ. To update a familiar cliché, going to church on a regular basis no more makes you a Christian than eating daily at McDonald's makes you a hamburger. You have to do personal business with Jesus Christ - put your trust in Him as Savior and Lord. Becoming a true Christian is a personal transaction between you and God. No one else can do it for you.

I maintain, therefore, that the salvation spoken of in Ephesians is already complete for him that believes; so absolute indeed, that none can add anything to it, because it would be adding something to Christ, and to what Christ has done. And this may not be, cannot be, seeing that it is all the free, unmerited, unmingled mercy of God. And this is the great thing for the soul. Am I able, without question of what I am, or what I hope to be, or what I ought to do for God, to trust Him now? Can I rest all that I have been and am upon Christ, without any promises or pledges of mine — without any hope or thought of what I may do, because God might take me away in a moment? Can I rest entirely and implicitly in Him? Think of the case of the dying thief, which is a living and notable testimony of salvation by grace throughout all ages. Others may have a work to do afterwards; but there we have one who was an object of grace in the last hours of his life. And there is no other way. Had he lived for a thousand years afterwards, he would not have been a whit more secure by grace than he was then. It is of great moment to bring our souls to the touchstone from time to time — whether we are resting solely upon the grace of God toward us, not upon what people call grace in us, i.e., our faithfulness toward Him. For this is a common notion of grace. They mean a great change that has taken place in the heart in respect of God. This, however, is not what God calls grace, but what He has given gratuitously in the work that Christ has done for sin. "By grace are ye saved through faith." The Spirit shuts out all thought of man's contributing the faith or taking any credit because coming to Christ; for He says immediately after, "And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." This probably refers, not only to the salvation, but to the faith; it was all the gift of God, and not man's production: "Not of works, lest any man should boast." On the contrary, instead of being a question of our works, we are God's handiwork, the new creation for His own praise. "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them." There you have a most plain proof that there could be no carelessness as to the walk of the believer; but the same verse cuts off all thought that man's doing can be the ground or means of salvation.

This, then, is the answer to your question: if you want to be saved, you must believe on God's Son. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." Mark you! it is Christ, you must know. It is the Person of Christ who is the object of belief, the object of faith. Christ, personally, is the object of the soul's faith, and the one who believes in Him gets the benefit of all the work He has done. I do not agree at all with an old woman, in Arran, who said to a friend of mine, who was pressing the gospel on her, "You make far o'er muckle o' that word, believe, believe." That let out a great deal. You cannot make too much of believing. If Christ has not hitherto been the object of your faith, may God give you now to believe on His blessed Son, and you will get what the jailor got. "Thou shalt be saved," is God's assurance to the believing soul.

When the question, "What must I do to be saved?" rang from the agonised lips of the prison warder at Philippi, the inspired answer did not bid him pray, or strive, or make vows, or anything of that sort. He was told to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Nothing that he could do could secure God's salvation. The doing had all been done by Christ. All that is left for the sinner is the appropriation of the results of His mighty work by simple faith.